Neon settles legal dispute with IBM - Neon zPrime to be withdrawn

Well, this story has apparantly come to an end with a press release Neon released yesterday. In short : Neon withdraws zPrime from the market and it will ask existing customers to "remove and destroy" their copies of zPrime. You can find the entire press release over here. And I don't think there's much more to add after you've read that one. So, this time apparantly no 'To be Continued' but 'The End', I guess . . .

zPrime : the saga continues

Once in a while the zPrime saga pops up again. Today I read a story about it on the DancingDinosaur blog of Alan Radding : 'Save through zPrime on System z'. It's an interesting post because for the first time (to my knowledge) it tells the story of a client who's actually using zPrime on its production site. It's about a European customer who has installed three zIIPs and is redirecting lots of workload to these zIIPs instead of running it on the traditional engines. A pity it doesn't tell us how many traditional engines they still use nor on what machine they are running (z10 EC or z10 BC). I'm assuming it's a z10 EC.

Alan Radding draws the parallel with the IBM Solution Editions which are the IBM alternative for making the mainframe cost competitive. But, to him, this is just not enough. IBM has to choose between losing mainframe clients (even with the Solution Editions) or cutting down its software costs as losing clients will even cost more to IBM. I must say it remains an interesting issue on how to keep people on the mainframe with or without zPrime.

One side note : I'm intrigued by the savings of "nearly $1 billion Euros each year" they are making with these three zIIPs. As they are redirecting workload from traditional engines to zIIP, I gather they save the MSUs of three engines. On a z10 EC that would be about 450 MSUs. As I reckon this is not a small shop, these are the upper, low(er) cost MSUs. This means they save about 80 million euro on software cost each month ? What kind of software do you have to run for this kind of bill. I don't know. I'd love to see some more information about this.

Still, an interesting story. As I always say, just check it out !

NOTE : As remarked in a comment, the article I refer to no longer seems to be there ?!

Status on zPrime and TurboHercules

Ok, I just mention this for people who are interested in these legal cases. Let's say I'm just watching this from a distance. Still, I start wondering, are some of you people actually using these products for the moment. Or, as one of the articles says, is time really on IBM's side ?

Here's the article on zPrime : 'Neon zPrime, IBM battle in Limbo'.
The article discusses the lawsuit in the States, the situation in the EC (which might be more favorable to Neon) and the fact that the genie is out of the box. The author indicates that even if Neon loses the battle with zPrime, others will follow and will eventually have a chance to be more successful.

Here's the TurboHercules article : 'Microsoft Quietly Invests in IBM Emulator TurboHercules'.
Well, the title says it all. As Microsoft earlier supported T3, it now also (financially) support TurboHercules. You can find all the details in the article itself.

IBM, Neon and the Cable Guy

Apparently people sometimes need simple images to understand a message. About a year ago we had 'Joe the Plumber' and now there's the cable guy. What's it all about ? Well, here's another episode of the Neon zPrime story. As I told you last december Neon sued IBM. I'm not going into all the legal stuff but Neon said to be losing lots of business because of IBM's actions against zPrime.

Now IBM is striking back (hey, more movie language) and they're making a cable guy comparison :

"Neon's business model expressly depends upon Neon inducing IBM's customers to violate their agreements with IBM. In this respect, it is no different than that of a crafty technician who promises, for a fee, to rig your cable box so you can watch premium TV channels without paying the cable company. Even if it could be accomplished technically, it is neither lawful nor ethical."

Clear language, no ? If you want to read all the details, you can find some articles on The Register, eWeek.com and the Mainframe Propeller Head blog where Mark Fontecchio concludes with "The verbal back-and-forth continued for a few months. Now, it’s a legal back-and-forth".

I'm not sure customers still like this movie . . .
. . . To be continued !

zPrime : Neon sues IBM

I thought you might be interested to know this. If you follow zPrime on Twitter you've seen it already : Neon is suing IBM. You know the story : Neon introduced zPrime last summer which enables a customer to offload more workload to the specialty engines than IBM finds eligible. Obviously, one thing led to another and this is the latest step in this curious history. I'm no lawyer, so I'm not going to spend much words on this, but if you want to know all the details you can take a look at the Neon site or you can find a very good article on the topic at eweek.com giving you insight on the viewpoints of both sides.

GSE, z/OS and zPrime

About a week ago I attended the GSE z/OS working group meeting here in Belgium. The presentations are now available at the download page of the GSE z/OS website. This time the 'crowd-puller' definitely was P. Viebrock from Neon Software on zPrime. It was Pauls last presentation before returning to the States as he had been touring through Europe to present zPrime. It was my first real presentation I had on zPrime and it also shed some light on how it works. No explicit details, though. You can find that presentation as well on the GSE z/OS site, so I won't go into any details.

Are there any new evolutions on zPrime ? Apparantly customers are going into production with it and they actually seem to pay less. Here's a recent update on IBMs reaction to a customer using zPrime who ordered additional specialty engines. Of course it's up to every individual customer to decide whether to proceed with this or not.

The zPrime discussion - Violation vs. Exploitation ?

Here's an interesting blog entry at Data Direct which was brought to my attention by Mike Nelson : 'Violation vs. Exploitation: IBM Clarifies Authorized Use of IBM Specialty Engines/Processors' by Gregg Willhoit, Chief Architect at Progress DataDirect.

There was already a letter form Mark Anzani (IBM) circulating regarding IBMs position towards zPrime, which you can also find on the DataDirect blog. Apparantly Gregg Willhoit asked for more information and he now reproduces a new letter by Mark Anzani on his blog. You can read it over here.

I think the message remains the same : "non-Eligible Workload running on the Specialty Engine will cause the software running on the Specialty Engine to be chargeable" (first letter) allthough perhaps a little bit more explicitely stated in the second letter : "To be clear, if customers use Specialty Processors/Engines to process workloads beyond the IBM authorizations, then customers must pay the hardware, software and maintenance pricing associated with full CP capacity". In addition Mark Anzani says "In particular, IBM sells (...) MES upgrades for customers who wish to convert Specialty Engines/Processors to CP capacity in order to execute general purpose workloads".

Still, I'm curious how this will turn out in the long run. Aren't you ?

zPrime - Webconference

I guess that every one who's blogging is curious how many people are reading their posts and how people come to their blogs. As I was looking at some statistics the other day I noticed that I had lots of people coming via Google with search arguments on zPrime.
I mentioned this before, but for all those people who should've missed it : there's a webconference tonight at 17.30h Brussels time on zPrime. You can find more details in my previous posts on zPrime : 'Neon zPrime Reduces Mainframe TCO' and 'zPrime - some more information'. You can still register over here.
For those who can't attend, if I see a replay coming up, I'll mention it as well.

zPrime - some more information

I was telling yesterday about zPrime and that there was little information on how it technically works. Well, Al Sherkow (co-presenting the webcast on zPrime on July 15, 2009) comments on this in the IBM-Main list :

"I’ve worked with many ISVs, but typically NDAs are signed and I am not allowed to even disclose a relationship exists. I have been consulting with Neon Enterprise Systems in relation to zPrime. I am an independent expert and the information in this IBM-Main posting is no longer under my NDA.

Neon Enterprise Systems is not using the API in zPrime. They have invented a new way of enabling work for the zXXP engines and that is a 'trade secret'
of Neon Enterprise Software."

To be continued . . .

Neon zPrime Reduces Mainframe TCO

OK, I admit, I'm interested, no, I'm actually curious : zPrime (I talked about earlier) is now officially available from Neon Enterprise Software. What is it ? Well I'm not really sure how it technically works and I can't find any specific details on it, butI'll give you some appetizers. Here's a quote from the press release :

"NEON zPrime can save companies with System z mainframes 20 percent or more of their annual mainframe hardware and software costs under conventional use-pricing structures. Unlike any approach to date that attempts to offload processing from a System z central processor, or CP, to IBM specialty processors such as System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) or System z Application Assist Processors (zAAP), zPrime easily enables the shift of huge amounts of routine workloads running on CPs to these equally-fast but lower-cost specialty processors.

zPrime can facilitate the transfer of as much as 50 percent or more of a company’s IMS, DB2, CICS, TSO/ISPF, and batch workloads from System z CPs to zIIP and zAAP processors, and consequently reduce mainframe costs significantly."

So, if I understand this correctly, Neon has come up with a technique to offload much more workload to the specialty engines including e.g. a lot more DB2 workload than before but also traditonal batch workload. To good to be true ? Not according to Neon :

"NEON zPrime is 100 percent compliant with IBM specifications, rules and conditions for System z processor access to assure a seamless environment that makes IMS, CICS, TSO/ISPF, DB2, batch jobs and NEON IMS utilities workloads eligible for processing on zIIPs or zAAPs."

If you want to read more about it, you can find additonal information at the Neon Website with some more details, a data sheet and a short presentation.

There's also a Webcast on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 5:30 pm Brussels Time with Tony Lubrano, NEON product author who will explain the solution and with Al Sherkow. Now I'm really curious :

"Al Sherkow describes the dramatic early test results that NEON zPrime has shown in real-world environments. Mr. Sherkow is a capacity planning and performance consultant for IBM's mainframe computers. He is also recognized as the leading industry expert on the crucial subject of IBM’s new software pricing model Workload License Charges (WLC)."

Do check this one out !