BY 1990 mainfarmes were dying [LWN.net]

BY 1990 mainfarmes were dying

Posted May 13, 2008 14:39 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: This is good for the longterm by i3839
Parent article: Microsoft vies for budget laptop market with XP price cuts (ars technica)

I've the impression that mainframes never did better than nowadays.

Is this a joke? In 1960-1970 mainframes were THE business computers. All big companies used them. By 1990 they were almost wiped out: only IBM survived and even IBM's mainframes had bleak future. Linux quite literally saved them - but that's totally different story.

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Mainframes still selling well

Posted May 13, 2008 16:37 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

No joke. IBM's mainframes continue to sell well. Consider that mainframes have been used for virtualization for forty years, and companies nowadays often use a mainframe to run hundreds of virtual hosts.

IBM did attempt to slowly withdraw from the mainframe market, but then a lot of companies using them for traditional purposes (i.e., non-virtualized hosts) started clamoring for upgrades and new models. Apparently these businesses have a "it ain't broke, so no need to fix it" attitude towards their IT needs.

BY 1990 mainfarmes were dying

Posted May 13, 2008 18:44 UTC (Tue) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link]

Maybe mainframes nowadays have a 1% share of a market that is 100x as big as the market 40 years ago of which they had 50%, and in that sense, mainframes never did better than nowadays.