Know about Mainframes & it's prospects ...
As Published in Education Times, Deccan Herald, January 15 - 2004
Article by - Mr. Naveen V. MD Maintec Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
The computers are categorized into Microcomputers, Minicomputers and Workstations, Mainframes, Supercomputers. The Microcomputers like PC, Apple Mac Originated in late 70's were Single-user-oriented, the Minicomputers and Workstations are Smaller versions of mainframe, usually run on either the highly portable Unix OS or close OS such as VAX (DEC), Nighthawk, IBM AS/400, IBM RS/6000. The Mainframes are oldest form of computers, Expensive and powerful, Small, Medium, and Large-Program handling Uniprocessor, high-speed storage can be shared by a wide variety of users.
Mainframes can handle large volumes of data and Provide centralized administration Offer superior data management capabilities, can handle different types of workload, have high data bandwidth, Monitor data integrity and security. Mainframes use Operating Systems like MVS/XA, MVS/ESA, OS/390, VM/ESA and the latest being z/OS which has functionalities like System Management, Resources Management, Memory Management, and File Management. The characteristics of Mainframe OS are Virtual storage, Multi-programming, Spooling, Batch processing.
Four nines availability" and "Five nines availability" are terms unfortunately unfamiliar to PC users. Yet it is these figures - 99.99% and 99.999% availability - that are used to rate the reliability of mainframes. Such figures equate to between 5 and 53 minutes of downtime a year. In fact, for System/390 mainframes - the average time between failures that force a reboot and an initial program load - is 20 to 30 years. Such reliability is truly stunning from the perspective of a PC user, yet this kind of performance is crucial to businesses where a crash could incur losses of millions of dollars for every hour of downtime.
A fundamental difference between mainframes and PCs is the respective attitudes shown towards them. If a PC crashes, it's a problem. Work is lost, the user is unhappy, but then reboots the system and redoes whatever was lost. It's unlikely the system administrator would even hear about it. If, however, a mainframe crashes, it's a major catastrophe.
The advent of minicomputers in the seventies and desktop PCs in the eighties was expected to ring the death knell for mainframes, which were considered to be large, inflexible, expensive and difficult to use. Desktops were not only inexpensive, but could also be connected through a network to a central server, enabling organizations to store huge amounts of data. But doomsayers were proved wrong when despite stiff competition, the mainframe continued to maintain a steady growth rate. And in the current scenario, where organizations (after 9/11) have increased spend on storage solutions, there is a trend which indicates that mainframes may gain a bigger share in the IT budgets of CIOs.
For instance, other than traditional mainframe users like the banking-financial services sector and manufacturing behemoths, even unlikely candidates like universities and the travel industry have been choosing mainframes over newer technologies.
A stunning fact is more than 70 percent of the world's data still resides on mainframes! The market is growing in terms of revamping the older mainframes and adding new features and software to the oldies. Also, the new mainframes are smaller, cheaper, more powerful and e-business ready, so the market is growing steadily
IBM exited India in the seventies and returned only in the nineties. This gap of close to 20 years put a dampener on the adoption of mainframes here. Awareness about mainframes is only now picking up. The industry is realizing the importance of converting mission-critical and large volume applications from distributed processing back to centralized processing for better control and management, disaster recovery, security and business continuity. According to market sources, IBM's mainframe business has been growing at a steady 12-15 percent per quarter.
A single mainframe can reduce the cost of maintaining hundreds of servers. The cost difference seems high when you compare the price of a single server with that of a mainframe. But people have to look at it from the point of view of a total data centre. Only then will they realise that the actual cost difference is not much. The IBM zSeries, for example, enables server consolidation by handling the workload of hundreds of servers. It not only provides organisations with a lower total cost of ownership-through consolidation of Unix, Windows NT, and Linux applications to Linux on zSeries-but is also an application development platform for large customers. Further, fault tolerance is built into all mainframes, reducing downtime to the bare minimum. Another problem which customers face with client/server systems is that unlike mainframes these systems often come from different suppliers, and the various components may not be integrated or adapted to the user company's needs. This issue is minimized by a mainframe.
Verticals currently using mainframes include stock exchanges and depositories, utilities, airlines, railways, armed forces, e-business portals with heavy traffic, oil-sector PSUs, manufacturing giants, the travel industry, banks and financial institutions. These industries cannot do without mainframes since they run mission-critical applications that require high security and reliability. They also have huge databases, which can be managed only by a mainframe.
The banking segment has traditionally been a heavy mainframe user. But with many banks migrating to client/server, this sector has seen a sharp decline in mainframe usage. It is true that many of the smaller banks with fewer branches have opted for client/server, but most of the larger banks remain loyal customers. There has actually been increasing demand from banks for mainframe technology-especially after 9/11-for managing their disaster recovery needs; this is because the quality of service offered by mainframes is very mission-critical oriented." The Reserve Bank of India, one of IBM's largest customers in the banking segment, is also one of the most intensive mainframe users in India.
Usage of mainframes has also increased in the airline industry with Indian Airlines running mission-critical applications on IBM's zSeries. Even universities have shown a keen interest in training students on mainframes.
Another vertical that is a heavy user of mainframes is what is popularly known as the computer-related services industry. The software development industry has been a key focus area for us as we expect to see strong growth in this sector. IT giants like Wipro and Infosys do their development work here in India due to the cost/benefit factor. Since they deal with terabytes of data and also run mission-critical applications, a mainframe is the safest bet.
Not only does it offer a favorable cost/benefit ratio, it also provides high reliability and security required in large-scale processing work, which no other currently available technology can provide.
While it is difficult to predict the general future of mainframes, in India it may be a different scenario altogether. IBM may be able to gain a stronger foothold in the Indian market with its cost-effective Linux-based mainframes. Also, unlike earlier mainframes, the current set of machines are easier to handle and occupy less real estate-which may swing the tide in IBM's favour.
If you wanted to work in IT 14 years ago, it had to be with mainframes, as PCs were not developed enough to be widely used. Now the new trend is to bring legacy mainframe systems up to date with new IT fashions by providing a PC front-end, while the mainframe does all the real processing behind the scenes.
If a new IT graduate can get grounding in mainframes, then client-server application skills, he will know far more about computer systems than 90 per cent of the population. The linking between mainframe systems and client-server applications is exactly where an IT graduate should target your career these days as far too few people have this kind of skill.
Towards the end of the 80s, analysts predicted that the mainframe was dead and that the way forward was the client/server model with new languages such as C++, Delphi, and the server was not a mainframe run by COBOL or Pascal. However to this day mainframes continue to be used substantially. A key lesson learned from the so-called Y2K crisis was that efforts to replace legacy applications with new, internally built ones were mostly futile due to time and financial restraints. Legacy applications have retained their mission-critical status at many large corporations. This has been a big boost to IBM: their mainframe business has bounced back towards the end of the 1990s.
The stability of a mainframe environment combined with its cost-effectiveness provide for an attractive computer architecture that will continue to thrive for the foreseeable future. While both centralized and distributed environments each provide many benefits, neither offers a comprehensive solution to all problems. It is thus likely that the most robust and flexible computing environments of the future will be a combination of both mainframe and client/server architectures. Large organization with existing reliable mainframe systems and employees who are trained on them will continue to use them for many years to come.
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