Tony,
Here's an article you might like, about more compaines hosting their web sites on the mainframe. Remember our argument about big vs P.C's Your company is mentioned along with my city.
computerworld.com (I tried to link to the story, but the page was the search engine, you may have already read the print version)
Hope your having a good one.
Take Care
Ann
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Big iron gets a case of Web fever
Jaikumar Vijayan and Tim Ouellette
On the surface, SpeedServe, Inc.'s Web site looks like every other electronic-commerce site around the world. But under the covers, it is hosted on gasp! a mainframe.
World Wide Web sites usually are powered by much smaller Unix or Windows NT servers. But as electronic commerce matures, some companies have found that hosting a Web site on a mainframe provides more horsepower for high-volume transactions, greater reliability and faster access to databases.
SpeedServe, an online bookseller similar to Amazon. com, Inc., never had a mainframe before. But the company brought one in last summer to process the 1 million transactions per day it expects to handle this year.
Why use mainframes, once considered the dinosaurs of computing, to host a Web site? ''A mainframe scales much more than NT or Unix servers. And they are light-years ahead of both in availability and manageability,'' said Carl Greiner, an analyst at Meta Group, Inc., in Stamford, Conn.
Don't expect mainframes to replace Unix or Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT as Web servers everywhere, though. Big iron costs big money. And so far, not many Web applications require mainframe horsepower.
CHANGING TIMES
But that will change as electronic-commerce volumes grow and customers demand mainframe-like performance, uptime and integrity.
''It is one of these things creeping in from left field,'' said John Young, an analyst at The Clipper Group, Inc., in Wellesley, Mass. ''But there is no doubt it is a growing trend.''
SpeedServe is a pioneer. As recently as last summer, the La Vergne, Tenn.-based company ran its online store on a Windows NT server. But it was handling more than 500,000 book titles, 85,000 videos and 15,000 games and maxed out its NT hardware.
''We ran into a ceiling with our NT architecture,'' said Michael Mason, one of SpeedServe's founders. At that time, SpeedServe's Web site averaged 50,000 hits per day. It now averages 100,000 hits per day.
Instead of throwing more NT servers at the problem, the company called in the heavy artillery: an IBM S/390. ''We looked at this from a long-term cost perspective. With Windows NT, it meant more machines and more people to manage them,'' Mason said.
Mason didn't provide dollar figures, but he said the payoff for the substantial up-front investment in a mainframe is lower labor and support costs and no worries about hardware upgrades or networking issues.
SpeedServe is using only three of the mainframe's 10 CPUs, so it has plenty of room for growth and spikes in transaction volume.
As Web commerce matures, reliability a mainframe strength becomes a key issue because online companies don't want disappointed Web customers or closed storefronts. High-profile server glitches, such as the one that closed Amazon.com for 11 hours recently, are raising some concerns about the reliability of other Web server hardware [CW, Jan. 12].
CLOSE DATA
Putting the Web site on an existing mainframe also means the mainframe data that Web browsers need is close by and doesn't have to be moved to or fetched from another system.
''With all the core data that is on the mainframe, it can really be quite a problem to move it to another system,'' said David Floyer, an analyst at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass. ''You could lose a lot of the benefits of the Web application in the process, especially in real-time situations.''
Merrill Lynch & Co., for example, is running a crucial stock market data Web site on an existing 10-engine Amdahl Corp. mainframe that runs in an IBM VM operating environment. Users can pull down stock quotes, get information on the most actively traded companies, track market decliners or scan their portfolios.
The decision to host the site which drew 18 million hits last year on the mainframe was simple, said Jeff Savit, a vice president at Merrill Lynch, in New York. ''The data was all on the mainframe. The Web was the obvious way to liberate it.''
By linking Merrill's constantly updated market information to a Web server and making the information accessible via standard browsers, the company can easily pump the latest information into the hands of its internal users, clients and external Web users, Savit said.
The incremental cost of setting up mainframe-based Web servers could be less than the cost of buying new servers. The mainframe likely already has the data, processing power, connectivity and support staff.
Consequently, ''we didn't have to worry about start-up costs'' for a mainframe-based Web site, said Annette Miller, lead technical support specialist for the city of Lincoln, Neb.
The city of 210,000 uses a Windows NT Web server for some of its pages, but because so much of its data still resides on the mainframe, officials have the mainframe act as a Web server and host its own pages.
EASY CHOICE
''And when IBM integrated Internet Connection Server with the [OS/390] operating system, along with the CICS and DB2 connectors, it was really a no-brainer,'' Miller said.
The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), in Rochester, N.Y., is taking the same approach by hosting a student information system Web site on its S/390 mainframe.
In addition to general information about RIT, the Web server allows the institute's 13,000 students to access registration, academic, grade and billing information from anywhere in the world via the Web.
''We have seen other universities take their mainframe data and download it on NT servers,'' said Daniel Vilenski, RIT's registrar. ''We believe this is an economic alternative to doing that.''
RISKY BUSINESS
But hosting a Web server so close to vital corporate data does pose a security risk, users and analysts agreed.
Still, security issues for mainframes are far better understood than they are for NT or Unix platforms, analysts said. Mainframers have years of experience with access controls for dial-up users, and partitioning technologies and firewalls can keep Web users and databases separated.
Despite the advantages, the high costs of mainframes will keep all but the most resource-hungry Web applications on Unix and Windows NT boxes for awhile, analysts said. Anentry-level S/390 starts at $500,000, without software.
Still, mainframe vendors IBM, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Amdahl and Santa Clara, Calif.-based Hitachi Data Systems Corp. are coming out with relatively inexpensive mainframes geared to Web site duties.
And IBM is offering integrated Web server software, firewall technologies and integration services.
In essence, the mainframe will become just another option, like Windows NT and Unix, for hosting Web sites. The decision will be driven by applications, business needs and economics.
''People can get so religious about the different ways of doing these things. The mainframe is a great alternative'' to multiple servers and the associated labor costs, Savit said.
Sidebar
Webifying mainframes
Most Web sites have their computer processing distributed over at least three platforms: a Web server, a firewall and an application or data server.
But IBM is leading an effort by mainframe vendors to persuade electronic-commerce customers to consolidate everything on one mainframe.
The company has already integrated several Web hooks into its OS/390 operating system and is offering a range of firewall and encryption technologies to boost its Web presence. IBM's Internet Connect Secure Server, for instance, lets users integrate Web servers and supporting applications on a mainframe.
The company in March will complete a rewrite of its TCP/IP stack for OS/390, which will boost performance for clients attached to a mainframe Web server. At the same time, IBM will make new cryptography features available in its Net.Commerce software for the mainframe.
Also, IBM is taking a piece of its mainframe clustering technology and making it available in the OS/390 Web server. Browsers at certain locations will gain high-priority access to the Web server and certain files can be accessed faster than others.
This new job for the mainframe comes at a time when Web-based applications are becoming more important to corporate America.
''In order to survive, IBM has to do this and do it well. [Otherwise] people will just move their mainframe applications to another platform,'' said David Floyer, an analyst at International Data Corp. |
