Tim and all, please don't get me wrong. I'm not an IBM-basher or an IBM
doomsayer. I'm glad IBM is doing well and wish them nothing but the best.
The mainframe has been very, very good to me.

I'm not a stock analyst and I'm not a chip engineering cost expert. My point
was this: it must be incredibly expensive engineering the Z chips, and the
MVS market is something of a -- what's a word you would not object to?
narrow? -- market. IBM does not invite me to their strategic planning
meetings but my guess was that the LinuxONE was an attempt to turn the
mainframe hardware into more of a mass-market machine -- Linux being the
most popular OS in the world -- or as I said below "sell a warehouse full of
them" and amortize current and future z hardware development over a much
greater number of sales. Which would be good news for the relatively --
what's the right word, Tim? specialized? -- MVS market.

I'm not sure that anything anyone has posted answers the question "has IBM
been successful with that initiative?" I was wondering not as a doomsayer,
but wishing for the best, and curious about the reality. One swallow does
not make a spring, and 8 new customers do not a mass market make. I was
curious especially about "culture," whether anyone with more of a presence
on slash-dot and the like had a feeling whether the LinuxONE was being
perceived by that community as one helluva cool Linux server, or as just
some weird IBM box. 

To success!

Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
Behalf Of Timothy Sipples
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2017 4:51 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper

Charles Mills wrote:
>Anyone have any idea how successful it has been? ....The answer matters 
>to the MVS community because if IBM can sell a warehouse full of them 
>it will support further mainframe hardware development, which must 
>currently seem to IBM to be a small niche market.

Where do you get your "must" from? IBM often reports IBM z System/LinuxONE
hardware revenues in its quarterly earnings reports. Even with a "tough
compare," in the latest quarter (4Q2016 as I write this) mainframe hardware
revenues were up, capacity deliveries up more, and margins up, too. Of
course that's not counting other, related revenue and profit. IBM's CFO also
reported 8 new customers in the quarter, 29 in 2016, and 80 since
introduction of the IBM z13.

https://www.ibm.com/investor/events/earnings/4q16.html

So, successful, very. Thank you!

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