IBM mainframe sales surge

The significance is lost on me: I never dealt much with mainframes, so I wonder what the qualitative difference is from a very large server. True, typically a mainframe runs multiple applications, but Unix was always capable of this (and in early timesharing days, did exactly this), but I think the mainframes in such applications as airline reservations were dedicated to the single application. I am aware that the mainframe wanted to control communications (SNA, I guess), because when I built the campus TCP/IP network we had to insert a box that looked like a slave both to the network and the mainframe.

But I can see from posts above that the mainframe growth looks like a reversal. Can somebody point out significance - thanks.; Posted by: IT_User Posted on: 02/27/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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I wonder rapson | 02/27/04

Carl, I agree. No_Ax_to_Grind | 02/27/04

Gee, P.T. Barnum WAS right... Stewart Cannon | 02/27/04

kind of makes you smile hipparchus | 02/27/04

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