Mainframe sales double in latest IBM profit

There’s plenty of tough talk about retiring legacy infrastructure across Australia’s government and blue chip technology circles, but the mainframe isn’t going anywhere soon judging by IBM’s latest financial results.

According to the analyst deck circulated with the latest set of quarterly financials, the IBM Z mainframe business, listed under its ‘systems segment’ has doubled year-on-year, pulling in a tidy US$2.2 billion ($2.96 billion)

Overall revenue rose nearly 4 percent to US$20 billion ($26.9 billion), beating analysts’ average estimate of $19.85 billion ($26.7 billion), according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The company’s revenue has now risen for three straight quarters after falling for nearly six years.

The positive result comes hot on the heels of the federal government’s announcement of a $1 billion, five year deal with IBM – although it is too early to say what part that contract played, if any, in lifting Big Blue’s numbers.

What is known is that Tax, Defence, Home Affairs, Centrelink, Medicare and a raft of state government transaction heavy shops still rely on the well established big iron line in much the same way truck lines have traditionally looked to Detroit Diesel for a heavy duty donk.

“IBM Z up > 100 [percent] reflects high adoption rate of z14 and strong demand for new workloads,” according to IBM’s results presentation.

Big iron also held up nicely over in IBMs ‘technology services and cloud platforms segment’ which includes Infrastructure Services and Technical Support Services.

It pulled in US$8.6 billion ($11.6 billion) in revenue with notes saying support growth “reflects strong IBM Z cycle”.

With Reuters