Is AES prompting customers to use the mainframe in different ways? The answer is yes. Customers are saying they want to run a variety of workloads on the mainframe. They have been gradually moving edge-of-network applications and workloads [running on Linux] onto the mainframe, and they are now bringing a lot of the Web server apps onto the mainframe. They feel that the edge-of-network [applications] are the first point of defense. So, yes, they are exploiting AES -- and are concerned about intrusions inside and outside, by the way.
A complaint by mainframe users over the years is the cost of software. Are you doing anything different to address software costs on mainframes? Do you have any new plans, new pricing? The newest idea is the ability for customers to run workloads on our specialty engines. Back in 2001, we introduced an IFL [Integrated Facility for Linux]. We extended that with zAAP [zSeries Application Assist Processor] for Java and in January, zIIP [Integrated Information Processor], which allows them to run DB2 on a specialty engine, so they get the advantage of mainframe pricing. That's been our strategy. It's turned out that the majority of the revenue and workloads that are coming to the mainframe are these new workloads -- about 60% of them are Java, Linux workloads.
What's the relative price savings if you run on a specialty engine? It varies. I hate to give you a number, but they do save money. The other thing is it works better because the engine is tuned for the application and workload, so they eliminate some inefficiency. They get a double savings in terms of more efficient running but also a better application because it's tuned to a specialty engine.
Are you developing new specialty engines, and if so, for what kinds of workloads? Our customers keep telling us that they are interested in us continuing this road map, which says any workload I have in the enterprise, they want to be able to run it on the mainframe, so we're open to that. It's totally in collaboration with customers.
IBM has announced a goal to have 20,000 professionals trained in zSeries skills by 2010. Where are you on that plan? We're ahead of schedule, and I'm really excited about it. I had no idea that the market would respond as well as it did. The goal is 20,000, and that's in general. We got a special challenge to get 10,000 [trained] in China. And we are well on the way of doing that. We are ahead of schedule. We will get to the 20,000 by 2010, and the biggest reason is our customers, our business partners, the universities are all working on this problem together. We've got a lot of people that are now coming to see the mainframe, know about the mainframe, learn, get a job working on the mainframe.