Yes, of course! It is just I mentioned: COCOM. Coordinating Committee
for Multilateral Export Controls.
I even remember times when (some) hard disk drives were under CoCom
restrictions.
Funny fact: devices under CoCom could not be legally exported to Poland,
but some devices (oscilloscopes) were manufactured in Poland and
exported - so re-export back to Poland was illegal.
And of course it was circumvented, mostly using secret service, TLA's
and spies. Really.
We (Eastern Bloc) had even source codes long time after IBM stopped
distribution. There were many interesting stories, IMHO it is good
material for a movie. :-)
However our banks started almost from scratch. I remember my co-worker
told me they started bank having two PC compatible machines. It was
approx. 1990. Yes: two polish clones of IBM PC 286.
So, later popular platform was Novell Netware LAN with Clipper
applications or something on Btrieve. And some Unix-based systems,
mostly ICL machines (DRS 6000). Reason: ICL had an office in Poland and
despite CoCom the sold us a license for their mainframe called Odra 1300
in Poland or ICT 1900 in UK. Later they sold us other machines.
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
(looking for new job)
Lodz, Poland
W dniu 18.03.2021 o 23:54, Mike Schwab pisze:
I would say the the reason would be the Iron curtain. IBM mainframes
weren't available behind the iron curtain and USSR clones were pretty
limited availability.
On Thu, Mar 18, 2021 at 5:33 PM Radoslaw Skorupka
<[email protected]> wrote:
W dniu 18.03.2021 o 01:55, Bill Johnson pisze:
Only 1 or 2 banks still use mainframes in 2009? The truth is, all but 1 or 2
banks worldwide don’t use a mainframe in 2021.
I’ve worked at 15 different shops in 40 years and only 1 used visual basic and
that was over 20 years ago. It was declared legacy in 2008.
To be honest there are three banks in Poland using mainframe located in
Poland. And maybe two or three using foreign mainframe (like Citi). The
rest is working on some unix or as/400 based systems.
However I have some recognition of banks in Europe and ...I don't know
ANY bank not using mainframe. I'm sure there are such banks, but I don't
know any of them. I could list several banks in Sweden, Danmark,
Netherland, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, UK - all of the countries
have more mainframe-based bank than Poland! The insurance market is even
more interesting: none of polish insurers use mainframe, and all of the
insurers in the countries I mentioned (and I'm aware of) are using
mainframe.
Reasons? Loooong story, IMHO the most important is our history and COCOM
restrictions.
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