Mary, >>>Having said that, I think the IBM mainframe is only replacing existing but less
powerful and outdated mainframes (probably no more than 5000 will be sold).
You would find these mainframes in smoke stack industries (auto, steel, and other
heavy manufacturing) and very large but mature industries (rail, shipping, air
transport, and financial services).<<<
Smokestack industries may be one name, Fortune 100/Fortune 500 companies is another for the main customers of S390. Like John said, 'when will the average Fortune 500
CIO bet his job, and company, on it...'
Still, this is obviously a lucrative market to go after for Intel and Intel's customers (a good one of which, of course, is IBM). I wonder what Intel's strategy is WRT possibly going after the S390 market. I would imagine it's one step at a time. Let's do medium first and worry about large later. Again, from John, the OS, RAS, I/O, and also security and scalability are still serious issues to address. They've started, need to go a lot further, and Microsoft isn't helping much, with NT 5.0 now Windows 2000. I guess it's like why should they care right now?
Tony |
