The Linux Executive Report from IBM
October 14, 2015
The Linux Executive Report from IBM: October 14, 2015. A monthly summary of important trends and market research, case studies and information about IBM's Linux initiatives of interest to senior management.
Linux News
"In a world where product lifecycles are measured in web years, what can we learn from the mainframe's rather unique longevity?" asks CIO Journal Columnist Irving Wladawsky-Berger in a new blog.
"IBM's commitment to Spark is the latest in a long line of commitments to open development of technologies - the very technologies that make systems of insight possible," writes Anirban Chatterjee, Power Systems Product Marketing Manager for Big Data and Analytics, a new Smarter Computing Blog post.
IBM Power Systems were recently showcased at Strata + Hadoop World in New York City, where IBM showed how Power Systems provides the world's superior platform for Systems of Insight, driving digital business in a waitless world. At the event, Power Systems highlighted new capabilities for Spark and Hadoop on the world's first system designed for data.
IBM is expanding its developer skills training program to reach a record number of students worldwide this year with the Master the Mainframe programming contest. In addition, for the first time, the company and academic partners will provide aspiring developers access to the world's fastest Linux system via the cloud at no cost.
MariaDB Corporation is now part of a new ecosystem with IBM that enables MariaDB Enterprise to run on IBM LinuxONE and IBM z Systems.
A new line of IBM Power8-based Linux servers - the Power LC (Linux cluster) Line - has been launched. The new Power Systems LC servers are the first to be based on technologies and development efforts contributed by OpenPOWER Foundation partners - including Canonical, Mellanox, NVIDIA, Tyan and Wistron.
A new article by Valerie Dennis in IBM Systems magazine looks at how Linux is driving an open-standards revolution in the IT marketplace and is now the fastest-growing OS in the world, growing at a rate of two-to-eight times faster than any other.
The OpenPOWER Foundation has just marked its second anniverary. In a blog post for IT Business Edge, industry analyst Rob Enderle reflects on the impact of Linux, the OpenPOWER ecosystem, the importance of collaboration.
The Linux Foundation has released its first ever report that attempts to measure the estimated value of development costs in its Collaborative Projects. According to the report, the total lines of source code present today in Linux Foundation's Collaborative Projects are 115,013,302, and the estimated, total amount of effort required to retrace the steps of collaborative development for these projects is 41,192.25 person years.
Inside Linux at IBM
In a Mainframe Insights blog post, Marcel Mitran, IBM DE and CTO IBM Systems Software Performance and Linux Ecosystem, discusses the performance and cost benefits of running MobileFirst Platform on IBM z systems, collocated with critical Systems of Record mainframe applications and data.
Linux on IBM z Systems provides high levels of performance, scalability and security. A rich open source ecosystem is growing on the platform—from Node.js to MongoDB to Docker—which combines with IBM z's speed and other unique features to deliver business agility—the ability of an organization to get to market quickly and effectively in order to solve the business problems it faces.
A new video demonstrates how the combined power of Linux, IBM z Systems, the hybrid cloud, and IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack enhance the benefits of each part to provide the most powerful and reliable enterprise solution.
IBM LinuxONE provides a portfolio of hardware, software, and services that combine the flexibility and agility of the open revolution with the industry's most advanced trusted, efficient and performant enterprise system for business critical applications. An increased emphasis on mobile, big data, and cloud is not only in sync with new industry trends it also responds to client demands for greater reliability, security, performance, and cost savings.
KVM for IBM z Systems provides open source virtualization for the IBM mainframe. Using a combination of KVM virtualization and IBM z Systems provides the performance and flexibility to address the requirements of multiple, differing Linux workloads.
Open source software brings a broad set of new capabilities to LinuxONE and z Systems in the form of more solutions that are optimized for use on an enterprise-grade platform that leverages inherent strengths—speed combined with ultra-security application uptime, limitless capacity for growth, in addition to an inventive and collaborative ecosystem of developers and practitioners - all of which gives enterprises an important edge in improving their business agility.
In a three-part blog, Luis Carlos Silva, Continuous Integration Lead for z Systems and Product Manager for Compilers on POWER Systems at IBM, writes about unleashing the full potential of Linux, and how Docker complements and works on IBM LinuxONE and z Systems, making the lives of developers and release engineers easier.
Using Linux containers and Docker radically changes the way applications are built, shipped, deployed and instantiated. A new IBM white paper explains how using Docker, IBM UrbanCode Deploy or Linux on IBM z Systems can help you quickly develop cloud-centric applications or micro services.
Linux and KVM Events
With the confluence of disruptive new forces, including big data, cloud, high performance computing, and new engagement technologies, organizations must innovate in terms of how they build their infrastructure, Doug Balog, General Manager, IBM Power Systems, emphasized in his keynote at Red Hat Summit 2015.
At IBM Insight 2015, October 25-29 in Las Vegas, attendees can explore the newest innovations, industry breakthroughs, and hottest trends in analytics, cloud, mobile, the Internet of Things and Watson that can't be found anywhere else. Don't miss the IBM z sessions at the conference.
SUSECon is the annual global technical conference for SUSE customers, partners and community enthusiasts, geared to the needs of the enterprise IT consumer. SUSECon provides the forum to announce and demonstrate the SUSE vision and latest technical advances to press, analysts, ecosystem partners, and customers.
The dates of next year's Red Hat Summit have been announced. The 12th annual Red Hat Summit will take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from June 28-July 1, 2016.
Delivering the opening keynotes at LinuxCon North America for IBM, a Diamond Sponsor of the event, Dr. Angel Diaz, Vice President, Cloud Architecture and Technology, IBM, and Ross Mauri, General Manager of z Systems, IBM, reflected on the change taking place in the IT world.
Linux and KVM Success Stories
Dirk Rossmann GmbH is Germany's second largest drugstore chain. To ensure rapid response even during peak times, Rossmann migrated its data warehouse reporting solution to Linux running on IBM Power Systems, utilizing the Capacity on Demand offering.
The world's most innovative companies are using z Systems to reshape the fabric of our businesses, our infrastructures, and our lives. They analyze big data to help their organizations, use mobile apps to better deliver products to customers and deploy secure and reliable cloud infrastructures to improve efficiency and economics.
Italian software developer Foedus has created OCTOBUS ERP optimized for IBM Power Systems running Linux. Foedus chose IBM Power System S812L and S822L servers running Linux and MariaDB database software as the foundation for its new version of OCTOBUS.
A new video showcases how low-cost carrier Allegiant Travel is leveraging big data without wait with IBM POWER8, DB2, and Flash. Allegiant Travel increased performance and scale, saved over $1 million over x86 solutions, freeing up resources to focus on innovation and serving customers better.
A new video explains how outstanding customer experiences demand waitless virtualization, cloud and analytics. Backed by Linux on POWER8, ZTEsoft clients can process 35,000 transactions per second with ease in virtualized cloud environments.
SLLIN Consultants is a Hong Kong-based IT consulting firm serving businesses across the Asia-Pacific region. SLLIN's Hands in the Air (HITA) music streaming application targets the Hong Kong independent music market, connecting musicians with listeners, collaborators and marketers.
Meeting service-level agreements (SLAs) hinges on server reliability, uptime and manageability. IBM LinuxONE and IBM z solutions provide a flexible yet powerful infrastructure that helps ensure that your business receives the performance, reliability and processing power it needs to address increasingly sophisticated and demanding application requirements.
Based in the German town of Bielefeld, IT services provider teuto.net is constantly looking for ways to deliver greater performance at competitive prices, leading the search for ultra-efficient technology. To satisfy client demands for more performance at lower prices, teuto.net launched new cloud services on a state-of-the-art IBM Power S812L server running the Ubuntu Linux operating system.
Check out the customer testimonials in this new e-book to find out how your peers are exploiting z Systems and Linux for competitive advantage.