IBM set to take wraps off new mainframe computer

IBM is expected to unveil today its next-generation mainframe computer, a more powerful version of the system that once generated at least 80 percent of its profits.

Even though IBM has become more of a services company in recent years, the mainframe is still a key product for the world's largest computer maker. Despite IBM's code-name for the product -- T-Rex, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the constant dismissal by competitors that the mainframe is a dinosaur -- the mainframe is far from death's door.

I am searching. I did find this story from the Poughkeepsie journal:

Sunday, February 3, 2002

Center drives IBM services

Corporation records rely on own crew

By Craig Wolf
Poughkeepsie Journal

Kathy McLaughlin photos/Journal Elwood Thorn of the City of Poughkeepsie pulls data tapes for customer requests at IBM Global Services in Poughkeepsie. The tapes store records for customers as well as corporate data.

David Tryon, vice president for America's service delivery for IBM Global Services, stands by a z900 mainframe, the latest in the eServer line.

IBM Corp. not only sells a lot of information technology services to customers, it uses some for itself. And much of that IT comes from Dutchess County.

''We take pride in eating our own cooking,'' David Tryon tells a touring reporter, and, one suspects, a lot of other folks. It's an apt metaphor.

Tryon is an executive with IBM Global Services, usually called IGS, and his client is IBM itself. He bears the title of vice president, America's service delivery for IBM's internal IT.

He and his crew are IBM's own ''systems guys.''

Tucked into IBM's sprawling complex of buildings in the Town of Poughkeepsie overlooking the Hudson River, there's a 100,000-square-foot building that houses IBM's data center for the Northeast.

Data put on tapes

Think of two football fields packed with big mainframe computers, disc drives the size of refrigerators, tape drives and rolling racks of tape cartridges.

The key equipment here all is made by IBM.

''That gives us significant cost advantages in driving the business,'' Tryon points out.

It feels humid in here, the better to keep all that gear comfortable. Tapes don't like it too dry.

Joe Toth shows off a tape reader that everyone just calls a ''jukebox.'' Its robot zips along internal racks of tapes, snatching and reading what's ordered.

''It minimizes human intervention. There's several hundred thousand tapes loaded in these libraries,'' Toth said. ''It takes about 15 seconds from the time it's accessed to the time it's ready.''

But much of the data is fetchable much faster, carried on disc drives. The system learns what's wanted most frequently and keeps that data on the fastest systems. The data is served up by mainframes, both the latest z900 boxes topping the eServer line and its predecessor System/390s. Combined computing capacity is tens of billions of instructions per second.

Staffers monitor the works, and hand-carry tape cassettes from the back racks when some rarely used set of data is called up. That could be financial, research or manufacturing data from within the Big Blue network -- or work for some outside customer.

This shop also does work for outside ''outsourcing'' clients, like 300 Volvo dealerships in the U.S. and Canada, and Advo, the direct-mail marketing company.

IBM Global Services is perhaps the least-known part of Big Blue in Dutchess, though this segment has well over 1,000 employees. Mainframes and their software, plus microelectronics, account for most of Dutchess' 11,900 employees.

Steve Cole, spokesman for mid-Hudson matters, ballparks the number at about 20 percent of Poughkeepsie's 6,100 hands, with several hundred people working at another IGS operation at the East Fishkill site.

Additional work is done by outside contractors of various numbers at various times, Tryon said.

The East Fishkill group works more with phones than computers. ''Its primary function is 'help desk,' or customer support,'' said Tryon. ''That team answers the questions that the user community has.''

''It handles well over 1 million calls per year and over 100,000 end users,'' both inside IBM and outside.

It's the outside users that provide IBM Global Services' revenues, $34.9 billion for 2001, the first year in which it eclipsed hardware, despite being only 10 years old.

IBM's take was well beyond that of Electronic Data Systems, which was $19.2 billion in 2000.

IBM revenues gained 5.4 percent, a slower growth rate than in previous years. And for the fourth quarter, it was down 1.4 percent.

Andrew Efstathiou, analyst with Boston-based Yankee Group, commented, ''I'd say it was very good, considering the difficult economic times. A lot of smaller competitors have gone out of business. It's been rough times and a lot of sweating.''

''IBM really is the largest one of the services groups,'' Efstathiou said. ''It's very heavily focused on outsourcing and competes directly in the space with EDS and CSC. They're the only ones that can do a total global outsourcing. All three deal with very large projects.''

''The outsourcing business has been strong for them and certainly for EDS,'' he said.

Relevant Web link
- IBM Global Services: www-1.ibm.com/services/fullservice.html

This must be what he is holding:

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Redesigned Multichip Module

The heart of the z990 is the IBM multichip module (MCM) -- the densest, most advanced semiconductor and packaging technology in the world. The redesigned 3.7" x 3.7" x .75" module, which fits in the palm of your hand, contains 16 chips mounted on 101 layers of ceramic glass connected to over 5,000 I/O pins by 500 meters of wire. The new MCM is 50% smaller, enabling the z990 to deliver almost three times the processor capacity of the z900 in the same footprint. The module uses IBM's leading-edge copper and Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology and contains over 3.2 billion transistors. Designed and manufactured by IBM's world-class chip developers in Burlington, VT, this leading-edge technology provides significant advantages in performance, power consumption and reliability. In addition, the z990's new superscalar microprocessor design helps deliver up to 60% performance improvement for Linux, e-business and traditional workloads.

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