funny? not sure. I'll vote for sad. Although a mainframe is claimed to be a general purpose machine, it doesn't fit all. but, at least, many that are using other platforms and languages. The problem I hear from clients is pricing. they don't really care for developers, Cobol is popular on other platforms as well, and it is popular because it fits into clients needs. It take few weeks to teach Cobol (done that, taught that). What clients THINK!s (I don't think IBM is still using this slogan any more, do they?) is that the TCO of the mainframe is not affordable, and I am talking about the largest mainframe shops we have (and had) here.
So, my advise is not to find new uses to the mainframe, just make it affordable for clients. If the number of shops will grow (traditional mainframe use), the number of universities will use and teach Mainframe. BTW, a college in In north of Israel offered students a free course of mainframe. Many of them took the full program and now are assembler programmers... The way the market is constructed only few giant clients dictate the the change in the industry. Most clients don't care for new hardware features that brings new models in and obsolete 5 years boxes. I still remember the crazy days that IBM released two zOS versions a year. all these upgrades cost money to clients, no surprise they think TCO is much to hugh. so the botom line is don;t look for nbew uses, find new accounts and save the mainframe. My two cents, ITschak ITschak Mugzach Z/OS, ISV Products and Application Security & Risk Assessments Professional On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 9:38 PM, Tom Brennan <t...@tombrennansoftware.com> wrote: > Fun to read! But whenever I see things like this a couple of items come > to mind: > > 1) z/OS often gets lumped in with z/Linux as if a move to z/Linux will > save the mainframe. Sure, that will save the *hardware*, but it won't save > the jobs of all the z/OS software folks. > > 2) IBM needs to make z/OS (etc) available for free for students and > developers so they can run it on Hercules. I'm not sure IBM realizes that > is basically their last chance to ever get z/OS growing again. > > > Mark Regan wrote: > >> >> http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/mainframe-world/ibm-plans-for-the-future-an-imaginary-tale-73469 >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >> send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN >> >> >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
