IBM (NYSE: IBM) said it has announced a significant expansion of the mainframe´s strategy of embracing open source-based technologies and open-source communities to provide clients with secure performance capabilities for an era where mainframes increasingly anchor corporate analytics and hybrid clouds.
Significantly broadening options for enterprises, IBM has enabled key open source and industry software for LinuxONE and IBM z Systems, including Apache Spark, Node.js, MongoDB, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Chef and Docker. These technologies work seamlessly on the mainframe just as they do with other platforms, with compelling performance advantages while requiring no special skills.
IBM helped pioneer virtualization on the mainframe and is now offering more choices for virtualization by enabling the new LinuxONE systems to be provisioned as a virtual machine through the open standards-based KVM hypervisor, just like any Linux server. SUSE, a leading distributor of Linux, will provide initial support for KVM for the mainframe.
Canonical and IBM also announced an initiative to encourage the growth of Ubuntu Linux on z Systems. Canonical plans to distribute Ubuntu for LinuxONE and z Systems, adding a third Linux distribution. SUSE and Red Hat already support distribution. Canonical also plans to support KVM for the mainframe.
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