Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 20th Oct 2006 18:30 UTC, submitted by anonynmous
"The mainframe is cool again as shops move to consolidate servers and run enterprise systems on a single platform with robust diversification. Some are even speculating that a rebirth is occurring and are talking about Mainframe 2.0. Currently, IBM z/OS supports many open protocols and other recent innovations including support for Java. Get an overview of the z/OS world for Java developers and learn how to deploy a Java application on the new Big Iron."
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Member since:
2005-07-12
I am not certain this information is completely true. Many of Sun Microsystem's customers are banks, financial institutions, and large organizations all over the world. Sun Microsystems does not sell an IBM mainframe.
Large organizations such as major banks and major airlines tend to use *both* mainframe and UNIX server resources.
When I worked at NWA, we had both IBM and Unisys mainframes running our core systems, but we also had dozens of Sun boxes of various sizes (both clients and servers) running other kinds of applications.
We also had HPUX, AIX, IRIX, and Win2000 servers, and we had Solaris, Mac, and Windows boxes as clients in various areas.
Sun could very easily sell a lot of hardware and software to banks and other financial institutions, but my bet is that most of those are still using a mainframe at some level.
When I interviewed at BB&T a couple of years ago, IBM mainframes were still at their core. I know that the same is true for places like Prudential, Travellers Insurance, etc., because I know IBM mainframe folks who work at those places.
W.r.t. multi-user support -- mainframe environments have supported multiple users in various ways since the mid-1960's. I can't speak authoritatively about IBM, but UNIVAC/Sperry/Unisys boxes have supported both a basic timesharing environment for programmers (DEMAND) and an online transaction-based application environment (which can support tens of thousands of concurrent users) since the mid 1960's. That's how airline reservations systems work, for example.
The idea of "virtualization" as presented by things like IBM's VM have very little to do with that.