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Technology: What elixir can defeat obsolesence?
Technology museums are packed with memories of years not too long gone of things that once seemed indispensable: the punch card, the slide rule, the stock ticker, the floppy disk. The mainframe? Think again.
The mainframe is still with us and is experiencing a bit of a renaissance. In February IBM launched the z10 mainframe, a hefty computer descended from a long and distinguished line of machines. While it’s not cheap though, many see it as competitive to other technologies on price — one z10 will set you back a cool $1 million.
While many people have written off the mainframe, IBM has re-invented the concept, and has been successful. To some extent, the lack of interest in the mainframe market, has been a boon for IBM: it’s a lucrative niche with low competition. The new z10 machine has the equivalent computing capability of 1500 x86 machines in a relatively compact size and with low energy requirements. The maturation of virtualization software is driving people’s interest back to the mainframe too. BMC, an IBM competitor selling mainframe software, saw 32 percent growth last year.
Coincident with the announcement of the new z10 machine, IBM also announced that 400 colleges and universities in the US are now teaching courses in mainframe computing — compared with just 24 schools in 2004.
The secret to the success of the mainframe’s survival? Evolution with the marketplace. Just as radio once dominated communication only to be surpassed by television, it didn’t die, it evolved into delivering shorter pieces and often serving as background filler to other modes of communication. Today’s mainframe is significantly different than the mainframes that dominated computing environments in the 60’s and 70’s.
“The mainframe survived its near-death experience and continues to thrive because customers didn’t care about the underlying technology,” said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Customers just wanted the mainframe to do its job at a lower cost, and I.B.M. made the investments to make that happen.”
