Re:Next Week's Bloodbath At IBM Won't Fix The Real Problem
by graycat on Sunday January 25, 2015 @10:42PM
(#8945443)
Long one of the main reasons for
IBM mainframes was the bet your business
software that wouldn't run anywhere
else and that would be too expensive
to rewrite to run somewhere else.
Also, there is a remark that in major parts of the financial industry, running an IBM mainframe is nearly a necessary condition for compliance.
Re:Next Week's Bloodbath At IBM Won't Fix The Real Problem
by jussij on Monday January 26, 2015 @01:03AM
(#8945717)
> would be too expensive to rewrite to run somewhere else.
I'm don't doubt that is a major factor. Add to that the major risk that what every new system you move to might actually fail to work or end up costing more.
Re:Next Week's Bloodbath At IBM Won't Fix The Real Problem
by toomuchtodo on Monday January 26, 2015 @01:06AM
(#8945724)
> If as you say mainframes are overpriced and inefficient, that means there is a great opportunity for some organization to move with a much cheaper, more efficient option.
But isn't that what Facebook, Google, and Amazon are doing? Using massively distributed commodity x86 hardware to eat away at incumbent businesses that would outsource their IT services to mainframes? Last I read, Google is about to go into auto insurance, and all three companies I listed do payment processing.
If software is eating the world, SV behemoths are eating business verticals.
But people have been predicting the death of big iron for several decades now, yet they live on.
I don't doubt mainframes might be overpriced, but I also suspect the reason they persist is they have yet to come up with a cheaper option, offering the same performance figures.