ZDNet: Linux in the Land of z/OS

“Users are faced with continued media and vendor (especially
IBM) hype concerning Linux in general and, specifically, its
viability as a potential mainframe growth driver.

“Although users have been relatively slow to embrace mainframe
Linux (notwithstanding IBM’s marketing figure of 11 percent of 2001
MIPS shipped being Linux-ready), we see some near-term momentum
developing for small application integration (Unix application
ports moving to Linux) with existing legacy systems, Linux
operational shakedowns, and low-end consolidation (mostly driven by
limited staff resources). Our research indicates the modest user
consumption of mainframe-based Linux is largely driven by the
mainframe’s current ease-of-use/management lead (e.g., partitioned
workloads, workload management, prioritization, ease-of-use
characteristics [for VM]) versus current incarnations of Unix and
Wintel-based systems, as well as the availability of some existing
mainframe MIPS. But we believe few users are buying any significant
new mainframe capacity to run Linux, except in limited cases where
service providers are exploiting the ease of virtual machines via
IBM’s virtual machine facility (z/VM and VM/ESA)…”

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