Chuba mentioned that IBM projects a strong Q4 on z196 sales, but an instant poll taken at a Gartner Data Center Conference session showed that almost half of the audience, 47%, doesn’t plan to install a z196 by the end of 2011. Only 19% said they would install by mid-year 2011. The results even seemed to catch Chuba off-guard, who mentioned that IBM would certainly be disheartened by the news.

The tepid response to z196 may partly have to do with the high costs associated with mainframe software. Another live poll showed that 26% of respondents felt that single largest inhibitor to the growth in usage of the mainframe in organizations was IBM’s high software costs. Chuba mentioned that for the first time in a while third-party software was not the main inhibitor. Quipped Chuba, “You’ve realized you’re already paying a lot to IBM for their software.”

Reaction to zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX) as an optional add-on to the mainframe was even more worrisome, despite the z196 blades’ ability to participate in cabinet power management when placed in the mainframe cabinet, among other benefits. Practically the entire audience polled at the mainframe session, a whopping 98%, said that they’re not likely to install a zBX before end of 2011. For one, the reasoning may be that Windows support for zBX isn’t currently in the cards, and more importantly, IBM may need a reevaluation of its marketing strategy with respect to zBX — throwing a bunch of features against the wall and hoping that something sticks may be throwing end users off.

“They need to re-announce the zBX,” said Chuba bluntly.

Phil Robert, Director of Service Management at Canadian-based Scotiabank, is a living, breathing case study of the zBX’s “miscommunication” factor – in fact, he really didn’t know much about it and mentioned that he would have to take a look at the announcement to re-familiarize himself with blade technology on zEnterprise.

In regard to z196 itself, Robert said that his company just recently upgraded to IBM’s z10 system. “We have no plans to even look at it,” said Robert of the z196.

IBM announced today that initial shipments of the zEnterprise mainframe with the z196 processor, dubbed by Big Blue as “the world’s most powerful computer chip,” will commence on Sept. 10. As previously reported, the mainframe boasts 96 cores running at speeds of up to 5.2 GHz.  The mainframe offers 60% more capacity than the z10, while still using the same amount of electricity, and the processor chip contains 1.4 billion transistors. According to IBM, the mainframe can handle 17,000 times more instructions than the company’s first system. Clearly, this is not your father’s mainframe. Only time will tell, though, if customers find the new z196’s capabilities to manage across multiple distributed server platforms relevant.

There were a handful of people defending Big Blue’s position “Mission critical applications are run on mainframes. So are high volume transaction appls. Systems programmers make good money and good job security too. Java and C++ programmers are a dime a dozen.”

But many more took offense to IBM’s crocodile tears about the dearth of mainframe talent, when Big Blue had no problems laying off higher paid, senior mainframe experts in the past.

“Young people, please don’t drink the IBM/CA Koolaid! These companies and the other institutions that use IBM mainframes will dump you in a second when they don’t need you any more. Go to indeed.com and see how many mainframe jobs are really in your area,” wrote one commenter.

“The article should have been titled ‘IBM and CA Having Trouble Finding Mainframe Skills for $35,000 a Year.’”

One thing the article did not include any of the financial institutions or hospitals that IBM claims will be hamstrung by the pending mainframe brain drain. In fact, I’ve yet to hear from anyone aside from IBM, CA and a couple analysts actually mention this situation. Which begs the question, is this manufactured demand? Is your company facing shortages of mainframe talent? Weigh in on the comments.

On Monday, the first investigation of the EU announcement was in regard to complaints to the EU from T3 and TurboHercules that allege IBM is unfairly tying its mainframe hardware products to z/OS.  Another investigation in the announcement stems from EU’s own plans to look into alleged discriminatory behavior on IBM’s part to competing mainframe suppliers.

With its statement, IBM is staunch in its denial of any silencing of the competition.  “IBM is fully entitled to enforce its intellectual property rights and protect the investments we have made in our technologies,” said the company. “Competition and intellectual property laws are complementary and designed to promote competition and innovation, and IBM fully supports these policies. But IBM will not allow the fruits of its innovation and investment to be pirated by its competition through baseless allegations.”

It certainly is interesting, though, that there are no specific details in the statement of what exactly they’re trying to protect, and what the “intellectual property rights” actually are, along with how they’ve violated those laws.  Vague statements sometimes allow people to fill in the blanks and question a company’s real motives.  Put Florian Mueller, a software developer and government affairs professional, into that category.

“I’m convinced that customers are locked in and milked shamelessly by IBM,” said Mueller in a blog post that he shared with SearchDataCenter.com.  “I hope that the outcome of the process will result in more customer choice.”

What do you think of IBM’s case?  Is they trying to “enforce their intellectual property rights,” or are they trying to make it impossible for others to penetrate the mainframe market?

Neon filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas in December 2009, claiming unfair competition and intimidation of prospective clients by IBM.

The lawsuit stems from Neon’s zPrime software, which allows users to offload workloads from the mainframe’s central processors to specialty mainframe processors. This in itself isn’t unusual, but what zPrime does is allow users to offload more work to these specialty processors than IBM intended.

IBM started warning customers that zPrime could cause mainframers to violate software agreements they had with IBM. In its lawsuit, Neon claims that IBM’s unlawful actions could cost potential Neon customers more than $1 billion in software licensing fees.

Neon is eager to get its day in court with IBM, Reynolds said. “Our goal is to get the case to a final decision and trial in Austin by early next year. IBM doesn’t want the case to come to trial until 2012.”

Reynolds said IBM is stalling because of its deep pockets. “IBM is better positioned to stand an ongoing war,” Reynolds said. “My concern with such an extended schedule is that as long as the litigation pending, IBM can tell customers to wait and see how the litigation pans out. It wants to postpone that day of reckoning.”

The move is an effort by Big Blue to keep the mainframe relevant and attractive for whose who might otherwise select a distributed server infrastructure in difficult economic times. It also piggybacks off a similar package IBM put together last year for SAP applications, an offering that has helped cause 20% growth in SAP applications on the mainframe, according to IBM.

The packages are for data warehousing, application development, disaster recovery, security, risk mitigation and WebSphere; and include mainframe hardware, middleware and maintenance applications. More details here.

Perhaps more importantly, however, is the news that IBM is slashing the cost of the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL), the mainframe specialty engine designed to run Linux applications. Once around $100,000, they will now cost less than $50,000.

Linux has certainly been a bright spot for IBM on the mainframe. According to the company, more than half of the unique applications on the platform are now for Linux, and more than 40% of new System z customers installed Linux last year. It seems as if the mainframe has largely become a box that hosts old z/OS applications too costly/burdensome to migrate off, and consolidated Linux servers. Halving the cost of the processor that runs them is a clear move by IBM to try to stay cost competitive with distributed servers on the Linux front, especially considering the proliferation of chip cores that is flowing out of Intel and AMD chip labs these days.