IBM began shipping the new z9 on Friday, their new state of the art mainframe. The system is built specifically with security in mind, boasting an intrusion detection systems, encryption key management and a cryptography accelerator that can perform up to 6,000 SSL handshakes a second. The system comes with a staggering 54 chips and 18 billion transistors, and can (according to Big Blue) perform a billion transactions every day. Want one? Then get ready to pay about a million dollars for it.
Analysts suggest that the z9 will start to have a positive impact on revenue by Q4 this year. Bob Djurdjevic of Phoenix-based Annex Research told Reuters that customers have been putting off buying IBM's mainframes for a while, in anticipation of the new generation machine.