The early IBM mainframe computers were so expensive that only big companies could own them.
Just one generation ago the closest thing to an iPod was a Sony Walkman hooked up to an IBM mainframe computer.
An IBM mainframe keeps tabs on 250, 000 active bidders who have participated in one sale or another over the past two years.
To again meander, in the 1960s, IBM release the IBM mainframe.
For example, the microprocessor was hailed as the solution to the world's energy problems--after all, one 8086 had all the power of an IBM mainframe, but used a comparatively infinitesimal amount of electricity.
The county is also using SPSS predictive analytics software, Cognos business intelligence software, i2 Intelligent Law Enforcement solution, a private cloud system on zLinux hosted on an IBM System z mainframe and IBM PureFlex System.
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Mobil hired IBM to do the data processing, shutting off Microsoft databases in favor of Oracle database software running on a shared IBM Z900 mainframe.
In terms of operational expenses like energy and staffing, he estimates that it will be about 40% cheaper to run mainframe workloads on the zEnterprise than IBM's last mainframe, and its x86 capabilities will be 60% cheaper than most Linux machines.
Dell thinks that clustering could give his company the means to attack IBM's mainframe franchise.
The days when IBM's mainframe computers held a monopoly on enterprise computing may have ended with the influx of cheaper x86 and Unix servers.
IBM's Adkins responds with the company's usual argument against those antitrust attacks: That because mainframes now compete with x86 and Unix servers sold by many vendors, IBM's mainframe monopoly is really only a small slice of a much larger enterprise computing industry.
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)
Ever since IBM developed the first mainframe, technology has been employed to deliver services and goods.
Sam Palmisano, who has run IBM like a smoothly humming mainframe for a decade, has turned over the reins.
On the mainframe side, IBM is doing its part to improve efficiency.
These include arrogance bred of dominance of a particular area mainframe computers at IBM, personal computers at Microsoft and internal fiefs that hamper swift change.
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Famously, in the early 1990s, IBM held on to the mainframe business model long after the industry had changed, creating huge trouble for the company.
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Only IBM, with its huge mainframe and services businesses, seems able to defend itself as Dell turns once-profitable products into commodities and forces competitors into a cost-cutting game they cannot win.
Along with the mainframe makeover, IBM has also announced that it will acquire software-as-a-service provider Kenexa (NYSE: KNXA), a company that has experienced approximately 15.9 percent revenue growth over a five-year period.
The new hardware may also raise more questions around IBM's monopoly of the mainframe business.
What top executive would bet his company the way Tom Watson did IBM in the early 1950s on mainframe computers or the way Bill Gates bet Microsoft in the mid-1990s on Windows if he knew failure would tempt prosecutors, politicians and bureaucrats to destroy him?
That software "glue" means that IBM can use its dominance in the mainframe arena to win x86 and Unix customers away from competitors like Hewlett-Packard, which recently declared that it sells more x86 servers than any other vendor, and Dell.
Even in 1993, Charles still used only a plug-in calculator circa 1970, with blue keys the size of dimes, very rugged keys, which was indeed fortunate given the pounding he would give it when reproducing calculations by hand that some state-of-the-art mainframe, the pride of IBM and the size of a refrigerator, had no doubt taken many minutes to complete in some sealed room.
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That honor goes to IBM, which developed virtualization software for huge mainframe servers back in the 1960s.
IBM's first successful corporate computer was a mainframe called, coincidentally, the 360.
By using its mainframe business to leverage customers into buying IBM's x86 and Unix servers, IBM may be asking for more trouble from the Feds.
Among the missed opportunities: IBM is still waiting on a number of software and mainframe transactions to close.
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Last October the U.S. Justice Department began an investigation into whether IBM had stymied competition by blocking competitors from licensing its mainframe software.
However, IBM expects to close most of these rollover deals for software and mainframe in Q2, and therefore, report stronger revenue figures next quarter.
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