IBM Z

Score9.3 out of 10

134 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for IBM Z are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

High Performance Recognition: Users have consistently lauded the system for its remarkable throughput and robust computing capacity, positioning it as a significant performance enhancer. They were particularly impressed by the efficient handling of high-speed transactions, ensuring almost flawless integrity throughout all processes.

Unmatched Security Assurance: Reviewers have specifically pointed out the exclusive FIPS 140-2 Level 4 HSM on the platform as a standout feature that guarantees top-tier security for various workloads. Users highly valued the stringent security measures in place, which safeguard data protection and maintain utmost integrity.

Emphasis on Data Security: Users have expressed gratitude for the quantum-safe encryption feature, highlighting their strong emphasis on data security. The platform's non-open systems design and advanced security features were identified as major strengths by users.

Reviews

42 Reviews

IBM Z is an excellent option for reliable consolidation of a sprawling compute environment

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 10, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Platform solves virtually all major technical issues with low latency, dynamic scaling and spike/surge handling, and hot sparing of all critical components. Compatibility with both 20+ year old applications and the most modern tech all on one platform makes it a great career path as well.

Pros

High speed transaction handling with nearly guaranteed integrity
Specialty processors for offload of CPU intensive activities like crypto, java
Fast DR recovery with a single consistency group
All facilities for extremely tight security are available
The high centralization lowers environmental costs significantly

Cons

Low cost training/education platforms needed for small companies/individuals

Likelihood to Recommend

If cost is not an issue, it is well suited to nearly any use excluding Windows only implementations.

Ray Chabot

Senior Technical Specialist in Professional Services at More than 20 different businesses over 30 years (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

30 years of experience

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IBM Z - the AI Inspirer that reimagines delivery

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 2, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use IBM Z as the mainframe server framework, enabling enrichment with AI max productivity and statistical guidance.

Pros

Ai guidance
Innovation potentiation

Cons

Continuing being a leading game changer; industry is in motion

Likelihood to Recommend

Anyone with a serious network looking for serious results should use IBM Z.

Verified User

Director in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Best way to process huge data.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 26, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM Z is used for transaction processing for credit cards.So every real-time transaction is captured and validates the transaction and everyday processing is done on the whole portfolio as part of night batch processing. New application are also boarded and regular real time service requests regarding the account are processed and response are sent.

Pros

Processing high tps in a shorter time.
Handled multiple users with same efficiency.
Minimum outage or downtime for real-time requests.
Batch processing execution is organized.

Cons

Batch optimisation.
Cost to company is high for IBM Z
Less resources available as per market demand.

Likelihood to Recommend

Companies which have to process high volume of data is best suited to use IBM z for processing. Efficiency, integrity and performance is well maintained in the Z os so for large-scale data, IBM Z os is best suited. Whereas for companies that do not have the large volume to process, Z os is not suited because cost to company for using the Z os will effect the budget of company.

Sushil Arya

Software consultant in Information Technology at A-IT Software Services Pte Ltd (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

9 years of experience

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IBM Z Mainframe - The Only Data Center Processor you'll need in todays world

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

September 23, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We current have IBM Z15 and are in the process of implementing IBM Z16. IBM Mainframes first and foremost provide not only the necessary uptime, fault tolerance, security, automation, high availability, etc. We currently utilize the IBM Z15 in a High Availability Scenario for many major applications. Utilizing one as primary and a secondary offsite at a secondary location. We also have the IBM Z carved out into LPAR's "Logical Partitions", which provide virtual environments for Test, Dev, etc. This is not new, LPAR's have been around for many many years on IBM mainframes, and another cool thing is we can create an LPAR and virtualize thousands of Servers in an isolated arena on the mainframe. We also use it has a test bed LPAR for AI along with Hybrid Cloud connectivity.

Pros

Fault Tolerance
High Availability
Totally Agnostic
Perform Large Scale Transaction Processing

Cons

Overall Cost - Mainframes are expensive but you get what you pay for
Software & Hardware Maintenance are pricey
Learning curve for employees. Many MF folks have retired or are looking to retire

Likelihood to Recommend

In my opinion, IBM Z is extremely well suited for environments that run high levels of batch processing, online transactional processing such as CICS, interconnects to bridge multiple locations together and provide a single pane view of all locations, extremely fast, and Mainframes do not go down. In my experience, it is very uncommon for a Mainframe to just suddenly die, these boxes are not windows machines, very reliable.

Judy L. Berglund

Sr Systems Engineer in Engineering at Dell EMC and Many Other Companies (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

23 years of experience

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IBM Z review from a technician

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 22, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Backend Server.

Pros

24x365 UpTime
Transactional Work
JAVA Server

Cons

Software Cost of the Platform

Likelihood to Recommend

Josef Leitner

Systemtechniker in Engineering at Raiffeisen Informatik (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

30 years of experience

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Reliable and secured IBM Z

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 12, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Mainly IBM Z's versatile platform addressed our wide array of business challenges

1. Deployed to cater to the needs of middleware applications.

2. Focused on the modernization of legacy IT systems which are crucial for business operations and user experiences.

3. Custom in-house applications specific to the Next-generation AI and data analytics

4. Deployed mainly focus on business applications that need robust Reliability and Availability.

Pros

Linux on Z applications can seamlessly operate on z/OS, which leverages z/OS operations staff and reuse the z/OS environment.
Primarily container images with s390x architecture in the Docker Hub can
be run in z/OS Container Extensions.
Kafka alongside with ZooKeeper API, benifits from the centralized service that maintains configuration information.

Cons

Unfortunately, there is no provision of morethan one one network interface in each virtual server instance of z/OS systems
As a limitation at resource sharing, mainly Disks are not able to share between z/OS virtual server instances
Compression is one of the key feature should be included to support in the PCIe

Likelihood to Recommend

Its more appropriate for generative AI use cases wherein compute-intensive applications are hungry for CPU resources, and Z systems are more reliable and robust to a greater extent compared to traditional X36 or architectured Unix-based systems.

Even though Z systems cater to the needs of SMB users and businesses the penetration is not as expected in terms of price point compared to large scale Z systems.

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

IBM z provides great value and large scale computing

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 4, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Support the mainframe networks (tcpip & SNA) for our company. User of TSO and infrastructure tools.

Pros

Large database management
Legacy support
Large scale API access to data

Cons

Modernizing the unix stack
Being more quick to market on application trends such as containers

Likelihood to Recommend

Cost effective platform over larger time frames - write once run forever. Highly reliable. Relatively simple to manage for Disaster Recovery .

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

20 years of experience

IBM Z is the best among others

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 2, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, the project we are working on in our team/company uses IBM servers, specifically IBM Z. This is also one of our customer's requirements and we want to do everything on IBM Z servers. We handle it ourselves. Very helpful in terms of service support. We have been using it for almost 7 months. The overhead of running workloads and copying data has been reduced. Its AI is the main thing that makes the decisions made practically realistic and increases the efficiency of work. This is one of the best I've seen from IBM. This is really great. So far, we haven't had many issues and no incidents requiring fines. He is one of IBM's great products.

Pros

Usually it's fast when compared to other virtual power systems and low latency, hassle-free
Speed and availability
Effective and powerful

Cons

Delay and data retrieval
Connecticvity sometimes

Likelihood to Recommend

Most of the time, server utilization is reliable and stable during peak times. Truly amazing, this product offers a lot and gets it done in no time without any confusion.It is reliable, too accurate and the performance is top-notch. It seems to be competitive in all virtual energy systems and its connectivity is also good. It's available at a low cost, but it's enough to have as many low-cost, more efficient systems as possible. It's a minor thing, but very rarely, it can cause work interruptions while it can get stuck due to more frequent use such as restless work. These power servers are very efficient and really help when things go wrong. I am using this product to retrieve data much faster.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

The exclusive partner for IBM Z in the GCC recommends the mother of all servers for your enterprise needs

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 27, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

While my organization is an IBM Partner and we sell IBM Z to customers, we are a IBM Z user ourselves. Many of our internal workflow applications run on the mainframe platform and it has been supporting us for over a decade without having to take a downtime or even an upgrade. Reliability, Security and Scalability are the salient features of the platform. Getting it operational and forget it, it will run the company's business critical applications for you.

Pros

Availability - Runs non disruptively 24x7
Reliability - Never had to take an outage or unplanned downtime . Even it planned outage scenarios, it demonstrates high reliability, even though the platform is over a decade old now
Scalability - It runs at close to 100% utilization levels and never hangs or crashes
Security - Not even a single instance of it being hacked

Cons

IBM marketing of its capabilities need to improve
With such a great product, the industry perception is it being proprietary and expensive which needs to be clarified
Many applications are still not available on the platform to make it mainstream and much more is the perception

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for mission critical and business critical applications. Customers who have unpredicted spikes in workload can rely on the mainframe as it will scale and even run at 100% utilization without crashing. Highest level of security and integrity. Ideal platform for datacenter in a box. So customers who are constrained on datacenter space requirements can look at this platform .Less Appropriate for customers who can run their requirement on Windows PCs and do not require high qualities of service of high security, reliability and availability

Sreehari Somasundaran

IBM Z Leader in Information Technology at GBM (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

25 years of experience

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Secure the world and even more, with LinuxONE with every core

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 1, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Whenever a Business Application needs to run highly available, secure, and performant to a large number of users, it is just a perfect fit for IBM Z. The out of the box virtualisation capabilities are far beyond of any other platform and make even single systems highly available. That helps to reduce costs because we do not need to invest in software solutions to make it HA. And for sure, this makes the handling much easier.

Pros

Virtualization for Scale-Out and Scale-Up in the same footprint
Security for different workloads: Large Confidential Computing and lightweight Secure Execution
Performance is a true game changer: extreme throughput powered by amazingly huge caches.
The one and only FIPS 140-2 Level 4 HSM on this planet
Quantum Safe Encryption NOW!
AI infusion to every transaction

Cons

the amount of different pricing metrics is a inhibitor
the ease of use is really getting better - but still DPM is not available for all workloads
different pricing schemes for users vs. providers is a pain

Likelihood to Recommend

Best suited for Linux consolidations, Oracle DBs, Blockchain Networks on a single box with extreme throughput (I tested a Ethereum Network, and it brought 4000 tx/s = that is amazing). Modernisation of old COBOL code with building new feature on in Containerised version and the same HW with HyperSockets or SMC-D is the best ultra low latency connection you can use. And with z16, now anything that uses AI models should run on IBM Z.

Florian Schwanzara

Solution Planning Senior Manager in Information Technology at Accenture DACH (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

20 years of experience

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The exclusive partner for IBM Z in the GCC recommends the mother of all servers for your enterprise needs

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 27, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Availability - Runs non disruptively 24x7
Reliability - Never had to take an outage or unplanned downtime . Even it planned outage scenarios, it demonstrates high reliability, even though the platform is over a decade old now
Scalability - It runs at close to 100% utilization levels and never hangs or crashes
Security - Not even a single instance of it being hacked

Cons

IBM marketing of its capabilities need to improve
With such a great product, the industry perception is it being proprietary and expensive which needs to be clarified
Many applications are still not available on the platform to make it mainstream and much more is the perception

Likelihood to Recommend

Sreehari Somasundaran

IBM Z Leader in Information Technology at GBM (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

25 years of experience

View profile