UX, AIX, FLAYX...

[Liam Proven]

On 06/09/07, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
> Liam Proven wrote:
> >> It's not that there's a lot of mainframes out there, it's that they're
> >> quite pervasive.
> >
> > All right, conceded.
> >
> > But I suspect that there is a user count involved somewhere for
> > licensing purposes!
>
> Well, sort of.  There are actually different ways of doing it, but if
> memory serves, the most popular is by prcoessor-load.  There's even
> still a small but enthusiastic group of users who trade compute time.
>
> > Re your point about accessing a mainframe - that would generally be
> > very indirectly, though, no? They access a web server or an ATM or
> > something, that probably talks to another server, that talks to a
> > mainframe.
>
> Yes.  Definitely.
>
> > Most of the tedious IT management press that I read seems to consider
> > the client/server model obsolete now and talks of at least 3-layer
> > models instead.
>
> The benefit of recent mainframe software architecture is that you can
> run all of the upstream layers on one machine.  Run the web server on
> Linux, with transaction management or application backend running on VSE
> with the backend database on MVS.  Run the whole rigamarole in LPARs or,
> most popularly, in VM guests.  Each OS doing what it does best.  Without
> that advance, I don't think there would be nearly as many mainframes out
> there as there are.

I am sure you're right. I've read lots about this myself. But from
what I have read, it is not actually selling that many new mainframes.
I've read figures of single-digit sales per year.

It may be millions of US$ worth of business but it's not many actual
systems. Indeed I think a fair bit of this sort of consolidation is
happening by way of outsourcing to 3rd party datacentres - possibly on
machines still owned by IBM.

Yes, it's doing well. We are still not talking large volumes, though,
by /any/ measure.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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