> On 6/8/2011 5:14 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>>
>> Every single developped country's government uses IBM mainframes.
>> Every single bank in the world still uses IBM mainframes.
>> Every single insurance compnay in the world still uses IBM mainframes.
>> Every single airline in the world still uses IBM mainframes.
>> Most of the Fortune 1000 companies have IBM mainframes (Google is
>> probably one of the very few exceptions)
>>
>> Most of the above will have hundreds of P-Series (AIX) servers, AS/400s,
>> And intel-based servers made by IBM. Not to mention use various Tivoli
>> monitoring tools, Websphere applications platforms, and in many case,
>> Lotus Notes for internal e-mail.
>>
>> Also, watch this, when you have 15 minutes of spare time.
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jtNUGgmd4
>>
> The reason for that is that its often cheaper to keep running
> mainframes, than go to blade servers. Mind, blades are IBM too, in some
> cases, so.. lol But, in general, too much software, archaic file
> systems, no easy means to convert, even if you can run the application
> on a new system, etc.
>

There's also the question of performance.  One needs a metric ton of 
bladeservers to be able to match the performance under load of a 20 year 
old mainframe sysplex.  I've worked for many years in the airline 
industry IT and came across a few system "upgrades" where transactions 
took 3-4 seconds to complete on the mainframe, but required upwards of 
15 minutes, in some cases*, on the new client-server, web-enabled, 
buzzword-compliant system that was supposed to replace the green screens.

*This one was bad SQL queries due to the default behavior of the RADD 
tool used to design the front-end piece of the software, and was 
eventually fixed.

>>>
>>>> Survived what? The Exxon Valdez disaster was a mere footnote in their
>>>> history.
>>>
>>> One of the worst, most infamous ecological catastrophes in human
>>> history, and it's a "mere footnote"?? How did it not end their
>>> existence? How did they not get sued off the face of creation?
>>>

I read today that the oil operations in Nigeria spill the equivalent of 
one Exxon Valdez per year and it goes unfixed because it's actually 
cheaper to lose the oil than to fix the leaks, and no one cares because 
... it's Africa.

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