Mainframe: The Dinosaur That Is Not Quite Extinct

It is like a fairytale, which began in 1939 when John Atanosoff built the first generation of tube-based mainframe computers. Since then, mainframes have gone through a meandering journey, which at one point of time brought them on the verge of extinction too. In the present dynamic IT environment, what role do mainframes have to play? With a lot of interest being suddenly shown in the mainframe model currently, it makes one wonder whether these early-generation computers are going through a renewal phase. So has the mainframe arrived all over again?

Surrounded by Issues or not?

The absence of mainframes from the 1970s to the early 90s, when India moved on to become a UNIX country, is noteworthy. The mainframe has seen a sort of comeback only a couple of years ago. In all these years, the tales of problems surrounding mainframes have managed to remain fresh in the memory of organisations. One of the main problems has been the lack of skilled professionals, who are comfortable working with mainframes. Sreenath Chary, business unit executive, System z, IBM India/ South Asia, says, “IBM has been working with many business partners and universities to build skills on the mainframe. This goal is being slowly achieved with the adoption of a mainframe by the Anna University located in Coimbatore in south India for training post-graduate students.”

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With many organisations going in for consolidation and adopting new technologies, is mainframe anywhere on the radar? Naveen Mishra, senior research analyst, Gartner, says, “Organisations are not going back to the mainframe. The customers already within this environment will continue to invest in it. There are some new customers, who are evaluating them in today’s scenario. Taking into account today’s changing IT environment, mainframes have a lot of capability, especially through engines and open source, which are helping mainframes to get traction in new territories. In a market like India, the Business Class Machine launched in the mainframe category by IBM (z10) is priced at an attractive rate, which is encouraging many organisations to adopt it.”

With technologies like cloud computing and virtualisation spreading their wings across applications and verticals, what role can the mainframe play there? Mishra says, “The mainframe is one of the best technologies available in the market and it is definitely capable of delivering cloud computing to various organisations.” So the mainframe is likely to gain traction in new ways in this era of cloud computing.

The Real Picture

According to a recent Gartner report, more mainframes were shipped in India in 2008 as compared to 2007. As Mishra puts it, “Challenging times lie ahead for CIOs, who are constrained with IT budgets. It is a high cost product and companies will prefer to invest in such high cost technology in the future.” However, curiosity still remains regarding the verticals this platform is more suited for.

Most CIOs whom Biztech2.0 spoke to did not have a mainframe environment. Prasad Dhumal, CTO, DHL, (the company does not boast of a mainframe architecture), says, “Big organisations in the field of manufacturing, production, PSUs etc with legacy systems are probably the ones, who are still largely using mainframes. However, they seem to be having plans of moving away from the platform over the next couple of years, probably towards Blade technology or the like. The current economic slowdown may delay their plans as any new, big investment in the next 12 months is going to be a challenge. I guess CIOs in India will be more cautious in their approach for the time being, displaying more a tactical inclination than a strategic one over the next 12 months.”

M D Agarwal, head-IT, BPCL, says, “Mainframes are high capacity systems and CIOs are still not very clear about them. Indian CIOs often keep creating silos; they need to think more in terms of consolidation. Also the definition of mainframe needs to change as it has become a large system and the architecture has also changed. While treading the virtualisation path, one can make use of this large system of application. Mainframes have not died. It is merely the context of their usage, which has changed. Now large systems can meet that sort of usage requirements.”

So the mainframe fairytale right now stands in the ’not here, not there’ mode. It is yet to be seen whether this tale will have a happy ending.