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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly?
MSFT 491.95+0.2%3:59 PM EST
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To: Andy Thomas who wrote (8875)7/2/1998 9:03:00 AM
From: Bill Fischofer  Read Replies (1) of 74651
 
OT: MVS

MVS (aka "OS/390") is the prime example of a senile operating system. Note that senility does not imply that an OS is no longer used. Rather it means that it has reached its full potential and is now in decline.

How many new installs did MVS achieve last year? How many CS students and IS professionals are signing up to be trained on it? Is there anyone outside of the gray-temple set who even knows what JCL is?

Software dies because the young move on to other, newer, platforms. The RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability for those under 40) features required for enterprise-class computing that MVS pioneered are only now starting to show up in UNIX and will be part of NT in a few years. But each OS is a product of its era. MVS was optimized for an era of extremely expensive hardware which required the skilled intermediation of a priesthood-like programmer class. UNIX was optimized for an era in which hardware was still expensive and software was an academic research tool which embodied the ideas of a thousand Ph.D. theses. NT is being optimized for an era of cheap hardware and widespread computer literacy. Each approaches the RAS problem in a different way.
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