On 1/28/2013 7:22 PM, Don Williams wrote:
I'm not sure that the statements are blatantly false. My career has been
based on z/OS (a.k.a. MVS, MVS/ESA, MVS/SP, MVS/SE, OS/VS2, etc.) and
System z (a.k.a. z10, z9, zSeries, s/390, s/370, etc.), so I tend to be
heavily biased toward z/OS and System z. I love zMan's tag line -- "I've
got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it"
In the distant past, companies seemed to have selected the best platform
(hardware and operating system), then searched for (or wrote) applications
to run on it. Now days, companies seem to select the best applications,
then acquire the required platform(s) to run them. Of course, that is an
over simplification, but it seems to more or less apply to a lot of
companies (admittedly not the Fortune 1000 variety).
I work for a large hospital that has recently selected a new Electronic
Medical Records (EMR) vendor. While their decision process considered the
infrastructure, the weight of all the other factors effectively ignored any
platform advantages/disadvantages. They were far more concerned about
whether the application best meets the needs of the doctors, nurses,
clinics, etc. than whether the hardware be the best available.
Are you saying it's wrong to meet the needs of the customers first?
If I ran a hospital of course I would choose applications that helped
my staff most, and I would not care about the platform - just as long
as the applications worked correctly and were available when needed.
A former
colleague brought it to my attention that many hospitals have started
switching to the same EMR vendor away from mainframe based applications, and
that I should have my resume at the ready. After talking to other former
colleagues, I discovered that the hospital industry is not the only industry
trying to move to slicker, nicer applications even if they have to switch to
another platform. This implies that the software vendor is indirectly
selecting the platform.
Yes, and that's the way it should be.
While my analysis is based on antidotal evidence, I believe that the young
ITYM "anecdotal"; "antidotal" might keep
you from dying due to poisoning
new developers of these slicker, newer applications want to develop on a
familiar platform (i.e., their school did not use a mainframe).
IBM blew it 20-30 years ago when they stopped being generous
to colleges and universities. Looking at the short term.
They want
to choose a platform that minimizes their development cost (again not a
mainframe), yet is sufficient for a production environment. Historically,
PC, blade servers, etc. simply were not robust enough to handle medium to
large companies. PC/blades/etc. have become larger and clustered, etc., so
that now days they can handle a large company (this does not apply to the
Fortune 1000 variety, because they are beyond large). Therefore vendors
seem far more willing to develop for a non-mainframe environment. IBM seems
to have extended the mainframe with specialty processors like the IFL
processors for zLinux support, and Ensembles for blade support as a hedge
against the other platforms.
I'm not saying that IBM's mainframe market is about to dry up and disappear.
The Fortune 1000 size companies alone will keep the mainframe market healthy
for many years to come, but I do think the other platforms are beginning to
make a serious dent in the lower side of the traditional mainframe market.
Where have you been? Of course that's what's been happening for
10 years or so. And IBM, generally speaking, is indifferent to
the trend as long as they get their share of the non-mainframe
market. Pay me for mainframes or pay for AIX, same results.
Don
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
Behalf Of Ron Wells
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 8:47 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: mainframe "selling" points
someone--needs to tell BBC about false statements.....
From: Mike Schwab <mike.a.sch...@gmail.com>
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Date: 01/25/2013 05:47 PM
Subject: Re: mainframe "selling" points
Sent by: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU>
Card reader / punch, lineprinter, reel tapes, unmounted 3330 disk pack.
Things have sure progressed since then.
On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 12:39 PM, Don Williams <donb...@gmail.com> wrote:
The article below does not paint a good future for the mainframe...I
hope
the analysts are wrong.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19399368
<deleted>
--
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
The Trainer's Friend, Inc.
303-355-2752
http://www.trainersfriend.com
* To get a good Return on your Investment, first make an investment!
+ Training your people is an excellent investment
* Try our tool for calculating your Return On Investment
for training dollars at
http://www.trainersfriend.com/ROI/roi.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
