Mainframes: The iron Web

Mainframes became the symbol of stolid reliability for many years in IT departments. So when the PC revolution hit in the 1980s, these back-office powerhouses were viewed as something of a throwback, too unwieldy for the constantly changing industry.

But the last few years of the '90s saw companies creating business strategies for the Internet, plans that required systems that could unfailingly handle high volumes of data. As a result, companies began tweaking their mainframes so that they could be accessed through the Internet.

"People who are trying to reach a stable operating model found that some of the underlying technology really isn't stable and reliable, and that's driving them back to these technologies or building new platforms that have those same characteristics," says Midior's Goldberger, noting that mainframes' reliability, availability, and uptime are back in vogue thanks to the Web.

In addition to the fact that mainframes can now be connected to Web-based front ends, rising deployments of large-scale ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, which require extra measures of reliability, have also helped bring them back into favor.

"Mainframes really just needed a makeover," says the online sporting goods company's IT manager. "Their value was always there, it just needed a little shove to get people to realize the value wasn't a thing of the past. IBM and others have upped [mainframes'] processing power, and some of the centralization you see nowadays really lends itself to mainframes."

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