Monolithic tech company IBM recently unveiled its new z13 mainframe system, which is designed to provide real-time encryption on all mobile transactions, and is the first system to be able to process as many as 2.5 billion transactions per day.
The “z13 system culminates a $1 billion investment, five years of development, exploits innovation of more than 500 new patents and represents a collaboration with over 60 clients underscoring IBM’s singular commitment to providing higher value, innovative technologies to clients,” said IBM in a statement.
The new system’s abilities are a natural response to the perpetually shifting topography of the tech industry, for several reasons.
First, e-commerce is huge. More than $1 trillion of retail sales were directly connected to e-commerce in 2012. According to figures from eMarketer, e-commerce was expected to reach $1.471 trillion by the end of 2014. With consumer attention clearly shifting towards e-commerce and m-commerce, a faster, more secure system is necessary to capitalize on the trend. Using the z13 servers, business could offer higher-quality, faster transactions.
Second, the swift growth of mobile applications has also created a new breed of consumer, who expects his or her mobile transactions to be fast and seamless, regardless of who is providing the service. Consequently, business now have to reevaluate their IT infrastructures, determining whether or not they can — at the very least — meet consumers’ high expectations. Otherwise, they may risk losing those clients to competing businesses.
“The z13 mainframe delivers scale and economics with real-time encrypting and analytics to ensure speed and safety for trillions of transactions in the mobile economy,” said the Inida subsidiary of IBM in a statement. “The z13 is the first system to make practical real-time encryption of all mobile transactions and help protect the transaction data with security features built into it.”
With the new app economy on the verge of redefining what digital business means, the z13 is a necessary solution. What modern, e-commerce business wouldn’t want servers capable of providing real-time transaction insights 17 times faster than any other computer system, at a fraction of the cost?