This article tries to explain why workstations are no longer an appropriate tool for the present working environment, what the alternatives are, and what consequences it has for the development of OSes.
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Member since:2005-07-12
Mainframes are cost effective in some cases, which is why we still use them (for example) and plan to for the next couple of decades (unless something better comes along).
Like most things related to IT, the viability of a given solution often depends very heavily on the specific business and technical context in which it is to be used.
Member since:2006-04-21
It's the same with Mainframes. Like it or not, they're a dying breed. They cost too much to maintain.
Dude, mainframes have experienced an uptake in recent years. If you're as ignorant on the Windows/Linux issue as you are on this, I'm glad I've never listened. Nor am I surprised.
Member since:2006-06-26
I don't know why this is modded up - it simply is not true. Had the author _any_ knowledge about this matter, he'd not written this crap. Mainframes are more wanted than ever. They are not dying - on the contrary companies rely more on them than ever. Well, guess why ...
Member since:2005-07-08
Mainframes are experiencing a resurgence, and it is precisely because they cost less to maintain. Less administration, less power, less heat, less space, less cabling, and much greater reliability.
The downside is a higher initial investment, but after giving distributed commodity infrastructure more than its fair consideration, the medium-to-large business is willing to pay boatloads to ease their maintenance headaches.
They're sick of fitting the pieces together with mixed results. They just want it to work. They want to shrink their IT departments and start concentrating on their business model instead of their datacenter. They discovered you can't do IT on the cheap. You either pay for it now, or really pay for it later.
We're seeing it in the high-end UNIX space. Customers are requesting mainframe technologies like I/O virtualization and live recovery. They also want the mainframe brand of customer service, where if a customer's system goes down, the senior engineers work around the clock in shifts until a fix is delivered and verified.
Edited 2007-01-19 04:05
Member since:
2005-06-29
It's the same with Mainframes. Like it or not, they're a dying breed. They cost too much to maintain.