The take-up of cloud computing over the last two years has been good. It's not quite the explosion most vendors would like to hype it as being, but it is delivering tangible and proven benefits to customers, and so it should. At the end of the day, cloud is rooted in decades old technology such as virtualisation, high levels of utilisation, management and automation.
All of these are technologies that have underpinned the mainframe for well over four decades. This predates the cloud computing revolution that VMware, Microsoft, Citrix and a number of other vendors would like to claim they started.
Welcome to the zCloud
Given this timeframe, it's surprising that it has taken IBM so long to aggressively go after the cloud computing market with its mainframe platform, System z. At IBM Enterprise 2013 in Orlando, the company rolled out a number of customers to talk about their private cloud stories. At the same time it signaled its intention to target the Managed Service Provider (MSP) and Cloud Service Provider (CSP) markets with a zLinux/zEnterprise cloud platform known as the zCloud.
At the heart of the zCloud pitch is cost. In June IBM started to show numbers around this platform. It compared cost per VM based on the utilisation of the underlying platform. The comparison was done using the cost of deploying the IBM solution vs what they say was an average cost of a VM in a public cloud. That average is based on the Amazon and Google VM costs.
Time to look at the numbers
Before talking any further, it is important to stress that these are IBM numbers that they have not yet given to any publication or analyst company for detailed analysis. While that casts some question over their veracity, if IBM is even close to the numbers it is using, anyone running large numbers of Linux VMs needs to take a look at what IBM is offering.
All the figures are based on a Total Cost of Acquisition figure. These figures include the purchase of the hardware and software licenses as well as the power and cooling costs of the cloud platform. They are also focused on the business case for a CSP.
In the table below, are the numbers IBM is using to compare the break even and profitability for a generic x86 platform and the IBM zCloud offerings. Notice that at the bottom end, IBM is comparing its zBC platform which comes in at around US$75,000 while the zEC is currently price on application.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Row 0 - Cell 1 | zCloud Profit | zCloud LinuxServer cost (£) | x86 | x86 LinuxServer cost (£) |
| zBC | 100 VMs | Loss | 142.85 | Loss | 112.51 |
| 200 VMs | 4% | 85.01 | Break even | 83.62 | |
| 500 VMs | 42% | 51.39 | 20% | 73.99 | |
| Row 4 - Cell 0 | Row 4 - Cell 1 | Row 4 - Cell 2 | Row 4 - Cell 3 | Row 4 - Cell 4 | Row 4 - Cell 5 |
| zEC | 500 VMs | 36% | 56.47 | 20% | 73.99 |
| 1600 VMs | 58% | 37.38 | 26% | 65.39 | |
| 3200 VMs | 65% | 30.69 | 27% | 65.39 |
One of the interesting things above is that IBM needs to switch platform at 500 VMs. It also shows how quickly the profitability curve for x86 flattens out. IBM says that this is due to the number of devices, racks and staff required to support that number of VMs while it can deliver 3200 VMs in a single cabinet.
No talk about Windows cloud support yet
Another fact that must be borne in mind is that this revolves around Linux workloads only. A lot of MSPs and CSPs will need to support Windows. The zBX blades allows Windows workloads to be run on zCloud but IBM has so far not done any pricing or talked about how this would be fully integrated. This is a key part of the story that they need to deal with.
IBM has decided that it is time for the mainframe to prove that it is a better platform for cloud due to its inherent virtualisation, utilisation, management and automation features. From the numbers above, it would appear that, with Linux workloads at least, it is capable of backing up those claims.
Will the MSP and CSP markets take IBM up? IBM has said that it has systems on trial at several vendors, including some telcos who see this as giving them a quick entry into the cloud market at a price that makes them competitive. We shall see.
