Why people don't like to buy Mainframe

Hello friends,

After lot of observations & reading I understood why people don't like to buy Mainframe, The Three Stupidest Reasons Why Not to Buy a Mainframe are

1. Mainframes cost too much.

2. We don’t have the skills needed to operate a mainframe environment.

3. Mainframes are old technology.
   After learning how some of these people are actually running their IT environments, I’ve come to believe that these are three truly stupid reasons not to adopt mainframe technologies.

1. Mainframes Cost Too Much?

Even though a mainframe can now be purchased for about $100,000 (the cost of some rack systems), IT buyers still believe that mainframe hardware is too expensive.

Really it is very costly, But we need to look at the advantages provided by mainframes over other IT infrastructure that is being normally used. Think about following advantages of mainframe

a. Management:

           Defiantly for operating the mainframe system we need skilled workers, but need less number of administrators because thousands of people work on the same server, Lets have look on following Example

A company serve 162 different customers-and over 3 million users-with six mainframe administrators." If you’re running a distributed computing environment, imagine how many IT systems, storage managers and administrators you’ll need to serve 3 million users! That number may well exceed 100 people. Now figure the cost for employee salary and benefits for all of those people, and suddenly mainframe pricing looks comparatively inexpensive.

b. Security:

             As I explained in the last post that the mainframe server is not hacked yet. It is highly impossible to hack the mainframe because the tight security provided by RACF, a security client.

c.  Consolidation/virtualization, reduced power consumption and real estate savings:

       By using the mainframes server it is highly possible to save manpower, power consumption & floor space. This is because virtualization is made possible by using mainframe. If we use mainframes then we may achieve 50 percent reduction in monthly Web hosting costs; an 80 percent reduction in data center floor space needs; significant power consumption savings; and huge savings in middle ware costs. Further, this executive saw a 50 percent reduction in hardware and OS support effort. 

2. Skill Issue with mainframes: 

                  The people using UNIX/Linux and Windows IT shops honestly believe that they don’t have the internal skills to operate a mainframe environment, and that is acceptable

          From last few years IBM has already taken an initiative for mainframes education. That is I am talking about IBM’s mainframe education initiative at this time was called the “zSeries Scholars Program” But, over the past two years, IBM has greatly expanded this program as part of its “Academic Initiative Program”, a program that now serves over 200 schools and universities around the world. And the company has set a goal, as part of its mainframe charter, to help the industry add 20,000 new mainframe skilled individuals by 2011.

3. Mainframes Are "Old Technology"

                   Though mainframes is the older technology, but it is not possible for any computer & server to provide service like Mainframes, So though it is old, that is like Gold. Anyway we can interface mainframes to the latest web technologies & able to program mainframes using very modern languages like JAVA, J2EE instead of using COBOL. But the is easiest language & all banks who have mainframes use it. Now it is highly impossible to replace those codes with newer one, Because those programs contain lakhs of lines of code.

Summary Observations

                   IT buyers who look at mainframe TCO should find that mainframes are less expensive to operate than distributed systems environments, in part because of reduced staffing needs. Taken with the fact that mainframes are clearly not old technology, these three arguments hold no ground against exploring the possibility of mainframe implementation.