IBM and Oracle are teaming up to make Linux-based
enterprise resource planning applications more widely available on
the mainframe.
IBM has been promoting Linux on the mainframe for several years
and is heavily discounting processors used for Linux-based
applications. It has also been working with ERP supplier SAP to
port its applications to Linux on the mainframe. In August, IBM
said it planned to invest £21m over the next five years to do
this.
Experts said ERP users could benefit from the reliability and
manageability of the mainframe platform.
Oracle will work with IBM to make most of its business
applications run on Linux so that users can implement the software
on IBM System z mainframes. The companies will help users migrate
their workloads onto Linux running on the zSeries. Oracle is likely
to use its own version of Red Hat Linux.
Mark Lillycrop, chief executive at mainframe analyst Arcati
Research, said, "This is good news. Users are certainly interested
in running ERP and other packaged business applications on the
mainframe. The IBM/SAP co-operation was definitely
customer-driven.
"Linux opens up a lot of new opportunities for users who want to
consolidate mission-critical workloads onto the zSeries, and
anything that runs on Linux on other platforms has to be available
on the mainframe too."
Lillycrop added that it was extremely cost effective to run new
workloads on the mainframe because of IBM's processor
discounts.
Putting Oracle's enterprise software on IBM mainframes raises
the question of whether Oracle would support users who want to use
Oracle applications with IBM's rival DB2 database. Despite Oracle's
database technology being available on the mainframe for some time,
Lillycrop said it was not widely used.
Nathaniel Martinez, programme manager at analyst firm IDC, said
IBM, Oracle and SAP have yet to outline how the software stack
works.
He said, "As long as Oracle or SAP have ported their
applications to the Linux environment, it should not matter what
machine is underneath it. The z/OS or 390 operating system allows
you to partition your mainframe into a number of virtual machines,
so you could have Oracle running on Linux on a partition."
IBM reference customers for Linux on the mainframe include
Dundee City Council, which runs 11 Linux virtual machines on a
single IBM zSeries 800. Financial services firm Le Foyer runs
Linux-based financial applications on the zSeries, and US
department store Boscov's runs IBM Websphere Commerce for Linux on
an IBM zSeries 900.
Comment on this article:computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk