Re: Mainframe impact
This may seem somewhat off-topic but it really isn't. The main theme I have been developing over the past year (mostly on the EMC thread) is that we are in the midst of a profound role-reversal in IT. The classical datacenter consisted of a large central processing complex surrounded by a huge "disk farm". In this model the mainframe ruled. The datacenter model which is now emerging is storage-centric and consists of a large central enterprise storage network surrounded by a huge "server farm". In the new model storage rules and CPU cycles become fully commoditized. To see this transition in action see, for example, biz.yahoo.com in which AdForce (a quintessential "new economy" company) has chosen to place storage squarely in the center. Note the following quote from the release:
``Our previous model of server-based storage hampered our ability to quickly add capacity to support new customers and provide critical applications,' continued Rao. ``EMC's open, heterogeneous ESN is allowing all of our data to be centralized and shared on a single, scalable storage platform, providing an easily managed vehicle for delivering new applications to our customers, and it will help ensure that our services are available online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.'
What does this transition have to do with MSFT? The answer is that as long as Wintel aspired to take the mainframe on head-on they were doomed to failure. But in the new model the mainframe is replaced by endless racks of commodity servers, the real value having migrated to the storage network. In this emerging model MSFT's new focus on "scale out" rather than "scale up" is perfectly aligned. Freed from mainframe ambitions, Wintel can focus on taking over the "server farm" as its piece of the 21st century datacenter.
I should point out that this model is even more pronounced in the network-hosted space. When you contract with GBLX, Q, EXDS, etc. you don't get a slice of a giant "mainframe in the sky". Rather you get your own server racks. This new standard model will within a few years be the only model found anywhere. The gating factor (besides the usual IT conservatism) is the recasting of all applications as net-based. In this regard technologies such as XML, MSFT's SOAP, and ironically SUNW's Java are only hastening the mainframe's inevitable demise. |
