IBM mainframe sales surge

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Cool things an IBM mainframe can do...

- Support tens of thousands of concurrent I/Os per second.
- Dynamic automatic adjustment of system resources (CPU, I/O, memory, etc.) based on business goals. For instance, you tell Work Load Manager the point of sale device transactions must run under .2 seconds 90 percent of the time. If the goal is not being met, WLM will automatically give more priority to these transactions. All major sub-systems work with WLM to achieve its goal. This includes Websphere Application Server, CICS, IMS, DB2, and even the SAN if IBM Shark is used. This is the magic that lets multiple applications, production, and development all to share the same hardware.
- Parallel Sysplex clustering technology that provides scale-out and fail-over. All major sub-systems are Sysplex aware and exploitive. It has been around for a decade. Well organised installations will do maintenance without taking user applications offline.
- Protection for user application software. I know some insurance companies running code created in the 70's for policy management that is still going strong. Even on the new 64-bit mainframe, you can still execute older 24-bit and 31-bit programs natively.
- Integrated security. Imagine a single sign-on for all the applications running on it.
- High levels of protection for the operating system. Only authorized programs can make system level calls. User written programs would not be in the authorized program list.
- No single point of hardware failure. Automatic switch-over for failed CPU or memory.

I'll admit I'm a bit of a mainframe bigot, but I've worked with other platforms and they just don't compare.

Posted by: Norm_z   Posted on: 02/29/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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