InformationWeek

Not Your Father's Mainframe Integrated Systems

The Spread of Client-server technology had the industry believing the mainframe was on its way out. Instead, technology managers are combining the two technologies to get the best of both worlds. Some managers even say big iron still offeres the best security, data integrity, and mass storage.

By Sana Siwolop
Issue date: Sept. 25, 1995

The viability of mainframes is the subject of much debate in the client-server era. But rather than killing off the mainframe once and for all, client-server technology is giving big iron a new lease on life. Increasingly, mainframes are being brought into the client-server fold. The integration of host and distributed processing allows information systems managers to address the computing needs of individuals, departments, and the far-flung enterprise. Mainframes continue to prove their worth for on-line transaction processing, mass storage, centralized software distribution, and data warehousing. Client-server systems excel at distributed processing and rapid application deployment.

Combining mainframes and client-server offers the best of both worlds. Mainframe vendors such as IBM, Amdahl, and Hitachi Data Systems are making it easier than ever for customers to integrate the machines into client-server environments with their support for standard communications and programming interfaces.

Of course, many of the new mainframes being acquired by corporations provide additional processing power to existing host systems and share the workload with client-server syste ms.

For many IS managers, client-server technology still can't be beat for lowering computing costs, adding speed, flexibility, and improved data access. For example, at New England Electric System, which has 1.3 million customers, technology services manager Daniel Reddy is turning to Alpha computers from Digital Equipment to curb mainframe growth. The processing requirements for his three-engine IBM ES/9000 mainframe have skyrocketed from 40 MIPS in 1990 to 170 MIPS (million instructions per second) today. "I could use more mainframe capacity," says Reddy.

Still, rather than spend more than $1 million to upgrade his machine, Reddy decided to go with Digital's Alpha platform, largely because of an "innovative" three-way financing program that Digital offered him. To Reddy, the program is an opportunity to finance the utility's last mainframe engine while at the same time moving to open systems. This strategy, he adds, should save substantial money on a multiple-year basis.

Was Reddy ever tempte d by lower-priced CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) mainframes? He credits IBM for bringing a more modular approach to the mainframe market. But he notes that CMOS software costs are "still very hard to predict," even though those costs have come down.

Mainframe Servers
Yet despite the popularity of powerful midrange servers like the Alpha and the Hewlett-Packard 9000, many managers are incorporating mainframes, rather than servers, into their client-server networks. There, mainframes act not only like dependable, high-powered servers, but also help automate support of the client-server environment. Hosts can also play a role in driving down costs by helping IS managers to better distribute application functions.

One dedicated mainframe user is First Union Corp. in Charlotte, N.C., one of the fastest-growing banks in the country. First Union has weathered more than 50 mergers in the last 10 years and now has 8 million customers. According to Charles Klapheke, senior VP, the b ank already uses both LAN and Unix application servers. But when First Union decided last year to dramatically upgrade its computing capacity, it went with five new Amdahl mainframes.

The new mainframes will enable First Union to distribute workload between two data centers in North Carolina and Florida, as well as to provide disaster protection that comes from having two geographically separate data centers. "I don't know that things have changed that much," says Klapheke. "Mainframes have always acted like servers." The current model seems to favor a thin client with a very powerful server that handles most of the heavy-duty applications processing, he adds.

How widespread is the resurgence in host processing? When researchers at Trish Information Services in Hayward, Calif., polled 120 IS managers this spring, they discovered that a quarter of the managers saw the need to add mainframe processing power, as measured in MIPS, just to suppo rt client-server applications. In all, the survey found that managers were actually adding more MIPS to S/390 systems to service client-server applications than they were offloading.

Though the Trish study was supported by mainframe vendor Amdahl, its findings are borne out by other research. When analysts at Alliance Development in Scottsdale, Ariz., asked nearly 100 senior IS executives at large companies late last year to explain their overall mainframe strategy, 64% of the execu-tives said they planned to continue using host computers, incorporating them into client-server architectures.

In contrast, only 36% of those sur-veyed said they planned to eliminate mainframes entirely. Sixteen percent of the managers attributed the recent upswing in mainframe demand to the fact that hosts were being incorporated into client-server systems. But 30% attributed it to the belief that some mainframe applications simply can't be run on other platforms.

Retreat To Safety
That finding helps e xplain the other half of the mainframe story: Some IS managers seem to have retreated to the safety of the mainframe entirely. They claim that even though Unix servers can now match the raw computational speed of high-end mainframes for certain workloads, big iron still offers better security, backup, and recovery.

Mellon Bank Corp. in Pittsburgh handles $20 billion worth of wire transfers in a single day, not the type of processing that can be left to midrange servers, says Marty Lippert, Mellon senior VP for information management and research.

While Mellon has a distributed computing setup that handles applications like electronic mail and spreadsheets for its offices from San Francisco to London, the bank's transaction-processing clout still resides at its central mainframe in Pittsburgh, where aggregate power adds up to 1,500 MIPS.

Managers like Lippert resolutely prefer mainframes for big batch jobs, as well as for storing massive amounts of vital business data. By their standards, servers still lack certain critical tools, like those for monitoring the performance of the entire system, including networks and applications. "In terms of full transactional integrity, you can't find mainframe performance on a Unix server at any price," says Charles Burns, research director at Gartner Group Inc., an advisory firm in Stamford, Conn.

Many industry analysts think growing disenchantment with client-server technology is largely responsible for the recent surge in mainframe sales, which picked up speed last fall and have carried over into this year.

Alliance Development executive VP Marty Gruhn says her firm's researchers first noticed widespread disappointment with client-server technology in April 1994, when they were involved in both mainframe and client-server applications development projects. "We heard one horror story after another," Gruhn remembers. "It seemed that IS had finally decided that the mainframe was a long-term player and that client-server systems weren't as cost-effective or easy to implement as they looked."

At Walker Interactive Systems in San Francisco, which sells both Unix client-server and enterprise server applications, executives first noticed interest resurfacing in the mainframe market early this year.

According to Darrell Trimble, worldwide marketing VP, that's when sales of the company's enterprise applications picked up considerably. Trimble pegs the recent mainframe surge to Unix "disenchantment" among large enterprise sites. "Unix servers just weren't scaling as quickly as promised," he says.

Of course, mainframe sales still aren't what they were in the late 1980s. Those days are probably gone forever. But the numbers hardly point to an industry that is drawing its last breath. When Trish researchers asked IS managers this spring whether they thought the recent surge in S/390 mainframe demand was temporary or long-term, 72% said long-term.

According to market researcher International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass., mainframe sales reached $22. 8 billion last year. This was a decline of only 3% from the year before, when sales plunged a discouraging 17%. While this year's sales are expected to remain flat, the numbers signal the end of a long sales decline for the industry.

Turn On The Power
On the MIPS front, the news seems positively rosy. In the late 1980s, MIPS demand for S/390 mainframes (the leading platform for enterprise computing) grew roughly 30% annually, then fell to 15% in 1993. According to Carl Greiner, the director of enterprise data center strategies at the Meta Group in Stamford, Conn., gross demand for mainframe MIPS jumped 45% this year and should grow by nearly as much next year. Over the next 10 years, Greiner expects to see demand for S/390 MIPS to grow 28%.

Not surprising, mainframe vendors are already feeling the financial benefits of the interest. Jerome York, IBM's recently departed chief financial officer, expects the company will see an astounding 66% jump in mainframe MIPS shipments this year. Th e recent uptick in mainframe sales was strong enough to help IBM rack up $3 billion in profits during the first half of 1995, tripling its earnings over the first half of 1994. At Amdahl, the news was also sweet, with mainframe sales helping double second-quarter earnings to $26 million.

Down the road, efforts to create new mainframe technologies may buttress mainframe sales even more. In April, for example, Hitachi Data Systems rolled out the fastest mainframe now on the market, the new 10-model Skyline series, which is about twice as powerful as the largest bipolar machine.

Meanwhile, Hitachi, Amdahl, and IBM continue to develop parallel enterprise mainframes that, unlike older bipolar machines, use CMOS microprocessors, rather than emitter-coupled logic (ECL) processors. Because the CMOS processors are packed far more densely than ECL microprocessors, they can be used to build mainframes that are considerably smaller, less power-hungry, and that can also be cooled w ith air instead of water.

Fred Sipes, IS director at Hyundai Motor America in Fountain Valley, Calif., chose IBM's new CMOS machine because it was cheaper than upgrading the existing 3090 host, as maintenance and base-level software was included in the lease price. "The savings for us were fairly substantial," says Sipes, who expects to save about $200,000 a year.

Alternatives Not Tempting
Was Sipes ever tempted by any of the so-called mainframe alternatives? "We have a lot of customized software, and the conversion costs were prohibitive," he says. "As for client-server, we couldn't see how we could get it implemented since we're a fairly centralized company. I went from a roomful of equipment with my prior system to two refrigerator-sized boxes, no water cooling, no peripheral support equipment."

Mainframe applications development is on the upswing as well. While nearly every mainframe applications developer continues to roll out client-server versions of its products, when it come s to applications for the newer CMOS machines, many IS managers find few readily available products. Still, the recent Trish survey found that 40% of IS managers plan to add new S/390 mainframe applications this year.

More than half of the money that IS managers now spend on applications development within vital, enterprisewide, systems goes to mainframes, especially in areas such as enterprise data management, says Bill Tudor, Hitachi product management director for the Skyline mainframe. "Money is getting back into [mainframe] applications development," he says. Hitachi first noticed the interest last summer, Tudor adds.

Peavey Electronics Corp. in Meridian, Miss., recently installed one of IBM's new CMOS mainframes as the core server within its small PC workgroup serving the shipping and receiving department. Peavey, which makes high-tech music and sound products, had never owned a mainframe before, but the ease of use and graphical applications put the mainframe on equal footing with other types of servers.

So for the time being, mainframes are back in vogue. "It's become politically acceptable to buy mainframes once again," jokes John Roberts, manager of competitive analysis and market research at Amdahl. "More and more people are coming out of the closet. Client-server has actually increased mainframe demand, rather than the other way around."

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