IBM launches new mainframe in bet that some data stays local

[NEW YORK] International Business Machines (IBM) unveiled its latest mainframe system, saying that a chunk of business data will remain on customer-owned servers and never be hosted on the cloud.

The new generation of IBM’s mainframes, dubbed z17, will be powerful enough to handle the work of artificial intelligence (AI) models with stored data, IBM said on Tuesday (Apr 8). Recent acquisition HashiCorp will help implement new security features for the machines, IBM added. The z17 is the first new machine since 2022, which fits the company’s general three-year update cycle for its mainframes.

Unlike the cloud, which enables companies to store and access data over the Internet from providers such as Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services (AWS), mainframes are physical hardware owned by the customer. For years, many industry watchers anticipated nearly all corporate data would make its way to being hosted by public cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google. IBM infrastructure chief Ric Lewis said there is a growing sense among customers that some data belongs on their own servers.

“You see the entire industry kind of settling into this hybrid model,” Lewis said. Some clients “are just obsessed about owning their data, getting value from that data and making sure it never goes anywhere and is never incorrect”.

The intense computational requirements of generative AI have increased demand for many kinds of tech hardware. Server makers such as Dell Technologies have seen once-sleepy parts of their businesses become major growth drivers.

Big Blue has remodelled itself around software and consulting in recent years. But physical infrastructure remains a lucrative, if slow-growing, business for the Armonk, New York-based company. That unit posted US$14 billion in revenue in the most recent fiscal year and is expected to modestly increase this year and next. BLOOMBERG