IBM claimed LinuxONE Emperor can scale up to 8,000 virtual machines or thousands of containers, which would be the most for any single Linux system. Now in order to distribute its Ubuntu open source software on LinuxONE and z systems, IBM has entered into a deal with UK-based Canonical Ltd, bringing a third Linux distribution option.

On Monday, 17 August, 2015, tech company global Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) proudly announced that, it is launching Linux-only mainframe servers, named as “LinuxONE”.

The contributions will help fuel the new “Open Mainframe Project”, formed by the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development.

The highlight of the trove is a predictive analytics technology that IBM has developed to help its customers identify operational problems, which members of the initiative will now be able to port onto other platforms thanks to its open licensing terms. It has also announced to join hands with Canonical to design a Linux mainframe that runs Ubuntu Linux.

Meanwhile, the LinuxOne Rockhopper is a smaller mainframe designed for entry-level buyers.

The LinuxONE Developer Cloud, which will be deployed in select IBM datacentres globally, will provide developers access to a cloud-based development, piloting and testing environment for Linux-based mainframe workloads.

IBM is sweetening the pot by contributing 250,000 lines of mainframe code to the Linux community. IBM has powered its zSeries mainframe with Linux since the year 2000. Contributors will initially focus on scalability, availability, performance and security.

The mainframe is one of those products that’s been declared dead a dozen times over because it’s now possible to build supercomputer performance by stitching together many cheaper computer servers, instead of buying a one big mainframe. To make sure Linux and the mainframe continue to thrive, vendors, users and academia needed a neutral forum to work together to advance Linux tools and technologies and increase enterprise innovation.

On the software side, IBM will enable Apache Spark, Node.js, MongoDB, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Chef and Docker to run on its mainframes. “Linux on z Systems gives us the ability to manage large amounts of data and transactions with speed and security while ensuring our system is always available even when demand spikes”, said Greg Levine, senior VP for infrastructure and operations at ADP.