The saying goes “you can’t choose your parents.” (No offense mom and dad.)
But in this case the newest member of the zEnterprise (a.k.a. System z) family should be pleased with its immediate relatives. The zEnterprise family is strong, steady, secure and ready to take on your next challenge.
Last month, IBM delivered the new IBM zEnterprise BC12 (zBC12) server, designed as an entry point for enterprise computing. This business class model offers new innovations and enhanced capabilities in these areas: cloud, analytics, mobile and security, as well as significant improvements in packaging, performance and scalability over prior generations.
You may recall that a year ago, IBM introduced the zEC12. The zBC12 offers similar capabilities as big brother zEC12, including the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) engine for running Linux applications, and the System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) and System z Integrated Information Process (zIIP) for accelerating workload processing. All this is now on a mid-range box.
So, why would an organization be interested in this new product from IBM? For starters, with an opening price of only $75,000, it can actually be lower in cost to operate than a distributed x86-based server infrastructure. Secondly, this is a mid-range zEnterprise server with extended capabilities around data analytics, mobility, cloud computing and Linux. So you have the workhorse server to help manage growing amounts of data and workloads.
Organizations have more and more apps that offer mobile access. Especially banking apps. Most big banks use zEnterprise servers for mobile apps. These servers are the best for serving high-frequency transactions, and they are more secure than other server platforms.
With such an affordable starting price, the zBC12 server is attractive to many organizations, including those running a lot of Linux applications, because of their low total cost of ownership. In a distributed environment, the System z is often the least-expensive option. For example, if requirements grow, System z customers don’t need to buy new servers. They can increase the capabilities of their existing servers on-the-fly.
The bottom line for the newest System z family member, it offers you big benefits at an affordable price.
I encourage you to learn more about the zBC12 by viewing the replay of the IBM announcement.