human beings have been performing
computations for thousands of years
from tally sticks to Stonehenge to the
portable and still employable
abacus the history of computing includes
punch cards tabulators and desktop calculators
all leading to alan Turing's influence
on computer science
with his mind bending algorithms and
miraculous program storing machine
in the mid-twentieth century computers
went commercial
developed by companies like UNIVAC,
Burrows, NCR
Control Data, Honeywell and IBM. This
consortium produced large customized and
expensive computer systems
for government agencies and corporations.
A new age in human computational history was about to dawn
in the nineteen sixties the status quo
experienced a radical transformation
new ideas were forming as cultural
political and social traditions
came under question the same can be said
for the world of
business computing generally considered
the first modern mainframe
IBM's 360 reinvented business computing
and deliver the technological firepower
that allowed NASA's rocket scientist to
look into the sky and say
Hey gravity! Let's go for a ride.
the first
thing that came to mind when I think
about what
impact the mainframe has had on
business
for the last forty-five years or so was in fact the
US space program because the mainframes
provided that complete solution
that actually enabled us to put a man on the
Moon
in the sixties
perhaps the biggest contribution was in
the area of
real-time transaction processing because
that's where really led the way
to for example credit card authorization
systems
airline reservation systems things we
kind of take for granted today
you could just walk up to somebody and they are going to immediately answer question or
or transact business with you. All
of that is driven by this real-time
transaction processing which is playing
here on the mainframe
When you look back in the sixties we're
really experiencing a lot
of technological problems that looking
back it's hard to
visualize now. Most computers were
custom-built
One of the great examples is SABER
which was a custom-built
IBM mainframe designed just for american
airlines to run a reservation system
there was an awful lot of this so you'd
have slight variations of the machines
IBM made the decision to have a
compatible family of systems that can be
used for any
business purpose. So to that goal IBM
start developing in 1960's System/360 line
as a we would now call a heterogeneous
line computers
so you would dramatically reduce the
cost of developing the systems
when I started working with
computers, a lot of work was done
through batch
at the time it was a great jump forward
because it
automated something that had previously
been done by hand
but businesses realize that they need to be
more responsive than this, they wanted to go
online. They wanted to
be able to do things
in real time so within IBM we created
TSO
for interactive users we created IMS
and CICS for transaction users
these environments particularly the CICS
are still very heavily used because they
provide
back up, the security are they provide
mechanisms for doing all the attributes
that business applications need
and all the customer has to worry about
is writing
the business logic part of it.
the mainfram itself was the outgrowth of a cultural of responsible
computing and that came together with an
architecture that was built around the
needs a business but also
a cultural scrupulousness of care
of doing things that we're looking to the
future hence the promise that IBM made
when they put off the
the announcement for the mainframe on
April 1764 that whatever you wrote
for their mainframe then we continue
to run into the future
that's a promise it's been kept
the ability to
run you know the terrible word legacy workloads
right so it's not like you know in
Windows when you upgrade from windows 6 to
Windows 7 or Windows whatever. whatever
is gonna come next
if your application stopped working you
have to go by the next one worth
to your application you have to
figure out what to recode
that COBOL program that you wrote
thirty years ago
continues to run exactly the same way as
it did our customers do like test
everything every year some extent their
surprise that
the stuff continues to run because of
the sort of the rules of engagement that
IBM in the ISVs put around the
mainframe which was
to make sure that it was the ultimate
investment protection platform
in all the years that I've been involved in a
mainframe I'm not sorry I chose that path
I'm not sorry now you know where we
used to have a data center that was
five million square feet okay now to
the data centers got maybe five hundred
square feet but it doesn't matter.
The power is five hundred times what it was it's
considerably easier to manage
I mean just look at the cable. In the old
dayswe had bus and table
cabling that would like a fire hose
and now you gotta a piece of wire that looks
like a telephone
jack in wall. Makes life a lot easier
if you talk to people who've been
working on this platform for longer than
I've been alive
they'll tell you that it's their
platform.
That IBM is just a custodian of a platform, CA is a
custodian of a platform
that you know they're the ones who in
the sixties were picking little cords up
off the floor and making sure that the
ID and CE did the right stuff
that's really why it is where it is.It is
the community and the fact that there's
a great deal of feeling responsibility
on all parts for the customers feel a
great deal of responsibly the platform, IBM
clearly kills a great deal of
responsibility as the ISP's
the remarkable change that to find the
nineteen sixties was
echoed in the world business computing
and what helped lay the foundation for
the aggressive business expansion
poised to on for all in the coming
decade the computational
engine that would help drive a
significant amount of that growth
you guessed it the mainframe
the nineteen seventies were study in
contradiction
oil embargoes global conflict raged well
agrarian programs on the rise of new
industrial techniques
flourished women were entering the work
force in politics
in increasing numbers while the trust in
corporations and principally governments
was in decline computer technology from
video games to complex computer networks
was becoming increasingly commonplace in
the world a business computing
new technologies such as virtualization
weird a viewing
on the mainframe delivering what
appeared to be a contradictory promise
greater utilization manageability and
performance
at a lower cost 17th just
school during 17
IBM came out where almost
processor every year starting in 1970
with the system 370
and virtual storage on live doubtless
that was pretty exciting back to simply
put
virtualization is about sharing
resources virtualization is the creation
of a virtual version
operating system a server a storage
device
more network resources sharing resources
allows organizations to achieve greater
utilization
manageability and performance from their
technology
investments rofl
problem I am have a buzzword that just
the PC market
last five ten years so I think many
things
credit it is a common thing for
mainframes to see
been there done that when they see some
Brandon technology come out are the
easiest one to refer to obviously as
virtualization
I was the operator about CP 67 system
360 CP 67 machine
which already could Ron software
which was the predecessor IBM allowed
one machine to act like it was more than
one and that was
a former virtualization the mainframe is
not restricted to
a single particular software
architecture you don't necessarily need
to buy another computer
because you want to run a different
operating system but it's a matter of
I'll
potentially operating your software are
expanding memory or or or some other
things
but not necessarily the capital expense
involved in
and the purchasing a machine I take a
look at all other
the big trends that are going on right
now in the distributed side
and they've all essentially commodity
mainframe think about virtualization
the distributed side being virtualize
that whether it's five for 20 percent
depending upon the study
you see purses the main frame it eighty
to ninety percent
ok
well
them
ok
ok
well ok
with the reduction at UBC in late be
able to label discrete things
and the inflectional technology to read
those and pass that along into
central processing a system it became
possible to automate lots more things to
keep
you know very close watch on inventories
into reduce costs by
managing inventory levels managing
supply chains well as time has gone on
obviously the other platforms have
adopted the good ideas that the
mainframe
develop decades ago but there are call
is a service to the main frame provides
in terms of P billion to do
detailed management on the system the
other platforms seems like that
philosophy is things are cheap so just
time-warner that approach has led to
much greater expense
then it would have been to implement on
the so-called expensive mainframes
I'm so my parentals the service is over
Hubbard does master with a little help
from IBM mainframe
business productivity once again prevail
as computer technology became
increasingly pervasive in both the
commercial and private sectors
organizations utilize mainframe
technology to grow their businesses
on a global scale virtualization
technology allowed companies to easily
share and grow their applications and
resources
across increasingly large networks in
the coming years a revolution in
computer technology
most notably personal computers would
help make server technology increasingly
more affordable
spawning what is often referred to as
the dawn of distributed computing
among other notables the nineteen
eighties
in the nineteen nineties gave us the
first woman appointed to the US Supreme
Court
the loss of the Challenger Space Shuttle
hong kong's return to china
and of course the collapse of the Soviet
Union in the corresponding fragmentation
what had been a closed and highly
centralized society with the advent of
the personal computer
dramatic changes were also occurring in
the high-tech industry
the Windows operating system along with
UNIX began to be adopted as an
alternative server solution
to the mainframe in fact some were
saying the mainframes days were numbered
in
both yeah I K their last respects more
beloved mainframe
me famous been pronounced dead more
times in
able to go to I'll it was a tough time
a trying to convince people number one
that you should continue to invest in a
mainframe
mainframes word flexible people would
come in and say
I need an application change I need a
new application
and we had backlogs we said well maybe
we'll get
maybe we'll get to your requirement but
it's going to be in another two years
people one of a kind I said well that's
not good enough I need to do something
and they need to do it now
the pushin eighties was to move to
distributed systems
there was a belief that these computers
will be able to take over for me
prime and to the name shop because the
crass the endless
users jumped on the street computing
idea the future the mainframe
looked of damn you had a a lot of
companies don't exist anymore
those who were sorta anti mainframe and
Amber
I think they went a little over the top
and trying to suggest that
they were going to fix all the problems
of mainframe computing
nine years were very perilous for the
name frank analyst
and technology Pendle I'll
thought that the main thing was going to
die they
pop called server with the way to go get
the flexibility that people needed to
get
system within very quickly so the main
point something quite a bit
at the higher levels there was a guy in
1991 when the
hotshot IT analyst he said lets me play
would be unplugged on March 15th
1996 that's almost 15 years ago and
today
that the have the top 50 banks use IBM
even computers
24 the top twenty seven retailers
use idea revealed why they do that is
because
me for him is the most reliable the most
available will secure platform
a computing system is secure if you can
rely on it to behave in the manner you
expected
now that is the beauty of the mainframe
there's an old saying
housework is something that nobody
notices unless you don't do it you know
it's kinda funny the mean Green's kinda
like that
that people don't notice the mainframe
because of the fact that it's just
sitting there working behind-the-scenes
the business
requirements keep getting stronger and
stronger every year for things like the
security
data integrity being able to report
these things the Intel windows or even
the
Mintel world arm has a lot of strengths
no in the fact that you can buy a lot of
things you know you can pretty much by
anything you want from any to any vendor
but the bottom line is that when the
ecosystems that broad
making those things work together in a
very effective way is harder
many distributed servers will be needed
in order to do a single job where
it could be done much more conveniently
efficiently and
in a controlled manner if it was done
mainframe system because the mainframe
system could do the whole job
pool in one place in our recent survey
seventy-five percent of CIO's are
undergoing some level agree
centralization
not just the mainframes there the re
centralizing on many different platforms
but that's certainly a good sign for
mainframes I think something that
that proliferation that occurred at that
server sprawl it out there today
is now being fixed up
up
ok old
home
house in the eighties and nineties a
dark ages at all I see it as a
appear to growth expansion and response
to
a challenger that came in the form a
distributed computing
eighties are usually remember is the
time when NPC showed up
and that God would make you think that
the mainframes they did but they didn't
really start fading that hollywood they
were
ever expanding very rapidly I DM pushed
and areas that do not conform
both to smaller companies in order
companies and all potentially touchy for
Jitsu
was a real expansion mainframe with the
nineties
perhaps a little bit different story
happening mainframes continued to grow
in presence and they were they remained
extremely important
but increasingly up
big production workload could be down on
other platforms and by the endless
requested
the Internet fact the mainframe
initially didn't play very well in that
world
by the end of the 90s that was a real
you know
thought that then mainframes we're gonna
go away they were gonna become obsolete
Justin just go away
eventually to which didn't help
distributed computing did not signal the
demise of the mainframe
in fact is the 21st century began in the
internet and global commerce
exponentially expanded quality such as
security
reliability and manageability were
becoming increasingly valuable
qualities the position the mainframe for
a renaissance
in the decades to cart up
the acceleration of globalization
epitomize the first decade of the 21st
century
allowing individuals to communicate and
collaborate using social networks
assuring the contents their pocketbooks
to electronic commerce
a more intimate planet could also bring
tragedy and none was more deep the 9/11
yes globalization also delivered
diversity inside
and opportunities all in real time the
always open concept was equally vibrant
in the realm of business computing Linex
became the fastest-growing
operating system on the planet in open
source option that thrived on big iron
across myriad industries in the first
decade of the new millennium
the mainframe was not only back it was
helping to once again
dictate the direction up business
computing
ok IBM has been very very
responsive to the the market place in
the customer demands and have
morphed mainframe into something that is
as modern as full function as every
other technology and even
even actually more so we do our best to
try to adapt any innovation from
anywhere in the industry
on to take advantage of it and be able
to deliver to our mainframe customers
thing about the mainframe is pretty
exciting the days you consider the
its existing for 45 years now yet it
still continues through
change every day to meet the business
needs
things that used to be significantly
different between the mainframe and
these other platforms
and sort of faded insignificance and the
same kinda development languages the
same kinds is
databases same kansan interoperability
with her
networked world wide world internetworld
all
are fully supported fully you no doubt
on the mainframes
up
up
ok well
them
ok IBM invested heavily
in 1x and people were scratching their
heads wondering about maybe this was
just because they had
miss the boat when they let Microsoft
take away the
word of operating system by a the fact
is that there when it's about as much
pain of Spades now
was around 2001 and we had just begun
this journey towards Linux running on me
it was a great idea that some summer my
team in Germany had come up with the
Portland x2 the mainframe
we were just beginning to see the
possibilities aboard what this
this additional operating system could
give us in the world
people look at limits as a way of saving
money it's not really the case
there's an expression that Freese offers
only for your time is worth nothing
when people look at Linux is free
software what you're really getting is
the portability
in much the same way that Java gave you
an application by reporter Billy
lyrics have the same operating system as
we see lexus lexus lexus
on x86 power mainframes
you could pick the best hardware
platform me your workload
today we look at i'd say maybe 15-20
percent over mainframe customers are
running Linux production workloads
I'll give credit where credit is due
here and that Google
Google runs a linux-based environment
and dad has gotten customers looking
okay huge corporation is based on their
business or in
your CPU and I should use it and we're
really seeing that mindset change
up
it's often asked wire mainframes
different we can deliver
vertical scale know what I mean by that
most other platforms in the world if you
run out of capability you add
a box you add another box yet another
operating system yet another image
and you scale horizontally and that's
pretty good
we can do that too but what we can also
do is vertical scale build
and that means that you could have a a
workload run that for some reason is not
meeting its goals you not meeting your
service level agreements we can
literally scale up
that application while it's running that
would be the equivalent of ending
horsepower to a car while you're driving
on the highway this is the only system
in the world
but you can add resources to our running
workload while it's in the middle
running and actually make a difference
and improve that response time be able
to keep up with on me and
level that people are just because into
the fall
i think is really israel maintains we
are most recently
used IBM's capacity on demand for souley
almost instantaneously
I'm you can upgrade your machine for
MIPS turn on turn want whenever you want
are and we've used to during somewhat
peak periods
during a month you don't need to upgrade
your machine physically
don't need to have anybody touch the box
open up our down go through the process
the code is downloaded machine was up
and running and when you don't want to
anymore you just
on do it manana goes away the mainframe
is a is a platform of choice for many
many kinds of applications
did still today the most secure the most
scaleable able to
sustain the highest kinda transaction
volumes and data volumes
at the lowest cost per transaction that
is a competitive edge
in the fact that that when you're
dealing with massive massive amounts of
data and massive numbers transactions
you need platform that will support that
mean trainers
has shown itself to be the premier
platform there and I think that will
continue
as long as investment continues as long
as customers
continue to demand more you know the
mainframe community will continue to
deliver more
with the first decade of the new century
coming to a close
the future of the mainframe was wide
open was sixteen hundred applications
introduced on the platform between 2007
and 2010
and the alluring attributes that had
initially drawn
organizations to centralize computing
we're back involved
the 21st century mainframe was retooled
and reinvigorated
for 2010 up
in the next decade the benefits global
connectivity
will blossom this basketball becomes a
barber shop
where becomes everywhere the corner
store
your wish list your bank in your pocket
and then with the push of a button
transferred across the global grid
and suddenly you're asking yourself is
this a good thing
what about security privacy reliability
backup and recovery it's no coincidence
that those challenges are the reason
many of the world's largest
organizations
choose to secure and transact their data
and IBM mainframe
get ready and say hello to tomorrow
we have a whole new a cohort of people
coming from universities coming onto the
mainframe
arm and that's a great thing because
they're going to make should mean can
keep trying
but we have to recognize that this also
means a change to me
we are using spittin who solutions that
were put in place twenty thirty years
ago
the person who wrote them often as even
long gone and
we don't need to upgradeable solutions
we need to simply
go beyond them in use the functionality
that's available on today's mainframe
these management softer takes care that
but if we don't do that before new
generations fully in place
they can be afraid to make those changes
themselves cuz they're not gonna why
would
lotsa people retire eligible what we
gonna do what our customers going to do
what I DM
we had started a program back in 2003
when this was also a question that come
up
call the academic initiative and it
started with 70 schools
largely in the US when I came into this
job in July 2009 I asked for an update
on the academic initiative
and I was thrilled to learn it was over
600 schools now
around the world it's been a win win win
win for IBM
for the student for the university and
for the companies that have been able to
hire these
student Christine Harper and I'm
actually Mac at an event that IBM had
sponsored
there was a networking event where they
thought as party IBM academic initiative
that that it would be a really nice idea
to get anyone who is currently at that
share me think of it from Boston
to get together question and I had that
vision a person
right from the beginning I'll no there
something here that there is enough %uh
who want to get together and
contemporary and can help each other
but technical question can build a
professional work a lot of my generation
doesn't know anything else besides
making me
and and they don't know about me think
naughty but
I think they're both doing the opinion
explore
ninety career-low outside pp platform
I think they would embrace it I decide
to go with me in praying for
professional career
because I saw the area of opportunity
for myself
you know I've you know just coming into
the field is coming out of college
everybody else
was going into the telecom are going
into the server side of the world
I saw the opportunity for a media career
growth to take reins at my own career
and progress as quickly as I you know as
quickly as I could drive myself
ok
until there's out you know magical
processor that allows you to run any
particular kind of our
instruction set anywhere you want I'll I
think that there's always going to be
room for mobile hotspot
our customers have put that out but
there isn't any customer who just wants
a mainframe
or just want one kinda distributed
system Iran
the workload based on where the
applications on the best all of our
clients are running that way they're
running in these heterogeneous
environments
but some grace that diversity let's
embrace that heterogeneity
and actually extend some other the
qualities a service that we had a
mainframe computing
to those other platforms but cost
pressure that's in place right now
as finance organizations really begin to
get a handle on the
the true costs have distributed
computing and they compare that to the
all in costs for
mainframe computing I think the
economics are going to be there
I think the workforce is going to be
there and I think the simplicity is
going to be there
workloads to migrate back to the main
for customers today that I work with
more and more than we're using the main
freeways that central data processing
services
for new workloads not just for the
traditional so we're seeing WebSphere
we're seeing our
Jaber workloads we're seeing where the
big things for IBM right now is Cognos
that's exciting for me because we're
bringing new people the platform seeing
the benefit
that if anything is going to help the
mean for stay relevant
for a great many years to come at this
point I don't see an alternative I don't
see
and am ball I don't see a Magnus and I
don't see
its a trilogy coming either would work
to create a new mainframe
I think that trainers already left the
station and and and really gone
saw it I think advancements will be in
the software
on purse offer is going to be as big if
not bigger part and what can and can't
be done
every time there's been a big try to the
technological crack has been really
driven by some sort of economic me
the current need to move to cloud is one
up
CIO's morning to really understand what
they're paying or be paying as you girl
but that seems to be the big things
behind driving clout
ok so so it's much more for utility mal
rights upon using
nope I need to drive my car 300 miles
and it takes 10 gallons I pay per 10
gallons a gas
I don't have to buy and on the gasoline
station to keep my
computer center right what most people
want when they talk about cloud
computing is the concept of
multi-tenancy
you may be co hosting competitive
workloads
I may be running workload from one I
retailer that's on the same
server is another retailer they do not
want their data biko mingle when you got
a guarantee
application isolation when you got to
guarantee workload balancing that one
can dominate the other one
when you got to guarantee security what
kinda things do you think of when you
think a mainframe computing what goes
with that very attributes
we embrace that we've been doing for
years I don't get excited about many
new buzzwords but
I experience cloud computing attic
company level it works it's necessary
and as companies become more global
cloud computing
yeah where each five or six years we see
Canada major revolution a major new
thing that
it shows up in in this world and so far
you know over over every cycle so far
mainframe community technology community
has has been able to
to support that in some cases lead to
look into the future I suspect we'll see
the mainframe continue to be a very
bright vibrant part
was required for it. today people
looking at reliability
scale abilities important issues but add
to that and the complexity a reply
government
regulations mainframe is the only
platform businesses can we look at the
future
its gonna get bigger can get more
exciting and it's going to become
large part to be a who IT ecosystem
ok the mainframe platform offers almost
unlimited opportunity for young people
interested in the world business
computing businesses recognize how the
strings
and attributes of the mainframe closely
aligned with their strategic direction
but IBM's continuing and significant
investment in the venerable system
it's clear why so many customers
business partners
industry experts are bullish on the
future of the mainframe
for this computing platform the future
is extraordinarily
bright ok
well
bull
on the hook
like
world
ok
ok
humbled
ok
are
well
hoc
little
old well
book
well
hold thing
