Comments on: IBM aims for user-friendly mainframes

Big Blue will spend $100 million over five years to make the high-end server line easier to administer and program.

[reachdnr]

Finally...

Looks like somebody at IBM has seen daylight after years of living in a Cave..i guess :).

Even though mainframes are extremely reliable and work flawlessly when presented with heavy loads..user interface has always been a ice which is relatively difficult to break.

[GlennAl]

Hardly

Having spent over 25 years installing, maintaining, and programming for MVS (the "original open source OS"--before OCO, that is), I couldn't agree with your statement less. If you haven't used ISPF, then you don't know what "easy" is.

Yeah, there's some room for improvement... if you aren't a sysprog. It ain't Windows, after all... thank God. The only real "problem" with MVS is that it's EBCDIC instead of ASCII, which makes interoperability a bit of a hassle at times. Oh, well, let's go ahead and "improve" it so even clerks can administer it; who needs sysadmins?
(</rant> :-))

[scdecade]

More IBM FUD

So much for web services in a theoretical sense. Why would IBM want novice users to program for a specific operating system? Oh yeah, I forgot... mainframes have always been and will always be about proprietary lockin. The more things change...

[rtwigg]

Proprietary

ALL operating systems are propriety. Windows requires specific hardware compatibility same as z/OS and i5/OS.

[gjungels]

Vendor lock

Let's face the facts. If you are looking at utilizing a mainframe, you have a very specific reason to do so and you will make your choice based on your need, not whether you are afraid of vendor lock in. The fact that IBM is taking time to make them more user friendly is a huge step in the right direction. There are plenty of great system administrators out there that are uncomfortable outside the world of GUI interfaces. I know, sad to say. Making a more friendly interfact to common tasks opens the door to a much larger market.