UX, AIX, FLAYX...

[Liam Proven]

On 06/09/07, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
> Liam Proven wrote:
> >>>   z/OS is a "legacy" OS?  Sure doesn't look that way to me.
> >>>
> >>>   Am I just blind today or something?
> >> I was going to say something to that effect.  *sigh*
> >>
> >> I believe MVS is selling/running on a greater number of copies now than
> >> it ever has in the past.
> >
> > It may well be, yes. But is it not more relevant to ask:
> > [1] how large is its proportional market share now compared to 5, 10,
> > 20, 30y ago? I don't have any figures, but I bet its %age of the
> > market /now/ is tiny compared to in the 1970s.
>
> It depends on how you define the market for a mainframe.  It's not the
> same market as for a Windows PC, and it never was.

Well, we could compare installs, or we could compare users. It's up to
you. Either way, I'll warrant that its market share now is
infinitisemal compared to what it once what.

Even if they're shifting a million seats a year, which I really very
much doubt, they're doing so in a market of hundreds of millions of
users a year of other platforms. It's marginal. It may be high-margin,
but it's a tiny drop in a big ocean.

I think to describe a 33yo OS with a minute market share as a legacy
system is a fair call, even if it is still in active development and
being actively sold.

> > [2] how many new green-field deployments are happening?
>
> Many, many, MANY more than before.  Less profit per install, but many,
> many more installs.  Read up on zLinux and what it's doing to the market
> for mainframes.

All right, up to a point, yes. I've been watching the progress of
Linux on S/390 and zSeries with some interest. I still don't reckon
it's a very significant market share, and furthermore, every site
running primarily or totally on Linux/390 is a site that's running
less on actual IBM OSs.

Indeed, tho' I don't know a lot about mainframes, I have a feeling
that most Linux/390 is deployed on z/VM - which is to say, in an LPAR
under VM - rather than under z/OS, which is to say, MVS. Linux is
probably actually displacing MVS - z/OS - rather than helping it.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com • MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com
Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk • Skype: liamproven • ICQ: 73187508