Will virtualisation create a mainframe renaissance?

When IBM first introduced the idea of a mainframe virtual machine back in the 1960s, few people would have predicted that the IT industry would have come full circle more than 40 years later. But increased interest in virtualisation and the demand for ‘greener’ computing could see a revival of interest in mainframe computing, according to some industry insiders.

“We are absolutely seeing interest in mainframes from clients who want to use more virtualisation,” says Roy Illsley, a senior research analyst with Butler Group. “It’s not an approach for everyone but, done well, it can reduce power consumption and footprint, improve reliability and provide a lot of value to the business.”

Although virtualisation is most often discussed in terms of Wintel and Unix servers, the idea of consolidating many workloads onto a single machine and creating ‘virtual partitions’ was invented on the mainframe in 1967, says Carl Greiner, an analyst with Ovum. “This isn’t a new idea by any stretch of the imagination, and virtualisation has always been done on mainframes.”

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