The new generation of IBM’s mainframes, dubbed z17, will be powerful enough to handle the work of artificial intelligence (AI) models with stored data, IBM said in a statement on Tuesday.
The z17 is IBM’s first new machine since 2022, which fits the company’s general three-year update cycle for its mainframes. Recent acquisition HashiCorp will help implement new security features for the machines, IBM added.
Unlike the cloud, which enables enterprises to store and access data over the internet from providers such as Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services (AWS), mainframes are physical hardware owned by the customer.
For years, many industry watchers anticipated nearly all corporate data would make its way to being hosted by public cloud services providers like AWS, Microsoft’s Azure and Alphabet’s Google.
IBM infrastructure chief Ric Lewis said there is a growing sense among customers that some data belongs on their own servers.
