Next year, IBM plans to announce additional general purpose blades for the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension including select IBM System x-based blades running Linux.

ENGADGET: IBM's zEnterprise architecture makes mainframes cool again, also efficient (video)

This new dimension in enterprise computing-- extending mainframe governance to POWER7 and System x blades integrated into the zEnterprise System architecture--was developed over the past three years with direct involvement from a team of IBM's 30 top customers, which provided direct input at every stage of the development process.

ENGADGET: IBM's zEnterprise architecture makes mainframes cool again, also efficient (video)