Mainframe revenue the brightest star among IBM systems

On the hardware side, mainframe revenue for the fiscal third quarter performed far and away better than other IBM server platforms, presumably because Big Blue just came out with the System z10 earlier this year.

System z revenue was up 25%. Meanwhile, the “converged System p” platform, which is the System i and p combined, rose 7%, although that increase is somewhat misleading because it compares to only the System p platform from last year. System x revenue plummeted 18%.

IBM added that there was “double-digit growth in all geographies” for mainframe server revenue. Total delivery of mainframe computing power, measured in millions of instructions per second (MIPS), increased 49%.