If we're limiting the count to on-line in-house users - I'm talking about
TSO, CICS etc - I suspect State Farm might have a thousand users logged on
at a time (that's a massive system) but a few hundred is more usual in the
companies I've worked for.  Currently I have an insurance company as my main
client; in-house there are about 220 managers who review access, with let's
guess an average of five mainframe reports each.  They also have about 400
independent agents that use a system that ultimately connects them to the
mainframe, and each of those may have one or two assistants with their own
IDs.  That's probably typical for an insurance company.  I couldn't guess
about how many might be logged on at once.  Oh, sure I could, but it's just
a guess:  If there are 2000 mainframe IDs, maybe 500 at a time?  Purest
guess.

But we've also been talking about banks and their ATMs.  Do we count ATM
customers in the number for Bank of America, with their branches around the
country?  That could run to thousands at one time, don't you think?

---
Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313

/* It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the
silliest is quantum theory.  In fact, some say that the only thing that
quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.  -from
"Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku */

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of
Phil Smith III
Sent: Monday, August 14, 2023 10:14

In another thread, Jon Perryman wrote, in part:
>[You're] on a multi-million dollar computer shared by thousands.

Pure curiosity here: Without getting into any theology about futures, or
that obviously a single, relatively small app or even database could be used
in some sense by thousands of users via the network: 
How many users do sites typically have these days?

In 1986, University of Waterloo had over 20,000 VM users (on four 4341s
running Adesse Single-System Image), which was considered well beyond the
pale by most. We had several thousand logged on at once. Now, that was VM
(VM/SP, to be precise).

How many users does your z/OS shop have defined, and what's your daily
high-water mark of logons? We're a tiny dev shop, so have a grand total of
about four humans who touch z/OS using keyboards, and one of them only does
USS stuff. That's presumably not typical; I mention it just in the spirit of
fair play.

Again, this is purely curiosity-I am not contending that it proves anything
(except what we already know, which is that thanks to networking, there are
a lot of users and uses that show no visible signs of touching the
mainframe, yet are 100% dependent on it).

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

Reply via email to