by Susan Eustis

Greg Lotko is the Business Line Executive of the System z Division for IBM Systems & Technology Group, responsible for all facets of IBM’s mainframe business including strategy, marketing, sales, operations, technology development and overall financial performance.  Greg spoke in a compelling manner about the modernization of the mainframe, creating a case for movement of front end web enabled Linux workload from distributed systems onto the mainframe.

He illustrated the modern aspect of the mainframe by comparing it to a corvette.  The look is still the same, but the insides have been modernized.  Greg complements the mainframe on its rock solid stability and scalability.  “Put the pedal to the metal (100 percent utilization), and it doesn’t blink!” is his interpretation of the mainframe.

According to Greg, the mainframe is able to move into virtualization markets.  Virtualization was pioneered on the mainframe.  The mainframe is far more advanced than competitive virtualization systems.  The mainframe virtualization can handle 1,000 images while competing systems may manage 55 in a similar configuration.  The mainframe is good at managing workload even as people move software from one environment to another, not paying any penalty as they have duplicate systems running during the move.