Bob Sutor – VP, Open Source and Linux, IBM SWG

LinuxCon – 21 September, 2009

Regarding Clouds, Mainframes,

and Desktops … and Linux

© 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Abstract

 Linux is key to driving innovative new technology as well as

business models.
 It's shaking up the established view of which operating systems
should be used for what workloads, while slipping quietly under
some very cool new applications.
 In this talk, I'll focus on three areas of great opportunity as well as
challenge for Linux: the accelerating market for cloud computing,
Linux as a significant operating system for mainframes, and the
hope for Linux on the desktop.

2 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Agenda

 The cloud from a user's perspective

 Oh, yeah, my mainframe with Linux does that

 Possible futures for the Linux desktop

 Some 2008 predictions, one year later

3 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Who is the user for cloud computing?

 Could be ...
– A user of a virtualized desktop on a thin or fat client.
– A non-technical end user who accesses services through a browser or
via applications such as disk backup to remote storage.
– A “cloud choreographer” who strings together cloud-based services to
implement business processes.
– A service provider who needs to handle peak load demands.
– A developer who employs dynamic resource allocation in clouds to
speed application or solution creation.
– An IT system administrator who does not build clouds but deploys onto
them, probably in addition to traditional managed systems.

4 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

What does a cloud computing user want?

 Cloud-friendly applications
 Resources: storage, processor, platform
 APIs: the more standard the better
 Interoperability among clouds (may learn of this need later)
 Reduced capital expense
 A good, workable pricing scheme
 Quality of service, including
– Availability
– Reliability
– Performance I don't think any one of these
contradicts the use of Linux, and
– Security they all potentially encourage it.
– Privacy

5 © 2009 IBM Corporation

 Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Case study: IBM internal cloud for developers

Without With
Cloud Cloud
100%
New Development
Liberated funding
for new Strategic
Software Costs development, Change
transformation Capacity
investment or
direct saving
Power Costs
Current
Case Study Results
Deployment (1-time)
IT Annual savings: $3.3M (84%)
Spend Labor Costs
(Operations and Software Costs $3.9M to $0.6M
Maintenance)
Power Costs
Hardware,
- 88.8%
labor & power
Labor Costs savings reduced
Hardware Costs - 80.7% annual cost of
(annualized) operation
Hardware Costs
by 83.8%
- 88.7%
Note: 3-Year Depreciation Period with 10% Discount Rate
6 © 2009 IBM Corporation
Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

What does a cloud computing provider need?

 Maximum practical use of resources: processors, memory, storage

 A good, workable pricing scheme
 Virtualization, virtualization, virtualization
 Acceptable licensing of operating systems being used
 Highly reusable skills of system administrators
 Minimal power used, heat generated, datacenter space needed

I don't think any one of these

contradicts the use of Linux, and
they all potentially encourage it.

7 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

What special about Linux here?

 Linux supports multiple hardware platforms

– Implementation span from embedded devices to supercomputers
– Speed of support for new platforms
– Availability of skills, portability of applications
– Scale-out through clustering as well as scale-up through SMP
 Linux has an affinity with virtualization and is being used in clouds
– Supported on all major hypervisors, from z/VM to VMware and Hyper-V
– Ability to be paravirtualized with Xen
– Inclusion of KVM as part of Linux
 Linux is flexible
– Modular and customizable, with flexible usage licensing
 Linux is developed by an open community
– Sharing skills and resources, leading to faster development
8 © 2009 IBM Corporation
Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Agenda

 The cloud from a user's perspective

 Oh, yeah, my mainframe with Linux does that

 Possible futures for the Linux desktop

 Some 2008 predictions, one year later

9 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Why people are using Linux on mainframes

 Virtualization was introduced commercially on IBM

mainframes in 1972.
 Hypervisor is integrated with the hardware
– Sharing of CPU, memory and I/O resources
– Virtual network and virtual I/O
 Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
– Environmental savings – single footprint vs. hundreds of
servers
– Consolidation savings – less storage, fewer servers, fewer
software licenses, less server management/support
 Mainframe capabilities complement and enhance those
of Linux.

10 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Why people are using Linux on mainframes

 Utilization often exceeds 90%

 Manageability of centralized Linux systems
 Typical deployment needs:
– High performance transaction processing
– I/O intensive workloads
– Large database serving
– High resiliency and security
– Unpredictable and highly variable workload spikes
– Low utilization infrastructure applications
– Rapid provisioning and re-provisioning
 Mainframe characteristics complement cloud user requirements

11 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

IBM's Project “Big Green”

Double compute
capacity with no
increase in consumption
or impact by 2010
 IBM will consolidate and virtualize
thousands of servers onto approximately 30
1997 Today IBM System z™ mainframes
 Substantial savings expected in multiple
CIOs 128 1 dimensions: energy, software and system
Host data centers 155 7
support costs
 The consolidated environment will use 80%
Web hosting centers 80 5
less energy and 85% less floor space
Network 31 1
 This transformation is enabled by the
Applications 15,000 4,700 System z sophisticated virtualization
capability

12 September 17, 2009 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Agenda

 The cloud from a user's perspective

 Oh, yeah, my mainframe with Linux does that

 Possible futures for the Linux desktop

 Some 2008 predictions, one year later

13 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Possible futures for the Linux desktop

 It goes away.

 We stop using desktops, so who cares?

 The Linux desktop becomes a tactic instead of a strategy.

 One Linux desktop distribution ends up with 90% marketshare

among those using Linux desktops.

 One Linux desktop distribution ends up with 90% marketshare

among all desktops.

 We reach 33% / 33% / 33% parity with Microsoft® Windows® /

Apple® Mac OS® / Linux, plus or minus.

14 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Possible futures for the Linux desktop

 We stop pretending that it will be a drop-in replacement for the

dominant desktop operating system, and make it something better.

 The enterprise sweet spot for Linux desktops is virtualized Linux

desktops.

 We focus on usability, stability, security, reliability, performance, with

some cool thrown in.

 It's the browser, stupid.

15 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

An application
running in a
virtualized Linux
desktop on a
Linux rich client.

16 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Agenda

 The cloud from a user's perspective

 Oh, yeah, my mainframe with Linux does that

 Possible futures for the Linux desktop

 Some 2008 predictions, one year later

17 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

2008 Prediction 1
“Green” will drive significant initiatives in open source

Linux will help reduce energy consumption through server

consolidation, virtualization, load balancing and more efficient
resources management.

 This is happening as major customers such as banks move to

reduce their carbon footprints by consolidating onto mainframes,
often getting features such as disaster recovery as a bonus.
 Aside from tangential benefits of using Linux, I'm not seeing much
yet in the way of open source being applied to green initiatives in
a focused and specific way.

18 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

2008 Prediction 2
Linux will not be replaced

 I doubt anyone can seriously argue that any other open source
operating system has made significant inroads on the growing
installed base of Linux in the last year.

 Linux will be introduced to thousands more users via implementations

in mobile phones, though users may not know it.

 Much of the hot technological action is happening on Linux, such as

virtualization, and this will be essential for cloud computing.

 Linux will increasingly find itself competing against proprietary

virtualization technologies.

 Linux Inside?

19 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

2008 Prediction 3
Linux mindshare will be less x86 focused

 In the cloud, users may not know there is Linux Inside, much
less x86 Inside.
 From a device perspective, users will think less of operating
systems and chips, but more of user interfaces, media,
connectivity, applications, app stores, and coolness.
 Customers are more than capable of choosing the correct
hardware platform to match their planned workloads.
 The instability and uncertainty in the industry this year is
causing customers to re-evaluate their software/hardware
platforms and has been a great opportunity for Linux and
competitive winbacks.

20 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

2008 Prediction 7
Open standards will grab more attention

 The Open Document Format (ODF) is being approved for use in

more and more countries around the world.
 Recent adoptees include Malaysia, Norway, Ecuador, Venezuela,
Taiwan, Hungary, and Latvia.
 The Open Cloud Manifesto has over 250 companies and groups
supporting it.
 The industry and users will benefit the most from an emerging
technology when open standards are at the core, and there as early
as possible.

21 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

Finishing up ...

 Linux is at the center of the computing we have today and that which
we are building for tomorrow.
 I believe the Linux community and
leadership will rise to tackle
Mainframes
any challenges necessary to
meet and exceed
expectations.

Desktops Cloud

22 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

For more information ...

 IBM and Linux

http://www.ibm.com/linux/
 Linux on IBM System z
http://www.ibm.com/systems/z/os/linux/
 IBM Cloud Computing
http://www.ibm.com/cloud/
 Bob Sutor's blog
http://www.sutor.com/blog
 Open Cloud Manifesto
http://www.opencloudmanifesto.org/

23 © 2009 IBM Corporation

Bob Sutor: Regarding Clouds, Mainframes, and Desktops...and Linux

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NOTES:
Linux penguin image courtesy of Larry Ewing ( [email protected]) and The GIMP
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