IBM z17, a Mainframe Designed for the Artificial Intelligence Revolution

IBM has redesigned its Z mainframe system to put artificial intelligence (AI) at the heart of operations. The result is IBM z17.

This new generation of IBM’s mainframe includes hardware and software innovations. It supports the z/OS 3.2 operating system and the IBM Z Operations Unite solution, which brings together data from multiple sources in OpenTelemetry format.

With IBM Spyre Accelerator and its expansion options, this mainframe aims to enhance the user experience. Customers will be able to use different wizards and agents.

The Blue Giant strengthens developers’ skills and IT operations with IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Z and IBM watsonx Assistant for Z, for example.

In addition, watsonx Assistant for Z integrates for the first time with Z Operations Unite to detect and resolve issues via AI chat.

IBM z17 is powered by the IBM Telum II processor, which contributes to real-time transaction analysis.

It is estimated that businesses will be able to process 50 percent more AI inference transactions each day compared to the z16 model.

‘The industry is quickly learning that AI will only be as valuable as the infrastructure on which it runs,’ says Ross Mauri, general manager of IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE.

‘With z17, we’re bringing AI to the core of the enterprise with the software, processing power and storage capacity to enable it quickly and efficiently,’ he stresses.

IBM Storage DS8000 is the integrated storage solution. Its tenth generation has been developed to harness the power of z17.

What’s new from IBM ‘also allows companies to AI-enable large volumes of business data that until now remained underutilised,’ Mauri points out, ‘in a secure and cost-effective way’.

The Blue Giant promises security and resilience through HashiCorp‘s hybrid cloud secrets management capabilities and the IBM Threat Detection for z/OS security solution, which identifies anomalies with malicious potential.