Originally posted by: TonyPearson

The first official day of the [Systems Technical University 2014] conference had keynote sessions in the morning. The conference features experts from IBM Power Systems, IBM System x, IBM PureSystems, and IBM System Storage.

The keynote sessions were started with Amy Purdy, IBM Director of Technical Training Services, the group that is running this conference.

This conference is not focused on System z solutions, as many of the System z clients were in New York City for this birthday event, but it came up several times during the keynote sessions.

Amy offered a special [Happy 50th Birthday to the IBM System zEnterprise mainframe]. Fifty years ago this week, [IBM announced its famous S/360] mainframe that raised IBM's revenues from $3.6 Billion USD in 1965, to $8.3 Billion in 1971.

(FTC Disclosure: I work for IBM, and this blog post may be considered a paid, celebrity endorsement of IBM products and services. IBM has business relationship with both Intel and Amazon mentioned during the course of the keynote sessions, but I have no financial stake in either company. I was the chief architect for DFSMS, the storage management component of the z/OS mainframe operating system, and was part of the team that ported Linux to the System z mainframe.)

Nicolas Sekkaki, IBM Vice President of Systems and Technology Group in Europe, discussed IBM's commitment to client's privacy, the x86 and POWER server platforms, and a variety of mind-bogging announcements. He is focused on three trends: Big Data, Cloud, and Mobile.

IBM is focusing its hardware efforts on high-value, high-margin solutions such as System Storage, POWER Systems and System zEnterprise mainframe environments. Did you know that 65 percent of the world's business transactions are processed by either POWER systems or System zEnterprise mainframe?

IBM is also extending its continued focus on Linux and Open Source initiatives. For the System zEnterprise mainframes, 78 percent of our clients run Linux on System z. Over 290 clients have added the "zBX" option that allows them to run Windows and AIX on the mainframe as well. It is now less expensive to run workloads on System zEnterprise -- about 1 dollar per day per server -- than public cloud offerings from Amazon Web Services. Linux on POWER also has lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) than Linux-x86.

Nicolas also mentioned major changes for the POWER Systems, starting with the [OpenPOWER Consortium], formed by IBM, Google, Mellanox, NVIDIA and Tyan.

The move makes POWER hardware and software available to open development for the first time as well as making POWER Intellectual Property licensable to others, greatly expanding the ecosystem of innovators on the platform. The consortium will offer open-source POWER firmware, the software that controls basic chip functions. By doing this, IBM and the consortium can offer unprecedented customization in creating new styles of server hardware for a variety of computing workloads.

IBM POWER has switched from being "Big Endian" to being "Bi-Endian", allowing operating systems to choose between "Big Endian" or "Little Endian" modes. The Big Endian mode allows for Linux compatibility with the System zEnterprise mainframe, and the Little Endian mode for compatibility with Linux-x86.

Thorston Kahrmann, Intel Account Director for EMEA, presented Intel's rich history of collaboration with IBM, from technologies like BlueTooth and PCiE Generation 3, to platforms like BladeCenter and NeXtScale, to Industry Standards.

IBM had a lot of "firsts" in the x86 server area, including the first 16-processor server, the first to offer hot-swap memory, and over 100 leading performance benchmarks.

The latest Intel Xeon chip is the E7 version 2. For example, changing from DB2 v10.1 on the old E7, to running DB2 BLU columnar acceleration on the new E7 version 2, resulted in a 148 times increase in performance. A query on a 10TB database that previously took four hours was completed in under 90 seconds.

Thorston also wanted to remind the audience that nearly every System Storage product from IBM, from the high-end XIV, SAN Volume Controller, SONAS and FlashSystem V840, to midrange and entry level Storwize products, are all based on Intel's x86 processors.

Louise Hemond-Wilson, IBM CTO and Distinguished Engineer for Lab Services, reminded everyone today was also the [International "Draw-a-Bird" day].

Louise covered the findings from the latest 2012 CEO study, gathering insight from 1709 CEO interviews. The major focus areas for CEOs are:

• Empowering employees through company-wide values
• Engaging customers as individuals, rather than via demographics
• Amplifying innovation with strategic and tactical partnerships

With smartphones, tablets and ubiquitous Internet access, everyone is now a technologist, so that IT is now becoming a competitive differentiator. IT projects and Business projects are no longer separate. If your IT department is seen as an expense, it will continue to get its budget cut. If, however, your IT department is part of your revenue stream, then it can be viewed as an asset.

Sadly, over 75 percent of IT projects fail, either are way over budget, delivered late, or some combination of the two. Business leaders are pushing for IT improvements, but often CIOs are too afraid to take the risks to move the business forward. Louise cited three reasons for this, which she called the three C's:

• The IT and Business leaders did not full understand the context of the project.
• The content of the project was not properly defined between IT and Business architects.
• The collaboration between IT and Business personnel was not properly established.

Louise wrapped up her session with asking a simple question: How much is the cost of a light bulb. Some might focus on the cost of the bulb itself, while others might add the cost of maintenance, having ladders and personnel to replace them as needed, and others might include the electricity consumed. Both Business and IT leaders need to focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in their planning.

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmtechu, Amy Purdy, Technical Training Services, mainframe50, zEnterprise, mainframe, Nicolas Sekkaki, OpenPOWER, Linux, zBX, Amazon Web Services, Thorston Kahrmann, Intel, E7v2, EMEA, CEO Study, TCO, Louse Hemond-Wilson, STG Lab Services