It’s everywhere, it all encompassing and it grows exponentially. The Internet of Things (IoT) is big. But what does something that is just 33 years old have to do with something that is nearly 51 years old?

Just like the z Systems has evolved from a 24bit System/360 with 8-64K memory in 1964 into a machine capable of running 2.4 billion transactions per day with up to 141 Processor cores, the IoT evolved from a simple Coke machine connected to a network to an extremely large number of devices connected to the Internet.

Spotting the App Economy Connection

In today’s application economy, everything is connected. When I am late from work, I can make the heating system in my house, which is controlled by a NEST device, start 30 minutes later from my iPhone. And since it’s all connected, my Philips HUE lights will automatically adapt to the new settings. And this is just a tiny example of Internet traffic that was never there three years ago. Now multiply that byone billion? 10 billion? Who knows? If we think about all the embedded systems in hospitals that communicate with the vendors of those machines, all the wireless sensor networks, the control systems in cars that communicate with the manufacturers, the automation systems in buildings and houses (like mine), the RFID chips in billions of goods, one can only gasp by the enormity and complexity of it all.

And that is exactly my point. If we think about the massive amounts of data that are exchanged, those who are “in the know” automatically think about mainframes.

Maybe you recognize this story; A group of new hires is enjoying a tour around the building. When they end up in the datacenter, they are impressed by the amount of wires, lights and the racks filled with 1000s of humming blades. A truly impressive experience, even for me. And often, someone will ask, so, what is that big black refrigerator in the back? Well, you know the answer, it’s the mainframe that still runs 50 to 60 percent of the enterprises mission-critical systems. Banks, insurance companies, state and country tax departments, retailers and airlines, all still rely on the massive transactional power of the mainframe. And these transactions have increased dramatically over the past years. Unfortunately, many of the new hires will have forgotten that the mainframe is there once they leave the datacenter.

CA and IBM Address IoT

What have IBM and CA technologies have done to support this growth in transactions/traffic and how they have made sure that the Series z can cope with whatever the IoT is throwing at it?

For a start, IBM’s new z13 was built with the IoT in mind; 10TB of RAIM Memory, 141 Core processors, up to 320 separate channels of Dedicated I/O for maximum throughput and much more to cope with the demands of today, and in the foreseen future. But processing these types of data and managing them are two different things. Performance is key and even the smallest bottleneck can have a huge impact. Storing all the data on premise for back up reasons can be very expensive and “feeding” the Hadoop implementation with data for big data analytics is becoming more and more critical. It’s simple really, the exponential growth in numbers demands new solutions and innovative thinking. New interfaces to show trends in a sea of data points require the latest in UI design and optimized management applications.

We at CA technologies have understood this long ago. Especially in the OpsCenter area, where many of our products have helped large enterprises cope with the exponential increase of transactions for decades, we have done everything possible to manage massive quantities of information with ease.

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