>... >>Back in the day, Tandem was the dominant fault-tolerant platform. >>However, for almost two decades, sysplex technology has given >>mainframes fault tolerance that Tandem can only dream of. >>So, it's not that Tandem's front end value is lessening but that >>they are no longer the only game in town. > >I do think Tandem (HP NonStop) front-end value is lessening >because of decisions HP and especially software vendors have > made recently. But I think you're exactly right about the fact >that, if you have a highly available IBM mainframe backend, >why do you still need a special queuing front-end? Quite >simply you don't, and that's been the trend, to edit and >to simplify for several reasons. >...
I have no idea what's going on in the banking industry in general,; maybe reliance on Tandem is decreasing. But I see no move at this bank to move away from them. Our move towards higher availability has next to nothing to do with ATM support (Tandem's forte); it is driven by online banking support. I suspect that the ATM support will eventually start taking more advantage of the mainframe's high availability, but, as I said in a previous posting, the platform's availability has little to do with the need for something like Tandem. It's the applications; it's maintenance of the databases; etc. The HA front ends for ATMs allow near continuous ATM availability for customers without having to go though major costly redesigns and reprogramming. Bank IT deparments are pretty conservative in general, and the current financial environment isn't likely to inspire major changes. I suspect you will not see many banks that currently use Tandems stop using them because of high mainframe availability. I'd bet more on seeing IT staffs being cut, development put on hold, and greater dependance being put on whatever is in place right now. Pat O'Keefe ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
