[email protected] (David Boyes) writes: > IBM Branch Offices: What They Were, How They Worked, 1920s–1980s > > James W. Cortada > > Abstract: > IBM branch offices were the company’s local face around the world in > the 20th century. Its sales and customer support came out of these > organizations, which are described here, using the example of one > branch office as a historical case study. Additionally, personal > perspectives on their role of having worked with these during the > 1970s and 1980s are provided. > > Published in: IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ( Volume: 39, Issue: 3, > 2017 )
one of the issues after 23jun1969 unbundling announcement was how to handle the training of new SEs ... previously it was sort of journeyman training as part of large SE group at customer site. Unbundling started to charge for SE time at the customer ... and they couldn't figure out how to *NOT* charge for the SE trainee time. past posts mentiong 23jun1969 unbundling http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle The solution was HONE ... hands-on network environment, online to (originally) CP67 virtual machine datacenters (later moved to vm370) ... being able to practice with running guest operating systems in virtual machines. I provided highly customized & enhanced CP67 operating systems (and later VM370) to HONE from just about the beginning until sometime in the mid-80s. One of early enhancements was to provide simulation of the newly announced 370 instructions ... so guest operating systems generated for 370s could be run under CP67. some past posts mentioning HONE http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone The science center (besides doing CP40, CP67, CMS, GML, internal network ... technology also used for the corporate sponsored university BITNET ... where ibm-main mailing list originated) ... early on, also ported APL\360 to CMS as CMS\APL. HONE then started offering CMS\APL based sales&marketing support applications ... eventually the sales&marketing support applications started to dominate all HONE activity (salesmen edging out trainee SEs at branch office terminals) ... and the original HONE use for guest operating systems dwindled away. past posts mentioning science center http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech post mentioning internal network http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet posts mentioning corporate sponsored univ network http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet Mid-70s, all the US HONE datacenters were consolidated in Palo Alto (trivia when FACEBOOK originally moved to silicon valley, it was into new bldg next door to the old HONE datacenter). Their VM370 systems were enhanced to support single-system-image ... possibly largest in the world, eight large POK multiprocessor all operating as single complex with load balancing and fall-over across the complex. In the early 80s, this was replicated first in dallas and then in boulder ... with fall-over for disaster survivability across the three datacenters. Also, by mid-70s, mainframe configurations were getting so complex, that all new customer orders had to be first be run through HONE configurators. Also by late 70s, various IBM factions were demanding that HONE be migrated to MVS, the corporation's "favorite son operating system" ... and periodically all HONE resources were being devoted to MVS migration, eventually fail ... and then things would settle back to normal for a little while ... and then it would start all over. After several of these failed attempts, in the first part of the 80s, they started blaming me (and my enhanced vm370 operating systmes) for all the failed attempts to migrate to MVS. During the late 70s period, head of POK had made some internal proclamations that VM370 was being killed as product (part of the initial motivation for migrating HONE to MVS) ... which initiated huge protests from HONE & marketing ... and POK had to spend several months walking back the proclamation (reassuring HONE and marketing organization). -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
