Later this year, IBM will deliver the zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension with support for IBM POWER7 blades running AIX, IBM's UNIX operating system.

ENGADGET: IBM's zEnterprise architecture makes mainframes cool again, also efficient (video)

Next year, IBM plans to announce additional general purpose blades for the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension including select IBM System x-based blades running Linux.

ENGADGET: IBM's zEnterprise architecture makes mainframes cool again, also efficient (video)

The IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension allows supports purpose IBM POWER7 and System x BladeCenter systems as well as blades optimized for specific workloads, such as analytics and managing Web infrastructure.

ENGADGET: IBM's zEnterprise architecture makes mainframes cool again, also efficient (video)

The new systems design combines IBM's new zEnterprise mainframe server with new technology--the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension and the IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager--that enable it to manage workloads running across System z, and select POWER7 and System x servers.

ENGADGET: IBM's zEnterprise architecture makes mainframes cool again, also efficient (video)

For example, using the zEnterprise System with the zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension and IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager, a financial services company managing credit card transactions on the mainframe using an IBM blade optimized for analytics can gain insights from the information in seconds.

ENGADGET: IBM's zEnterprise architecture makes mainframes cool again, also efficient (video)