Unix Virtualization: When done with x86 virtualization, mainframe virtualization is what you'll turn to!
So maybe IBM is just waiting for that 360 degrees turnaround of the market and we'll all go back to the time-sharing age. 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." The key advantage of using a mainframe for virtualisation is that it improves performance, says James Governor, ...