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Does Target still run on mainframes?

• Shivetya 13y ago
  Out of curiosity, do you think that would be bad if they did? Also, how big of a machine do you need to have before its considered a mainframe?
• ja27 13y ago
  I don't know about Target because they were one of the few major retailers we never sold to, but most of the rest run at least parts of their business on IBM mainframes. It was very common for us to work on integration projects between Windows or AIX boxes at stores and data centers and the mainframe(s). I would never claim that mainframes are fuckup-proof, but they generally are much better protected than the Windows / AIX boxes. It wasn't uncommon for us to be able to get any of a half-dozen IT guys with sudo / root to quickly make any change we needed on an AIX box, but then to make a change on a mainframe we'd have to set up a meeting with multiple people and discuss the changes. We fought one losing battle over extending a record format: "We haven't even recompiled that code in 7 years."