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Are we going back to Mainframes? 1
- Thread starter MarleneD
- Start date
This is my personal opinion:
Mainframes have never really disapeared. They've always been around. Mainframes are more expensive than servers and are more task specific. Extremely large sums of money are spent by large corporations to keep these systems compatible and up-to-date because it's cheaper than redoing the entire system.
Will they dissapear? I don't think so. The question will also follow the business trend. Take yourself back 20 years and much of the economy was driven by large corporations and world-wide enterprises. The market slowly started to be driven by small to mid size companies. Due to the cost and the needs, servers became more popular since they fit the budget of these smaller companies and did the job in a satisfactory way. The mainframes still did their jobs with those large corporations. Some of those coporations moved to servers, but many of them didn't. In the last couple of years, corporations have started to rise once more, buying out all their competitors or merging and making itself larger, bringing then demand for large applications server up a notch once more.
Will they ever become extinct? Not with the rise of Linux, that has greatly helped to put the Unix platform back on the map.
The need drives the demand, so you must also take a look at the business world, since they have the drivers seat.
"In space, nobody can hear you click..."
Mainframes have never really disapeared. They've always been around. Mainframes are more expensive than servers and are more task specific. Extremely large sums of money are spent by large corporations to keep these systems compatible and up-to-date because it's cheaper than redoing the entire system.
Will they dissapear? I don't think so. The question will also follow the business trend. Take yourself back 20 years and much of the economy was driven by large corporations and world-wide enterprises. The market slowly started to be driven by small to mid size companies. Due to the cost and the needs, servers became more popular since they fit the budget of these smaller companies and did the job in a satisfactory way. The mainframes still did their jobs with those large corporations. Some of those coporations moved to servers, but many of them didn't. In the last couple of years, corporations have started to rise once more, buying out all their competitors or merging and making itself larger, bringing then demand for large applications server up a notch once more.
Will they ever become extinct? Not with the rise of Linux, that has greatly helped to put the Unix platform back on the map.
The need drives the demand, so you must also take a look at the business world, since they have the drivers seat.
"In space, nobody can hear you click..."
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1
- #3
Good question,
Mainframes are still here, and in my opinion, will be here for a long time to come. Are we moving back to them? I'd say absolutely not. They will be around, but the growth of technology today, increases the demand that people put on these systems, and the newer more efficient and "feature rich" and "user friendly" environments will always prevail to the consumer and corporate markets alike.
Mainframe systems still play an important role in big business today, they have an important role, and one which is very difficult and expensive to run away from. Comapanies have invested billions, even trillions of dollars over the last 30 years in this technoloigy, and in many cases, still searching for their ROI, and will for many years to come. Meanwhile, Microsoft or Unix Based PC's, handheld devices, wireless communications, cellular technology, etc.. will continue to boom, techynology will get smaller, and more powerful, and more and more people will come to rely on them. Heck even my 95 year old grandmother surfs the web believe it or not. And with crippling arthritis to boot!
So no, IMHO we are not going back to mainframes, simply maintaining them, keeping them alive and profitable, and one day far in the future, retiring them or trading them in like we did the Commodore 64 for a newer, more powerful, more efficient, more friendly, less expensive technology.
Dave
Mainframes are still here, and in my opinion, will be here for a long time to come. Are we moving back to them? I'd say absolutely not. They will be around, but the growth of technology today, increases the demand that people put on these systems, and the newer more efficient and "feature rich" and "user friendly" environments will always prevail to the consumer and corporate markets alike.
Mainframe systems still play an important role in big business today, they have an important role, and one which is very difficult and expensive to run away from. Comapanies have invested billions, even trillions of dollars over the last 30 years in this technoloigy, and in many cases, still searching for their ROI, and will for many years to come. Meanwhile, Microsoft or Unix Based PC's, handheld devices, wireless communications, cellular technology, etc.. will continue to boom, techynology will get smaller, and more powerful, and more and more people will come to rely on them. Heck even my 95 year old grandmother surfs the web believe it or not. And with crippling arthritis to boot!
So no, IMHO we are not going back to mainframes, simply maintaining them, keeping them alive and profitable, and one day far in the future, retiring them or trading them in like we did the Commodore 64 for a newer, more powerful, more efficient, more friendly, less expensive technology.
Dave
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