What Became of Mainframes?
Stewart Alsop eating his words
"In 1991, technology writer Stewart Alsop wrote, “I predict that the last mainframe will be unplugged on 15 March 1996.”
In 2002, he admitted he was wrong."
What Became of Mainframes?
“Mainframes will soon be extinct”, pundits have announced regularly. Yet nobody told the mainframes, which remain alive and well, the backbone of world banking and other business systems.
Reliable and secure, mainframes are seldom in the limelight. But one probably approved your last ATM withdrawal or reserved your last airplane ticket.
IBM Z900 Mainframe Computer
IBM introduced the Z900 mainframe 10 years after published predictions forecast that all mainframes would disappear.
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VAX 11/780 Computer – CPU
The VAX line of 32-bit “super-minicomputers” rivaled much more expensive mainframe computers. Its success made DEC the second-largest company in the industry. VAX, a “complex instruction set computer,” was widely cloned in Eastern Europe.
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