IBM has dominated the mainframe market for years, but a group of ex-Amdahl engineers is preparing to shake things up with an Itanium 2-based system that analysts say could change the mainframe landscape by providing end users - a more cost-effective option for important workloads.

"These guys are pretty clever and they've really thought about what it would take to compete against a giant like IBM," says Mike Kahn, managing director of The Clipper Group. "Their story is a mix of commodity processor and commodity pricing with the ability to run z/OS workloads with traditional Intel workloads of Windows or Linux on the same computer. . . . More important than anything else, customers are looking for choice and this brings them another choice."

Platform Solutions was founded in 1999 by a core team of Amdahl engineers. Its initial funding of more than $10 million in 2003 came from a group of investors that included Intel Capital and Fujitsu. Subsequent funding has come from the likes of Goldman Sachs. Its management team also consists of executives with long histories at IBM.

The company shipped its first plug-compatible mainframe to beta customer L.L. Bean in March. The system's key feature is that it can run IBM's z/OS, MVS and s/390 operating systems, as well as Unix, Linux and Windows, all natively. In addition, because it is built on industry-standard hardware, the system will be priced "at a significant discount, compared with IBM," says Michael Maulik, Platform Solutions' president and CEO.

The vendor plans to begin shipping a four-way system by the beginning of October and plans general release of a 32-way machine at the start of next year.