Comments on: IBM Starts Showing A Little Hybrid Vigor https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/07/20/ibm-starts-showing-a-little-hybrid-vigor/ In-depth coverage of high-end computing at large enterprises, supercomputing centers, hyperscale data centers, and public clouds. Tue, 27 Jul 2021 17:28:28 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 By: Y I Patel https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/07/20/ibm-starts-showing-a-little-hybrid-vigor/#comment-164886 Sat, 24 Jul 2021 14:25:09 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=138843#comment-164886 Does IBM need to hold on to Power in addition to mainframe? I see a simplistic differentiation as intel at the low end, Power in the middle and mainframe at the top. Would getting rid of Power as an on premise option (or perhaps leaving that business for its partner in China) and using it more as a cloud only option with Power VMs help IBM consolidate and focus more on high end workload, or do you think there is a definitive middle of the ground Market with high growth potential that IBM is looking to stay in with Power?

]]> By: Tom Thurlow https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/07/20/ibm-starts-showing-a-little-hybrid-vigor/#comment-164861 Fri, 23 Jul 2021 23:38:40 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=138843#comment-164861 It is unfortunate that IBM did not do more to keep power chips in use in the high end embedded chip market in the early 2000’s. Power / PPC chips that were powerful, but under 20 watts, did well in embedded products until the early 2000’s. Then when Apple stopped using power / PPC chips in it’s MAC computers, IBM killed off a 15 watt power chip used in Apple
laptops. It didn’t help either that Apple bought up a power chip startup and had it’s employees work on ARM based products. After that, if one wanted a low wattage embedded processor with powerful cores, one usually moved to MIPs, x86 or ARM. Later on the move was less to MIPs and more to x86 or ARM.

]]> By: Margret Loven https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/07/20/ibm-starts-showing-a-little-hybrid-vigor/#comment-164844 Fri, 23 Jul 2021 11:29:26 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=138843#comment-164844 keep us up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.

]]> By: Eric Olson https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/07/20/ibm-starts-showing-a-little-hybrid-vigor/#comment-164785 Wed, 21 Jul 2021 17:01:54 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=138843#comment-164785 There is a global shortage of the COBOL programmers needed to maintain valuable (legacy) transaction processing codes in use worldwide. In my opinion, the reason for this shortage is lack of mainframes in computer science departments as well as lack of entry-level IBM systems affordable for individual developers. Combined, these two problems have essentially cut off the supply-chain of new developers for IBM Z and Power.

Could pricing deals and donations that get mainframes back in the universities and technical schools remedy the shortage of developers who are comfortable with the z/OS software environment? Not only could this solve the current shortages of talent needed to maintain legacy software, but it might increase market share as those new developers inform the decision makers about hardware for new projects. While at it, how about an affordable Power10 system as well?

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