IBM yesterday announced their zEnterprise mainframe server, touted to be the most powerful and energy-efficient mainframe ever.

Along with the mainframe a new system has been released which allows workloads on the mainframe, POWER 7 and System x servers to share resources and be managed as a single, virtualised system.

The new design combines IBM’s new zEnterprise mainframe server with new technology such as the BladeCenter Extension and the Unified Resource Manager. These new technologies allows the server to manage large workloads running across System z and select POWER 7 and System x servers.

IBM invested more than $1.5 billion in research and development, along with three years of close collaboration with some of their top clients to create the new technology.

With the ability to manage workloads across the different systems, the zEnterprise can equal up to 40% lower acquisition costs as well as reducing the cost of ownership by up to 55%.

The zEnterprise System was designed to address an important issue for corporate data centres. That is, the adding of disparate technologies over time which run specific applications and are sometimes unable to communicate with each other.

This may require extra staff or software tools to manage and tends to be a great liability. The zEnterprise System was designed to increase interconnectivity between these systems.

“The new IBM zEnterprise System represents a bold move to fundamentally change how data centres are managed,” said Tom Rosamilia, general manager, IBM Power and z Systems.

He said that the new mainframe is the, “fastest enterprise server in the world and represents a giant leap forward in performance.”