IBM Targets Mid-Market With z800

The zSeries 800, announced this week at IBM PartnerWorld 2002 in San Francisco, is being billed as a lower-priced, entry-class offering that will bring IBM mainframe technology to companies that previously couldn't afford it.

"This will change the economics of mid-sized computing," said Peter Rowley, general manager of IBM business partners during a press conference announcing the new server offering.

IBM, which last month released a Linux-only mainframe, is releasing eight new general purpose models of the z800. The offerings, which will be avaialable by the end of next month, will include a number of features common to the IBM eServer family, including self-healing and self-managing features, capacity backup, Parrallel Sysplex clustering and concurrent I/O.

According to IBM executives, more than 75 percent of sales of the new zSeries, code-named 'Raptor,' will go through business partners, making it one of IBM's most channel-friendly offerings.

IBM says the offerings are well suited for solution providers serving enterprises that want to consolidate servers, letting them eliminate under-utilized server farms, simplify systems management and reduce costs. The company says using z800 technology, companies can consolidate between 20 and several hundred Sun or Intel servers on a single box.

The company also announced z/OS.e, a 64-bit operating system designed for e-business applications running on WebSphere, DB2, Java JDK and MQSeries, as well as a packaged, low-cost z800 storage solution to go with the offering.