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So can distributed systems? All you need is a queue in the right place or some other kind of data store? It’s relatively easy to decouple data models from proce

So can distributed systems? All you need is a queue in the right place or some other kind of data store? It’s relatively easy to decouple data models from processing, you just have to consider failure scenarios? I mean, the distributed non-mainframe way of doing things is you just use more units of hardware to make up for deficiencies? I imagine the hardest thing to port is well, the equivalent to “if we scale up this machine and buy lots of RAM, our data fits in RAM and we can run this code that much faster,” but even then, can mainframes really handle that much more data by virtue of being mainframes with all their legacy? The way I’ve heard it described, it’s not the features of a mainframe that sell it now, those are commodity. Instead it’s the existing code that ties companies to mainframes - they don’t want to rewrite logic they likely don’t actually understand the details of if it’s already been tuned and tweaked to work for their business? To that end the future of mainframes is probably virtualization of hardware and improved static analysis tools to better support codebases we don’t understand because they’re decades old, etc.?

rbanffy 6y ago
You are right in the sense that a modern mainframe is reminiscent of a cluster of specialised computers connected through multiple ridiculously fast interconnects. The difference is that IBM offers the software you’ll need to manage the environment.
toomanybeersies 6y ago
Aren't we facing the exact same problem, but now rehashed in the cloud? A lot of companies are running applications that rely heavily on AWS managed services. If you're tied to DynamoDB or Athena, you're in no better position than being tied to IBM mainframes.
- lstamour 6y ago
  That's absolutely true. Though with one small exception - most mainframes I hear about don't seem to be hosted in the cloud yet. I imagine cloud hosting of mainframe workloads is possible if and when moving to virtualization becomes an easy, supported service (if it isn't already, of course) and is perhaps just as cost effective but with different security features and deployment models available due to operating in the cloud? For example, it might make on-site maintenance a thing of the past or lead to new managed services? I'm absolutely not going to say that the cloud alone leads to cost savings, it probably doesn't. For true cost savings in the cloud you often need to re-architect the app and change business and IT processes to match what the cloud can offer, I'd think. Besides possible security benefits, if a workload takes hours to run, the cloud could allow you to parallelize the workload and run jobs as test cases, maybe?
908B64B197 6y ago
Google didn't have money for an always up, 100% reliable mainframe. So they built fault tolerance on top of off commodity hardware. Fast forward years later, why would they pay the mainframe tax and lock themselves to a single provider?

rbanffy 6y ago

You are right in the sense that a modern mainframe is reminiscent of a cluster of specialised computers connected through multiple ridiculously fast interconnects. The difference is that IBM offers the software you’ll need to manage the environment.

toomanybeersies 6y ago

Aren't we facing the exact same problem, but now rehashed in the cloud? A lot of companies are running applications that rely heavily on AWS managed services. If you're tied to DynamoDB or Athena, you're in no better position than being tied to IBM mainframes.

lstamour 6y ago
That's absolutely true. Though with one small exception - most mainframes I hear about don't seem to be hosted in the cloud yet. I imagine cloud hosting of mainframe workloads is possible if and when moving to virtualization becomes an easy, supported service (if it isn't already, of course) and is perhaps just as cost effective but with different security features and deployment models available due to operating in the cloud? For example, it might make on-site maintenance a thing of the past or lead to new managed services? I'm absolutely not going to say that the cloud alone leads to cost savings, it probably doesn't. For true cost savings in the cloud you often need to re-architect the app and change business and IT processes to match what the cloud can offer, I'd think. Besides possible security benefits, if a workload takes hours to run, the cloud could allow you to parallelize the workload and run jobs as test cases, maybe?

908B64B197 6y ago

Google didn't have money for an always up, 100% reliable mainframe. So they built fault tolerance on top of off commodity hardware. Fast forward years later, why would they pay the mainframe tax and lock themselves to a single provider?