Mike Bliss, director of System z technical support and marketing at IBM, said System z9 was a new mainframe that comes with the latest technology.

There are two models - for mid-range and entry level - to cover the middle market, small and medium enterprises and the entry-level market.

"The new z9 has a 35-per-cent increase in performance at a lower cost compared with existing mainframe technology," he said.

He also said the firm would partner with independent software vendors (ISVs) for long-term relationships, providing free testing for them so they would be able to develop new applications to support customisation and ultimately sell their products to end customers. The firm has worked with the education sector to provide mainframe facilities for classrooms and end-to-end products, so students will able to take advantage of IBM architecture.

"IBM has cooperated with 250 schools worldwide to provide mainframe classroom facilities. It has also set up six university-hub systems that actively share international academic mainframe resources," said Bliss.

The firm has set up a lab in Shanghai that will develop software for System z and conduct related testing, because IBM realises that Asia is an emerging market, especially China.

In addition, IBM has enhanced its System z9 Enterprise Class server with features that increase the system's flexibility for business.

"China is a very important and fast-emerging market, where firms are rapidly deploying the mainframe technology needed to achieve the scale and reliability required to keep pace in a globally integrated economy," said Bliss.

He added that IBM also spent US$1 billion (Bt38.39 billion) a year to develop and research new innovations in mainframe architecture.

Jirapan Boonnoon

The Nation