13 June 2002 Organisations are increasingly moving computing workloads off their mainframe computers, according to investment bank Merrill Lynch’s ‘TechStrat’ survey of CIOs in the UK and US. While 54% of CIOs said they were decreasing mainframe workloads, just 24% said that they were moving more tasks onto their mainframes.

Despite this, CIOs expect the amount of mainframe computing power they utilise – measured in how many million instructions per second (MIPs) a computer can execute – to increase by an average of 10% during 2002.

But MIPs growth rates could reach between 30% and 40% later in 2002, according to Bill Zeitler, senior vice president of system giant IBM’s server division. This potential is being driven by the release of IBM’s new z800 and z900 Turbo mainframe products, claimed Zeitler.

Still, the overriding trend is away from mainframes. “IBM’s effort to consolidate workloads on the mainframe with Linux is having some success, but the cost of mainframes and lack of available skill sets mean that workloads are moving off,” according to Merrill Lynch. But only 16% of CIOs surveyed said that they used Linux on their mainframes.