IBM is ramping up its zSeries technical support
operation and has begun offering customers a $250,000 credit to
encourage them to purchase big-iron systems.
The company's latest 24- and 32-processor versions of its
zSeries 990 mainframe computers will ship at the end of this month,
following on from its A and B z990 models, which were introduced
last spring.
IBM will also increase by a third or more the $250m a year it
spends on technical support of by creating a new class of IBM
technical support consultants, called IBM System Architects.
The company will boost spend on hardware and software support
for the mainframe.
"We're increasing our investment in the area of 30% to 40% over
the next six months, including these new System Architects," said
Pete McCaffrey, IBM's director of zSeries product marketing.
About half of the new support investment will be spent on the
System Architects, who will be available, free of charge, to
mainframe customers.
"Previously a customer would have to hire a consultant to
provide this level of service," said McCaffrey. "Initially, we'll
be deploying about 150 around the world. They'll be deployed into
our top accounts on an as-needed basis."
The System Architects will evaluate a customer's IT environment
and provide consulting services to help users simplify and
consolidate IT operations.
The other half of the money will be spent on "beefing up the
specialist community that supports these architects", said
McCaffrey. Most of this money will be spent on adding more staff to
the 1,000 technical support specialists who already work in IBM's
zSeries group.
IBM's moves are, in part, designed to assuage fears IT managers
might have about a thinning of the mainframe work force, as the
technology becomes less prevalent in IT, said John Phelps, a
research vice president with industry research firm, Gartner. "They
want to build up confidence in the mainframe, that there are people
out there who can help them," he said.
"You worry about the mainframe from a skills basis because you
don't have a lot of people coming out of college who have been
trained that way," Phelps added. "I see this as moving back to that
environment where you're getting this kind of good support from the
vendor without having to be nickeled and dimed for a support
contract," he said.
The $250,000 credit will be another incentive for mainframe
customers. Through to the end of the year, IBM will offer mainframe
purchasers this rebate on a variety of IBM's On Demand services and
products, such as its BladeCenter or storage systems, or WebSphere
software.
The latest mainframes will feature enhanced clustering
capabilities that will allow mainframes as far as 100 km apart to
be linked together. They will also contain 30 logical partitions,
twice as many as their predecessors, and 512 I/O channels.
IBM is also enhancing Linux support on the mainframes so that
Linux users can now turn on and off processor capacity depending on
system requirements. Linux mainframe users will also now be able to
use IBM's 2105 Enterprise Storage Servers, and its Enterprise Tape
System 3590 drives for storage.
Robert McMillan writes for IDG News Service