IBM today announced its z15 mainframe geared towards hybrid cloud and cloud-native workloads.
The IBM z15 can be used in cloud-native app development and any workload that demands low latency. Featuring 12 per cent more cores and 25 per cent more memory than the IBM z14, a single z15 unit can process up to one trillion web transactions per day, or scale-out to 2.4 million Linux containers, according to IBM.
Security was one of IBM’s foremost concerns when it came to the z15’s development. IBM says that 60 per cent of businesses reported they suffered a data breach caused by a vendor or third party in 2018.
To address this problem, IBM spent four years to integrate over 3,000 patents into the z15 to strengthen its security. It includes pervasive encryption, Trusted Data Objects to manage fragmented data, enterprise-wide data privacy policies, end-to-end data consumption tracking, and better data migration key management.
IBM says that these security and privacy features are key in convincing businesses to move their mission-critical operations to the cloud.
After finalizing finalized its Red Hat acquisition in October 2018 for $34 billion, IBM has been deploying its features across Red Hat services.
In the Z15’s case, it integrates Red Hat’s OpenShift container application platform. Built on Kubernetes, an open-source container system, Red Hat’s OpenShift enterprise container system offers developers full-stack security and provides virtualization tools for unified cloud and on-premises operations.
A new study says 77 per cent of organizations are prioritizing mainframe modernization, and 82 per cent of respondents report that implementing DevOps is a critical or high priority. The study, conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Ensono and Wipro back in June, also says that more than 27 per cent of organizations anticipate the mainframe running next generation workloads such as blockchain and containerized applications.
The IBM z15 is available for purchase today. Pricing is determined according to business needs and financing options are available.
