Re: database market share 2003

"Data Goob" <datagoob_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:BVawc.1183$g12.672_at_fe41.usenetserver.com...
> Why would my question not be serious?
>
> I find the whole IBM landscape somewhat comical yet
> daunting. Lots of achievement and lots of angst
> over appearing too proud. On the flip side there
> is Oracle, with a lot of strutting around like a
> peacock, with totally undeserving value run by a
> pompous self-absorbed self-serving megalomaniac
> full of arrogance. But I'm getting redundant, and
> digress. There is a whole generation of computer
> users who will never see a mainframe, AS/400, OS/390,
> etc. etc. The fact that they won't know the value
> of old, big iron systems doesn't make them bad, it
> just means that a whole new generation of IT
> professionals are going to solve business problems
> outside the mainframe space, and would never even
> begin to consider them, instead trying to make Linux
> and Windows work faster and more efficiently. I'm
> simply asking questions about mainframes because I
> simply don't have a clue about that market, and find
> it curious that those that do, think that counting DB2
> on AS/400 is irrelevant or lies when it is clear that
> they really don't know jack about the DB2 market.
> Anyway, I remain curious about some kind of hidden
> value in the mainframe space that cannot be found in
> the Linux or Windows space. Enlighten me.
>

Obviously UNIX, Linux, and Windows server technology, including the databases that run on them, have come a long way in a short time.

I think that one reason most IT people will never develop on a mainframe is that you can't run it your PC at home. Also, the scope of IT has increased exponentially, so even if mainframes remain stable in terms of workload, the rest of IT is growing extremely fast.

But I think most people would be amazed at how close they really are to mainframes in their everyday life. Telephone, gas, electric, oil companies, banks, brokerage houses, airlines, governments, etc. They are more pervasive than you would realize in your own life, albeit as a consumer.

Whether mainframes survive is partially going to be whether they become price competitive with UNIX boxes. People are starting to realize that it takes a lot of personnel to maintain lots of small UNIX survivors in an enterprise. UNIX servers are becoming more larger and more consolidated, more like mainframes. Is a $5 million UNIX cluster a mainframe? Why not? Received on Fri Jun 04 2004 - 22:27:52 CDT