BMC to Sell Itself to a Private Equity Consortium

BMC, a software company with an extensive portfolio of tools for z/OS, has announced it recommends shareholder acceptance of an offer from a consortium of private equity investors to buy all of the company's publicly traded shares. The consortium includes Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital, and the offer price is $46.25 per share which values the company at about $6.9 billion.

There's a reasonable theoretical argument that companies liberated from quarterly Wall Street reporting pressures will be able to invest more and more strategically in developing their businesses, and that's the argument BMC's management is making. However, the actual results of companies that sell themselves to private equity firms are decidedly mixed.

Golden Gate Capital already owns at least a portion of several software companies including Infor and Attachmate (which in turn owns Novell), so they have some investment experience in IBM zEnterprise-related software companies. Bain Capital owns part of SunGard.

Manufacturer in Texas Still Relies on their IBM 402

In the late 1940s, IBM's factory in Endicott, New York, started manufacturing and delivering the IBM 402 Accounting Machine and related accessories. The 402 was not exactly a "computer" in the way we now think of them. For example, the 402 was electromechanical instead of electronic, and programming a 402 involved stringing wires in complex patterns on plugboards. Nonetheless, the IBM 402 helped businesses and governments efficiently and quickly (for the time) solve a wide variety of accounting problems: inventory control, payroll, billing, cashflow, etc.

One of the IBM 402 machines was delivered to Sparkler Filters, a small manufacturing company in Conroe, Texas, which specializes in chemical process filtration. That machine, now over 60 years old, is still running and still handling a wide variety of the company's accounting tasks. That's in no small measure due to the people who keep Sparkler's 402 in top condition, including Lutricia Wood, the company's data processing manager, and Duwayne Leafley, an independent maintenance technician. As far as anyone knows this IBM 402 is the last one operating in the United States and perhaps also in the world.

Sparkler Filters is an extreme example perhaps, but their experience reinforces some important lessons. One lesson is that business processes are extremely important and often durable, and the programs written today often endure a lot longer than anyone expects. Certainly Sparkler could adopt different technology, but doing so would be highly disruptive, especially without careful planning, documentation, training, and customization to fit within existing processes. Obviously they would prefer not to experience that disruption (and cost) unless there's a "damn good reason," and they haven't found one yet. Another lesson is that the choices we make about technologies should recognize durability and longevity requirements to support long running businesses and their often stable core missions. For example, the principles of accounting really haven't changed for centuries, so why rewrite core applications "just because"? That's frequently expensive and disruptive.

There should be a balance. IBM works incredibly hard to make sure that zEnterprise-hosted programs simply don't break even when everything else is evolving: input, output, servers, storage, operating systems, middleware, addressing, etc. While the supported program portfolio doesn't go back as far as IBM 402 programs, the commitment IBM made in the 1960s with the System/360 has been and continues to be honored. zEnterprise customers really do run code which was born in the 1960s alongside 64-bit code written 5 minutes ago on one operating system on one machine. That code interoperates: exchanging data, calling back and forth, etc. Unless there's a "damn good reason," you don't have to replace your programs unless and until your business has a new requirement, and then only to the extent you wish.

Now, just because you could run only decades old code without improvements and innovations doesn't mean you should. If you underinvest in any business infrastructure, including important application enhancements, that's a problem that'll progressively and negatively impact your business. However, being forced to make vendor-driven changes simply for the sake of change (and for the benefit of vendors' quarterly financial statements) is no way to do business either. That sort of change is simply wasteful.

I hope I get the chance to stop by Conroe, Texas, someday soon. What a wonderful story.

Fun Fact: zEnterprise Alone = Triple Oracle

To gain a little more insight into the server market, I was reading through IDC's 2012 year end server market report and compared that to Oracle's latest financial report. Here's the fun fact: IBM's zEnterprise server hardware business alone is triple Oracle's entire hardware business: "Exa," Solaris servers, tape, everything.

Sure, insert standard disclaimers here about quarterly and annual variations, model cycles, etc. But still...wow.

IBM Announces 1Q2013 Earnings: zEnterprise Shines

IBM announced its first quarter earnings for 2013, reiterating its earnings guidance for the year. Bearing in mind my previous cautions about not reading too much into one quarter or into one segment of the global mainframe ecosystem, IBM's zEnterprise server business performed quite well, growing 7% year over year (8% at constant currency). Any growth in the server business these days is highly likely to be a marketshare gain, and so it was with zEnterprise. Yes, that's correct: IBM mainframes are gaining substantial marketshare in the server market.

IBM's CFO added a few comments to give some color to that performance. One comment was that "MIPS" deliveries galloped ahead faster (27%) than the growth in revenue, so that means customers continue to enjoy progressively lower prices when they buy mainframe capacity. He also pointed out that speciality engines are continuing to perform well, too, reinforcing the fact that mainframe customers continue to place new applications on mainframes at a brisk pace. And he mentioned that several large mainframe sales got pushed into the second quarter, perhaps due to the unusual timing of the Easter holiday, so IBM is expecting a further increase to double digit zEnterprise growth in the second quarter.

Overall, though, IBM's hardware business had a tough quarter. One surprise (to me, anyway) was IBM's Power server business which declined 32 percent. There were several comments about that statistic. One is that IBM is overwhelmingly #1 in the UNIX server market and still probably gained marketshare — that gives you some idea how horribly Oracle/Sun and HP are doing in the same market segment. Also, IBM had a somewhat tepid quarter in their so-called "growth markets," and 20% or more of IBM's business in those markets is hardware, a lot of which is Power-based. There were also some model cycle effects as Power servers are transitioning to POWER7+ processors. IBM said they'll be increasing their efforts to promote Linux on Power in order to try to win a greater share of the Linux server market to add to their dominance in the UNIX market.

IBM's CFO noted that the PureSystems are doing quite well. In fact, IBM's CFO's comments would indicate they're selling in much greater numbers than the Oracle "Exa" systems, probably because they're more open and flexible, providing direct support for a much wider range of industry applications while also delivering the benefits of integration. (The new IBM PureData System for Analytics, featuring Netezza technology, is the PureSystem model most relevant to zEnterprise customers.) However, the growth spots in the quarter (zEnterprise and PureSystems) were not enough to offset the overall decline (14%, excluding IBM's divested Retail hardware segment) in IBM's total hardware business.

In his comments to analysts, IBM's CFO pointed out how storage is changing, with more content and value in the software used to manage storage. (IBM's storage software business was up more than 10%, he pointed out.) To which I would add that trend is true for all types of hardware, and I've mentioned that before. It doesn't mean you can't do without hardware — far from it — but getting the combination right is critically important, and how you do the accounting is much less important. Likewise, I would caution cost-focused IT organizations (which is almost all of them) not to concentrate much on hardware costs. The other parts of IT, notably staffing, continue to increase as a share of spending. Ignore those and your bottom line is in peril.

The PC Market is Shrinking Fast

IDC and Gartner reported their separate views of the state of the PC market for the first calendar quarter of 2013. They agree that the PC market is shrinking, quickly.

According to IDC, the PC market suffered its worst year over year decline in the history of its tracking study. It estimates that the global PC market shrank nearly 14% and that the U.S. PC market shrank nearly 13%. (Gartner estimates are -11.2% and -9.6% respectively.) They both agree that HP lost a lot of marketshare, Dell lost some, and Lenovo, Toshiba, and Apple gained some marketshare. Lenovo, in particular, managed to grow within a shrinking market.

If Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system had any impact it wasn't helpful. By definition a shrinking PC market, particularly one with Apple gaining marketshare, means a shrinking Microsoft since so much of its business is dependent on the twin Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office franchises. Microsoft also has other business units, but those two are essential to its continued success. I can't imagine Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer being happy with what's happening to the PC market his company dominates.

What's going on? Simple: smartphones and tablets. Google and Apple supply the two most popular mobile platforms. Those devices are killing off much of the PC market. Smartphones and tablets are simply more relevant to more people in more places than PCs, and the mobile client application ecosystems are now stronger. It's astonishing, really. And what's really scary if your business is heavily dependent on PCs is that most of the world's population will never buy a PC but almost everybody on the planet has a mobile phone. Mobile phones are literally more popular than toilets. And smartphones are rapidly eroding the remaining market for feature phones. If it hasn't happened yet, this year (2013) is when the number of active smartphones and tablets will surpass the number of PCs, and it won't take long for tablets and smartphones to outnumber PCs by billions.

Naturally Microsoft isn't happy with this turn of events and has even filed a complaint with the European Commission, which strikes me (and a lot of other people) as absurd. Google and Apple simply built better business models and more compelling platforms than Microsoft, and that's why they're doing well (and should do well).

So what does the continuing rise of smartphones and tablets have to do with mainframes? Plenty. I continue to hear from mainframe users that transaction volumes and associated batch processing are growing faster than they expected, and that's mostly explained by smartphones and tablets. Mobile users are inherently more demanding users in terms of time and place, and consequently they expect continuous or near-continuous service with excellent security. Mobile users often generate wilder swings in application usage patterns — a simple Tweet could easily trigger (twigger?) a sudden spike in demand. Do those requirements sound familiar?

I don't predict the death of the PC, however. I'm just not sure yet where the PC market will stabilize.

UPDATE: ZDNet has posted an incredible chart showing what's happening to the PC market along with some more commentary. Wow.

IBM Mainframe Computing at AT&T in 1973

AT&T has posted a wonderful historical film produced by Bell Labs in 1973. The film introduces employees to the services available at the Holmdel, New Jersey, computing center. At that time you could submit batch jobs on punched cards, typically resulting in printed output, or you could interact with the system through TSO (Time Sharing Option) and interactive terminals, some connected via telephone lines.

Note the photograph attached to the IBM System/370 that appears at about the 5:30 mark in the film. Many things have changed in 40 years, and many things have not.

UPDATE: One thing that has changed is that the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex closed in the mid-2000s. The property is available for occupancy if you're interested. Bell Labs has been largely dismantled through a series of corporate reorganizations and cutbacks beginning with the AT&T breakup in 1984. There are a few vestiges of Bell Labs still operating as part of Alcatel-Lucent and (separately) as part of Ericsson.

I'm not the sort of person who looks back on the past as necessarily better. In most respects it wasn't. For example, unleaded gasoline arrived after 1973 in the United States, eliminating a serious public health hazard especially for children. There's some evidence that the reduction in lead exposure has contributed to a large drop in crime rates. As another example, smallpox was still afflicting some of humanity in 1973 but was eradicated a few years later. Also, back in 1973 you couldn't send an e-mail or an SMS to practically anyone, and a one minute "long distance" telephone call from New York to Los Angeles cost about $0.25 (in 1973 dollars, only if you called on nights and weekends), excluding the monthly service charge. Now you can talk and text as much as you want using a mobile phone for as little as $19 per month. So is the loss of Bell Labs worth the benefits to consumers with the explosion in Internet and mobile services at affordable prices? Yes, to the extent it was a trade, that was a trade worth making, and that's what the market decided — with a little help from Judge Harold Greene perhaps. That doesn't mean the loss of Bell Labs wasn't a loss: it certainly was and is. Continuing, long-term investments in research and development are critically important to the success of consumers, a company, a nation, and all of humanity. How best to support those ongoing investments is another question.

Bitcoin Needs a Mainframe

The MTGox exchange and Instawallet, which both deal in Bitcoins, are suffering security-related outages. The whole currency declined in value as a result, and the attacks may be a way to manipulate the value of the currency.

Unplanned 3 Hour Global Mainframe Outage Scheduled

IBM is notifying all its mainframe customers that due to a once-in-a-lifetime "rear endian horological issue" of critical importance, all mainframes, worldwide, must be completely shut down and powered off for 3 hours on April 1, 2013. Any 3 hours will do, according to IBM's press release, but the downtime must occur on April 1, 2013, based on Mainframe Standard Time (MST). Moreover, the outage must be Sysplex-wide in order to correct the horological issue properly. All forms of GDPS, SRDF, and other cross-site recovery procedures must not be initiated. Failure to shut down on April 1 will result in random transposition of date fields so that, for example, April 2, 2013, which might be represented as 02/05/2013, could instead be rendered as 3102/50/20. Such improper date rendering could result in catastrophic business losses, such as bank account holders getting paid 0.1% in annual interest on their accounts.

There are only two exceptions listed in IBM's urgent "red alert." The first exception applies to customers that do not use the so-called "Western calendar" and which only process dates using other calendar systems such as the Maya calendar. They can postpone powering off their mainframes until 5 minutes before their IBM hardware service agreement expires. The other exception is Cyprus's Laiki Bank which the red alert describes as a "Permanent Mercy Outage (PMO)."

This worldwide mainframe outage is unprecedented, and it goes without saying it will significantly disrupt global society and our everyday lives. The world's financial systems, public safety including national security, Taco Bell's new SuperMax Burrito, and many other facets of our everyday lives depend on IBM's ordinarily incredibly reliable workhorses. That said, we humans always try to look on the bright side. The BBC interviewed Abigail Smythe, a customer of a large U.K. bank, who says she is looking forward to 21 hours of continuous service. Meanwhile, South Korean broadcaster KBS, which was on the air for 10 minutes today until anonymous hackers compromised their servers again to transmit footage of Kim Jong Un eating sushi and playing with an iMac, mentioned that IBM's red alert will not affect their operations. Visa and MasterCard announced that they've programmed all retail terminals to approve all charges during their 3 hour outages. Credit card industry spokesperson Stuart Umpton notes that "We don't want to do anything that will interrupt our cardholders' spending beyond their means, so we'll just approve everything and clean up any messes starting on April 2."

Mainframe users in Venice, California, express horror over the forced worldwide outage, warning the public using this helpful sign. Photo taken by Anthony Citrano (Creative Commons License).

Oracle Announces Fiscal 3Q2013 Earnings: Hardware Imploding

Oracle announced its fiscal 3Q2013 earnings. They weren't good. Even software license revenues were down.

Total hardware sales were down again: another whopping 23% (22% at constant currency) year over year to $671 million for the quarter. Hardware systems support fell less quickly to $570 million as Oracle's hardware maintenance prices continue to climb. Note that these figures include what Oracle calls its "engineered systems," i.e. Exadata, Exalogic, etc. Oracle said they showed "excellent growth" but that their average selling prices are down. Oracle did not say much about its storage business (which includes StorageTek tape products).

Oracle said that its delayed T5 processor would be introduced "next week." Oracle CEO Larry Ellison called the SPARC T5 "the fastest microprocessor in the world." He claimed that Oracle would publish 17 "world record" benchmarks. (We'll see.) Despite the claims, Oracle predicts that its next financial quarter will see another 12 to 22 percent drop in hardware sales in constant dollars (13 to 23 in reported dollars), so apparently Oracle won't be able to deliver many systems with SPARC T5 microprocessors, Oracle won't be able to sell many, or both.

Every server processor vendor has product cycles. However, if the business is healthy there are both up quarters and down quarters. We haven't seen an up quarter in Oracle's (and formerly Sun's) hardware business in a long, long time. Oracle's entire hardware revenues are now about a third what Sun's were just over five years ago, for perspective. The SPARC T4, introduced in 2011, might have slowed the hardware slide but didn't stop it. We'll see what happens next, but it's awfully hard to sustain sufficient hardware R&D with these financial results.

UPDATE: I have a few more thoughts about Oracle's "engineered systems." First, it's important to recognize that these systems are essentially "appliances": fixed function/single purpose servers that are bundles of Oracle software and rather common hardware. Exadata, for example, is an Oracle Database box. Oracle counts these engineered systems as hardware sales — they have to be counted somehow — but are they? I think they're at least as much "software" as "hardware." Read on for an explanation.

The financial problem is that every Oracle engineered system is a perfect or near-perfect substitute for an Oracle software sale. If you buy an Exadata box you don't buy Oracle Database licenses for your other servers, or at least you buy fewer of them. To some extent, probably a large extent, an engineered system sale subtracts from software sales. In other words, Oracle is simply moving many software sales among existing Oracle customers from the "software" part of its balance sheet to the "hardware" side. That could be a good strategy, or it could simply be a more expensive way to package and sell certain Oracle software products, reducing Oracle's profitability. If Oracle receives $X in profit from an Exadata sale and $Y in profit from the equivalent Oracle Database software sale, and if $X is less than $Y, then the engineered system could be a very bad idea, financially speaking. On the other hand, if the engineered systems are providing real value above traditional and cloud-based software solutions, and if Oracle can share in some of that customer value (i.e. collect more profits), or if at least the engineered systems have higher win rates with better customer loyalty, then they might be helpful to Oracle.

We don't really know yet which is the case. But there are some clues. Oracle reported that the average selling price for the engineered systems is coming down, and they say that's due to the introduction of smaller models. Even so, unit sales are below previous forecasts, even the revised ones, and in this most recent quarter software license sales are down. I wonder whether there might be some cannibalization going on, with the modest engineered systems sales understandably eating into Oracle's software sales. Margins are much higher on software, so if cannibalization is happening it's probably not a good trend. Also, it's hard for me to understand how fixed function appliances fit into the growing public and private clouds. Yes, I'm sure Oracle will have some marketing answer why their engineered systems are compatible with the word "cloud." I don't agree even if I stretch the definition of "cloud," and I suspect a lot of potential customers would also disagree with Oracle, viewing their engineered systems as what they probably are at least in part: vendor lock-in devices. If you only want to buy your storage from Oracle, for example, buy an Exadata box. (And databases never get larger, of course.)

I haven't seen IBM follow this path. And to the extent Oracle thinks it's following in IBM's path, Oracle is misreading IBM and its history. Yes, one can buy WebSphere Application Server appliances for example, but they are virtual ones with plenty of convenience and also lots of flexibility. IBM's "hardware" appliances tend to be very specialized with no direct software-only counterparts. The IBM PureData System for Analytics and DataPower are two excellent examples. My observation is that, in general, IBM is trying to deliver "workload-optimized" systems which are extremely convenient, easy to deploy, and easy to manage, but which also have a lot of flexibility. Granted, IBM has a lot of advantages, including the fact that IBM can research, design, and fabricate its own silicon. I can't think of any other big enterprise software vendor that can do that. As I've written before, it takes a considerable amount of long-term effort with sustained investments to make that hardware-software magic happen, and it's something IBM does uniquely well in its markets.

California Keeps Its Mainframes (Thank Goodness)

Sometimes it's difficult to admit making a mistake and reverse course. Yet California's Department of Motor Vehicles finally took the correct action and cancelled its second costly attempt to replace its IBM mainframe applications for vehicle registration.

According to public information, the applications date back to 1965 when they were first written to run on an RCA mainframe. In a few years they were moved to an IBM mainframe, and they are still running on one or more IBM mainframes today. Along the way the DMV has enhanced the applications, and they now have far more interfaces (and far more users) than they had in 1965. The applications handle about 30 million vehicle registrations.

The State of California first tried to replace these applications in 1987. The State hired Tandem Computers (now part of HP) and Ernst & Young to undertake the work. Seven years and $44+ million dollars later, California terminated the project. The new applications created to that point lacked basic functions and were 10 times slower than what they have.

California tried again, hiring EDS (ironically also now part of HP) to do the work in 2007. After spending $135 million (and counting), California cancelled the project. California has also recently cancelled its failed project to replace its payroll system after spending $254 million. Yes, that's at least $433 million wasted, and that's without adjusting for inflation and not counting significant opportunity costs.

It's important to recognize that these applications are not perfect. They are, however, better than any viable alternative, as has now been well proven twice. I would advise the State of California to take a new direction involving two important elements. The first element is that they should make an investment — a much smaller one — to improve the resiliency of these systems and applications to avoid outages. These applications are mission-critical, and, especially compared to the vast sums wasted, it's inexpensive to improve the resiliency of IBM zEnterprise-hosted application environments and access to them. For example, a couple years ago IBM introduced GDPS/Active-Active technology which helps businesses and governments achieve continuous service and move past traditional synchronous update distance limitations in many cases. The second element is to execute a program of sensible, progressive remediation of all of the deferred application maintenance, application improvements, and documentation that the State of California has undoubtedly failed to accomplish in its many years of budgetary problems and unwise spending on these two costly replacement projects.

Yes, these are three big IT disasters — no question about it. But I'm hopeful that California, on behalf of its taxpayers, can take the right steps starting today. And I'm also optimistic that at least some companies and governments can learn from this experience.

UPDATE: A correspondent writes me with this link to the project plan. The story is at least a bit more complex. The project involved multiple interdependent project deliverables. The plan was to move VSAM data into DB2, to move applications hosted in an Assembler-based "Real Time Control" environment to COBOL applications in CICS, and to do a lot of user interface technology rework using WebSphere Application Server (platform not clearly stated but apparently AIX on Power). Unfortunately it didn't fly.

If you're going to migrate these big applications and databases then the California DMV picked some good target environments — there was some thought that went into that decision. However, what seems to have happened is that the project was so big it collapsed under its own massive weight. It strikes me as an awfully big project to pull off in just a few short years. What probably has to happen now is what I alluded to above: some type of progressive rehabilitation, stretched over a longer period of time, with more tactical incrementalism guided by immediate business requirements. And hopefully the bigger, grander project that didn't fly still yielded some salvageable assets, such as better documentation of the existing code and data models. The destination may end up being the same, but the journey will be longer.

Observing from afar, another possible problem that might have cropped up is a common one: "What are we doing this for again?" Frequently I've been reminded of the fact that IT organizations sometimes get wrapped up in work that might be important to IT, but delivering observable, tangible business results also has to be part of the picture. If the users and business managers don't know why you're doing something or why you're spending their money, and if they don't see sufficient progress toward addressing their needs, they understandably get impatient. For example, it might matter a great deal to IT whether data are stored relationally or non-relationally. Both approaches have their merits, and non-relational databases are increasing in popularity nowadays (including at big name California-based Internet companies like Google and Facebook). Do users care? Should they? Not in those terms.

As it happens, IBM has a bit of software called CICS VSAM Transparency which, despite the name, doesn't actually require CICS but which does support moving VSAM data into DB2 databases without changing applications. It can be used selectively or broadly, as appropriate. That particular software was not on the DMV's materials list. Should it be, as part of a more gentle incrementalism? Maybe, but like any other project initiative it would depend crucially on user needs, and of course it would also depend on technical viability in the circumstances.

Anyway, my thanks to that correspondent who contacted me. And let's continue to cheer on the California DMV for making what was probably a tough decision. I think they do a pretty good job in general, especially considering the many years of state budget challenges that put pressure on every state agency.

I understand at least some of you are having trouble commenting on blog postings. We'll see if we can get our small army of technicians to look into that problem.

Mainframe Computing: What Will the Future Hold?

I do not have any particular insight into IBM's research and development efforts for future mainframe technologies, but I can take some educated guesses. In the process of guessing I am actually making some predictions about the future of all computing. There's been a long history of computing capabilities appearing on mainframes first, often a decade or more ahead of the rest of the computing industry.

Here are three of my predictions, in no particular order:

1. Fifty-five may be the limit. (Or not?) I'm referring to processor clock speed. For Intel the speed limit is 4.0 GHz, which is only reached with a single active core. Intel hasn't been able to increase the clock speed for nearly 8 years, and that's a long time in microprocessors. IBM's POWER processors did much better, topping out at 5.0 GHz with POWER6 and with all cores active, before backing off the clock a bit. Now IBM's zEC12 sits alone at the top of the clock speed ranking with all cores active at 5.5 GHz continuous. That's simply amazing. But will IBM be able to increase the zEnterprise's clock speed again? If it can be done, I assume it will be, but the physics are tough. That said, I expect IBM zEnterprise will maintain industry clock speed leadership indefinitely because, if it makes sense to solve those tough problems anywhere, it will make sense on zEnterprise.
2. Hardware collaborative iterative compilation. IBM pioneered microprogramming all the way back in the System/360 first introduced in 1965. However, for the most part hardware is static once shipped. Yes, occasionally IBM (and other vendors) may release microcode updates, generally to fix a misbehaving instruction in a processor (often unavoidably slowing down that instruction for the sake of correctness), but that's about it. When you want new instructions, you buy new processors. At least with mainframes you can upgrade your processors in place. I think the processor improvement cycle is going to accelerate as compilers start to tell the hardware how it can improve, and the hardware will respond. In other words, the compilers and the hardware will jointly figure out how to shave execution time and path length off computing tasks as they operate. The dialog will be something like this: "I see, Ms. Compiler, that you're being particularly demanding of my Level 3 cache today, and it looks like you don't need to be if I understand what you're trying to do. Would you mind terribly if you combine these duplicate memory blocks so you can fit in Level 3 for me?" "That's a good idea you've got, Mr. Hardware. I'll take care of that for you the next time Dr. z/OS tells me there's a lull in high service class processing. By the way, Mr. Hardware, I'm doing a lot of financial calculations that could really use a custom instruction or at least a few better instructions. Have you got a better one that you can put into your microcode or into your FPGA for me? Or ask your mother if she can provide you with a new instruction and delete those 5 other instructions I never use? Thanks a bunch." "Teachable hardware" will have some interesting side effects. For example, if you think capacity planning is difficult now, just wait.
3. Quantum computing. IBM is spending a lot of effort in this area, and I think we'll see a quantum computing element available for zEnterprise as an option in the not too distant future. That innovation will also have some interesting side effects, like perhaps upending cryptography.

It's Time to (Mostly) Retire Historical Mainframe Photos

Chris Gaun at Gartner asks "Can Mainframes Be the Least Expensive Option?" (Well of course they can!) But I must take issue with his editor who decided to illustrate Mr. Gaun's blog post with a photo of an IBM 704 mainframe taken in 1957.

What's the freakin' point? Shouldn't illustrations have some reasonable relevance to the story? (And why stop there? How about a picture of Charles Babbage's difference engine? Or an abacus? Good grief!)

Here's a proposition. If every news editor starts illustrating all Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Nokia Lumia, and RIM BlackBerry stories with photos of analog cellular "bag" phones or rotary dial "candlestick" phones, and if every editor illustrates all stories about Apple iPad and Google Nexus tablets with photos of a 12th century monk's manuscript, I'll drop my objection to illustrating mainframe-related stories with photos taken years or decades before I was born. Do we have a deal?

Unless you're specifically writing about an IBM 704 and its use in 1957 at NASA, that's a really, really dumb photo to choose for your story about the popularity of 5.5 GHz IBM zEnterprise mainframes in 2013. Update: NASA didn't actually exist until 1958. However, NASA is the source of the photo Gartner used. The photo might make sense accompanying an article about NASA's computing history. That isn't Mr. Gaun's article.