> And if you listen to Martin, everyone out there on zSeries (of any sort) is 
> apparently wallowing in memory anyway.
They are. The memory just isn't for z/OS, it is for zLinux. After all, 
everybody knows that z/OS makes do without adequate resources, when Linux 
applications fail. 

You wouldn't believe the fight I went through to get our z/OS lpars enough real 
to get paging below the 25% threshold when we migrated from 1.10 to 1.12. Not 
to mention to stop the RSM abends we experienced that IBM was unable to debug 
and that were most probably due to not enough real and a serialization problem 
somewhere. That was about 30GB of real for 10 lpars. 30GB were thrown easily at 
one Linux runnig under VM, on the other hand.

> Customers rebelled against the constant need to update the OS we've had to 
> dance to over the last few years, and IBM changed its tune.
As someone else said, I don't think customers rebelled. I think that IBMs own 
resources are spread so thin that the previous cycle couldn't be maintained 
anymore. Did you notice lately that BCP questions are answered from China on 
this forum? It looks to me like some of the development labs went there.

>While I can appreciate that IBM is innovating the platform, economics like 
>this is really putting the squeeze on many IBM customers.  This is a very 
>disturbing trend in zSystem economics, which IBM should reverse but likely 
>won't.

If you're not one of the big customers, you have lost. In a few years there 
will be 50 large mainframe installations around the world and all small ones 
will have been absorbed into those 50. Recent development in z/OS only helps 
large customers who can afford 'large' hardware.

Also, I attended Bob Rogers' 'crystal ball' session at the last zConference in 
Berlin in May. I think he was talking about the architecture of what is now 
called z12EC. What I got out of that is that the instruction set for z/OS (our 
zArchitecture) is basically tacked on to a completely different type (forgot 
which). And given how much z/OS is made to look and feel like what the clickers 
are used to (which is the only area IBM spends development dollars on), I 
firmly believe that z/OS is doomed.

I just hope that I'll be able to work on z/OS until I retire. Which is entirely 
too far into the future.
How's that for gloom on a Monday morning?

Barbara

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