A new line of mainframe systems introduced by IBM was sparking fresh interest in these bulky, high-performance computers in Hong Kong, according to company officials.
The new z990 mainframe, code-named T-Rex, is also expected to take a large chunk of the information technology (IT) budgets of IBM's top banking sector clients.
Priced at about US$1 million, depending on the system configuration, the flagship product of IBM's eServer family, the z990, is its most sophisticated server to date.
'We already have a number of hot prospects,' IBM Hong Kong manager for eServer zSeries and storage systems James Hung said last week.
He declined to name these prospects, but said the company expected to close a number of deals this year. He said that the interest in new mainframe installations debunked the view that these big machines had become obsolete computing platforms.
Initial z990 purchases would involve the top 10 per cent of IBM's customer base, research firm Gartner said in a report issued last week.