Oh how things have changed. Back in March 1991, Stewart Alsop (PDF Link), venture capitalist and one time editor-in-chief of InfoWorld said, “I predict that the last mainframe will be unplugged on March 15, 1996.” In 2010, while IBM doesn’t break out its profits by individual server line, IBM’s systems and technology group, reported 1st quarter revenue of $3.4 billion. While IBM’s System z, aka mainframes, revenue fell 17%, a billion bucks or so of business still isn’t anything to sneeze at.
So what happened to give the mainframe a new lease on life? In a word: Linux.
Back in February 1999, IBM announced it would work with Red Hat to support Linux. By May 2000, Linux moved from being an experiment on mainframes to being a fully supported option. And, then in 2001, IBM’s announced that it was spending a billion bucks that year on Linux. It wasn’t that big an expense. As Bill Zeitler, IBM’s senior vice president and group executive for eServer at the time, explained. “We’ve recouped most of it in the first year in sales of software and systems.”
Today, IBM and Linux go together like peanut butter and jelly, or if you’re prefer a tech. business analogy, Microsoft and Windows.
More >
