Steve_Domarski Wrote:
>> And so it begins,
>> Management has decided after a year of thinking that the era of
the
>> mainframe is over here.
>> ........
I think it is not just beginning but is well under way in most places. Part of this is a sort of 'religious belief' in the conventional wisdom that anything that is not a mainframe will be cheaper (more cost effective) and will run modern systems better. Any arguments to the contrary, no matter how well supported by facts, are immediately dismissed as being presented by those stuck in the past with a vested interest in retaining mainframes. It seems to be a case of 'everybody else is doing it so it must be right - don't confuse me with the facts'.
Here, like many places, there is a definite plan to eliminate mainframes from the organisation at almost any cost. Luckily for me it will take longer than most places, because of heavy reliance on TPF for our core business, so I should see it to retirement.
Having said all this I do agree with what Steve implies, IBM are not entirely blameless in this decline.
1. When the Z/series with IFL's was announced a subtle change in the emphasis would have made a huge difference. If this had been announced as primarily a shared LINUX server that had the additional benefit of **also** running legacy mainframe code then there is a chance it would not have been tarred with the mainframe brush.
2. Software pricing has long been the bane of mainframe economics (with some justification). It is perfectly true that development and support costs must be reclaimed but the argument for maintaining high software costs for products that are now stabilised / out of support is much harder to justify. We are currently going through a software cost reduction exercise and are looking at the most expensive products first. Some that are no longer current fall into this category so we have found free or reduced cost alternatives. If IBM had reduced the monthly cost for outdated products to a more reasonable figure then we would probably not have even questioned them - as it is we eliminate the product and both we and IBM lose.
Colin Allinson
(speaking for myself)
