Re: Is VMS losing the Financial Sector, also?

re: mainframes

Mainframes used to be big, expensive, very very expensive. And IBM used its social muscle to convince MIS directors (that is what they were called back then) that only IBM could do the job.

In the 1990s, even mainframe shops couldn't ignore the growing "minis" (aka: Solaris) and even banks starts to accept Solaris in their shops.

IBM reacted by making its mainframes more competitively priced. It was far more agressive at preserving its mainframe business than DEC was. DEC was in fact purposefully sabotaging its VMS business while IBM was trying to salvage its MVS business.

The scope of computing has widened. Banks now have web sites, they have automated telephone banking etc. Those were deployed on Unix because the software was available on Unix. But their core remains in the mainframe because that is where the big software exists and because it is already installed and has taken a lot of roots over the years with many many applications tying into the mainframe databases. The mainframe may not have 100% of banking left, but it still has a significant chunk of it.

IBM actively protects its markets. HP actively is pushing away ISVs from VMS.

Mainframe customers tend to be more mature about IT and not jump onto the latest and greatest bandwagon just for the sake of it.

With Oracle, it makes Unix platforms quite serious for real business. So IBM's competition is no longer from Amdhal, it is from Solaris for the serious applications. For anciliary apps, Solaris and Linux and Windows are acceptable.

The big question is whether Oracle will succeed in making Linux a serious platform, acceptable to banks for serious applications.
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