Oracle loses appeal in HP row over Itanium Oracle's last-ditch effort to wriggle out of a judgment requiring it to continue support for HP's Itanium-based servers has failed, leaving only the issue of damages to be resolved. In August 2012, a San Jose, California court ruled that Oracle had violated the terms of its contract with HP when it announced that it would no …
Tuppence's worth...
Is it all pointless? HP reckons that Itanium has architectural advantages that give it a unique selling point for its big machines. Fair enough, it may well do so. But a lot of those features are making their way into Xeon anyway (e.g. fused multiply-add).
Furthermore Intel are planning on pushing the next Itanium out designed to plug into a Xeon socket. That means that whatever cleverness HP has built into their Itanium chipset is toast. [I suspect that most of the mission critical features of their superdome machines are actually derived from the chipset, not from the Itanium CPU.] If they do a new chipset for the new socket that will also unavoidably be an x86 chipset; it's the same socket... Or they abandon whatever chipset cleverness they have.
If HP do a new chipset then their large superdome machines could easily be either Itanium or x86 based. Electronically it would make no difference. So for the sake of a few chipset drivers HP could move superdome over to x86 relatively easily. And it would kinda make sense if Linux became their underpinning OS. Why maintain your own (is it poorly regarded?) OS when there's already a pretty good one out there?
So their entire range could become x86 / Linux without too much effort beyond what they're going to have to do anyway given the future common socket. In which case, why the fuss over Oracle on Itanium? Is it because HP haven't thought about their development strategy? A common Xeon / Itanium socket design is bound to raise all sorts of awkward questions about exactly how HP are any different in any sense from any other server manufacturer.
"......Electronically it would make no difference....." Computationally it would. Just comparing Poulson with current Sandy Bridge 46xx CPUs, the Itanium is a completely different architecture with more regsiters, more cache and more QPI links, allowing it to chew through larger instructions faster than Xeon. It's a bit like comparing a panel-van with an eighteen-wheeler - some jobs will run better on lots of vans, others need the grunt of the eighteen-wheeler. No-one pretends the eighteen-wheeler will out-drag the van, but then if your job requires lifting heavy loads then drag-racing is unlikely to be the main requirement. Sun learnt this when they tried to push the Niagara as a replacement for all the Netra UltraSPARC boxes, only for their customers to get so upset they had to introduce a one-socket M-series box with Fudgeitso's SPARC64 to keep them happy. What hp will offer is servers that can mix loads inside the same frame with hardware-isolated partitions, something IBM will only be able to dream about unless it also offers combo Itanium-Xeon boxes.
Oh, and Huawei is also planning the same combo Itanium-Xeon boxes.
It is difficult to explain why but I have always considered Oracle and Apple as belonging to the same basket.
Ellison and Jobs share(d) a common denominator, complete disrepect for everything that stands (stood) in their way....
I have a little more respect for Ellison simply because of his sponsorshop for fantastic racing yachts. Jobs on the otherhand with his "stark" nightmare......
>It is difficult to explain why but I have always considered Oracle and Apple as belonging to the same basket.
"> Slowaris
Yup, it's Matt"
Hey, I have to get this digs in whilst I can! After all, it can't be long before Larry does another "efficiency drive" and deep-sixes Slowaris completely, especially given his pref for his own RHEL clone, and AIX just doesn't lend itself to that kind of humour.
Itanic is dead and has been for years. How long can you beat a dead horse?
The revenue stream from itanics dwindle day by day. There cant be much left.
if they jumped ship when this was announced they would have been in much better shape now.
There is a marked out there for linuxboxes with the same feature set as itanic superdomes,
Couldn't be that hard. SGI moved from itanium to Xeons in 2 years on their Altix line.
Nobody is missing the itanics. it was a bad design that lived way too long.
The slow single thread performance and poor intel compilers will not be missed.
Morten, it's a breach of contract and the general suckiness of Itanic doesn't absolve Oracle from upholding their end of the deal.
And IMO sucky platform or not, Oracle would still be happily collecting the big bucks from HP customers if they hadn't gone into the hardware business.
P.S. it's not unknown for HP to pull this kind of stunt on their own customers, so in that sense I share your lack of sympathy with HP.
Agree, although HP is trying to equate their trapping Oracle via poor contract management on Oracle's part into claiming that the judgement found that Oracle claims about Itanium were untrue and Itanium rocks. Oracle produced mountains of evidence detailing that Intel wants out of Itanium, HP is planning for the end of Itanium, and that HP had been trying not to let anyone know the previous two points. The judge found that whether Itanium is dead or not dead is irrelevant and only that Oracle had agreed to support it, a contractual issue as you mention. The only thing that was proven is that HP's lawyers were better than Oracle's lawyers.... If someone is confused about what was the issue in the judgement, however, it is probably because they are listening to HP who are playing this as a positive affirmation of Itanium's future... which it wasn't at all.
".....HP is trying to equate their trapping Oracle via poor contract management on Oracle's part into claiming that the judgement found that Oracle claims about Itanium were untrue...." Actually, that is EXACTLY what the judge decided. The judge's statement was there was a contract between hp and Oracle for as long as hp sold Itanium kit, so if the judge had accepted Oracle's argument that Intel was canning the Itanium then there would be no contract to enforce. This is made clear in the prior El Reg article http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/01/hp_wins_ruling_vs_oracle/:
"A California court has ruled that Oracle is contractually obligated to produce software for Hewlett-Packard's Itanium-based servers and must continue to do so for as long as HP sells them....." Obviously, the judge considered more than just Larry's obsessive shrieking. About time some of the posters faced up to that fact too.
".....HP is trying to equate their trapping Oracle via poor contract management on Oracle's part into claiming that the judgement found that Oracle claims about Itanium were untrue...." Actually, that is EXACTLY what the judge decided.The judge's statement was there was a contract between hp and Oracle for as long as hp sold Itanium kit, so if the judge had accepted Oracle's argument that Intel was canning the Itanium then there would be no contract to enforce"
Oracle didn't claim that Intel was dropping Itanium in 2010, actually they evidenced that HP had paid Intel hundreds of millions to prop it up for a few more years. They claimed that Intel's future focus is on x86 Xeon for high end chips (obviously true, Intel admits it themselves) and that there were/are plans to end Itanium as soon as HP's contract through Kittson was over (which they produced a mountain of evidence to support).
The judge made no comment on Itanium's future viability whatsoever. Read the judgement. He only found that Oracle's press releases in conjunction with HP created a contract and that Oracle needed to support Itanium until the end of the line regardless of the truth of their rationale behind dropping Itanium.
"Umm, it it's anything like VMS and NonStop, there is a long tail of very profitable annuity income from the installed base, as long as they can continue to support it. That's a reason to fight. And if Oracle has to give them money as well, it's all good."
Clearly, I don't think anyone would dispute that it is profitable, highly profitable, for HP to continue to support the legacy Tandem and DEC platforms as well as HP-UX. They are paying Intel hundreds of millions to continue Itanium just to get the maintenance streams.... It makes perfect sense that HP would fight this tooth and nail to protect the legacy maintenance streams.
Corporate Pride?
EPIC was an HP invention IIRC. It is/was the wrong choice. The famous DEC analysis document comparing Alpha with the EPIC architecture stands a lasting testament to the victory of marketdroid suits over engineering.
The EPIC architecture was doomed before it saw silicon. It's death will not be mourned, except for the fact that it will take the last legacy of DEC, VMS, to the grave.
Hi Folks,
I find it interesting that you claim that Itanium has been dead for ages,but if you check IDC, Itanium in EMEA(where I work) has been the market leader 2008 Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 and 2009 Q1. With the current problems brought on by Oracle, the market position has now dropped to second place(behind IBM). Please check this data.
Thanks and wishing you happy discussion, but with the real facts.
IBM and Oracle are both releasing new CPU's. IBM released Power 7 three years ago and Power 8 is expected this year.
Oracle released the T3 in 2010, the T4 in 2011 and the T5 soon. New M series servers on the SPARC64-X will be released as well.
Intel released the 9300 in early 2010 and the 9500 in late 2012. There is no public roadmap for future processors and it well known that HP has been paying Intel to keep the Itanium as a product. So I'm sure HP will take that 500 million and pay that to Intel to produce Itaniums beyond the current 2017 date that current payout requires them too.
".....IBM released Power 7 three years ago and Power 8 is expected this year....." IBM's public roadmap has zero detail on P8 and nothing after it. In short, Power does not have a roadmap. At least Intel talk about future development, even if they don't have a code name for it yet, but IBM go silent about what follows P8.
".....Oracle released the T3 in 2010, the T4 in 2011 and the T5 soon. New M series servers on the SPARC64-X will be released as well......" Tx is a joke, unable to even match the promise of ARM outside the web serving niche, and the M-series promises sound like "Rock Mk2" - too little, too late, too irrelevant and due to die before launch. Oracle is putting what little development muscle it has left behind Xeon kit for Exedata, etc. Larry was gambling desperately and blindly on Itanium dying and he was wrong when he went public with his fervent wishes, and now he's going to have to pay for that little Segway from reality.
@Matt Bryant,
"IBM's public roadmap has zero detail on P8 and nothing after it. In short, Power does not have a roadmap. At least Intel talk about future development, even if they don't have a code name for it yet, but IBM go silent about what follows P8."
You keep forgetting that HP is subsidizing the Itanium for Intel. HP still needs to pay for the processors. That is not a viable business at all; Itanium cannot stand on its two feet with HP's monetary support. The Intel shareholders would be calling for it to be axed if they had to foot the bill for a money losing venture.
What Intel has talked about is taking bits from the 7 series Xeon processors to reduce the costs of the Itanium parts and adding some of the Itanium inner workings/features to the 7 series Xeon processors. They want to make them socket compatible. That tells me that the road map that Intel has is to get rid of the Itanium and just let people change their apps to x86-64 which is what Intel has been pushing for over a decade now. Where does that leave the Itanium customer base? Yep, they need to start over. At least Power systems are binary compatible and the same for SPARC systems.
How does HP differentiate a server that competes with Oracle and IBM when it is just a Xeon server that everyone else sells? HP will get slaughtered on price.
"....You keep forgetting that HP is subsidizing the Itanium for Intel. HP still needs to pay for the processors....." Which has nothing to do with roadmaps, numpty. And even if hp do pay Intel, if they are making a profit on Itanium from the server, support and associated pull-through deals (and they are), then it is still a viable business model, unlike the one that killed Sun.
"....Itanium cannot stand on its two feet with HP's monetary support....." What a stupid statement - since hp makes roughly 98% of the Itanium servers this is hardly a surprise. It's a bit like saying Power couldn't survive if IBM stopped building Power servers - duh! Honestly, are you posting whilst under the influence?
".....That tells me that the road map that Intel has is to get rid of the Itanium...." No, that is what you want to see. Think of the original Celeron and Pentium - Celeron and Pentium were socket compatible offerings, they simply met different market segments, but Celeron did not kill Pentium. It's exactly the same principle, only with vendors that can offer both Xeon and Itanium servers being able to do so at much lower costs as the motherboards and other components can be identical between the two ranges. What you should be worndering is whether IBM's lack of plans beyond Power8 is IBM realising they cannot compete with a combo Xeon-Itanium range.
".....At least Power systems are binary compatible...." Second biggest lie out there. When the IBM salesgrunts start their upgrade sales schpiel, and start warbling on about performance, the first thing they have to admit is that just about every Power upgrade has meant you had to upgrade the version fo AIX to gain the benefits mentioned, and that breaks compatibility. Don't try and tell me otherwise, I've been there and seen the result.
".....How does HP differentiate a server that competes with Oracle and IBM when it is just a Xeon server that everyone else sells?...." Obviously, very well seeing the number of years they have been the number one x64 vendor. But don't you mean the Xeon servers IBM can still sell, seeing as they are gradually selling off to Lenovo and exiting the x64 server market?
Seriously Matt, what do you want to say?
That Itanium will yet prevail and is just currently resting?
That Xeon is the best thing since the Hitachi Massage Device?
That you hate Sun and even more SPARC?
That you hate IBM and Power?
That you have a huge stash of HP shares going nowhere?
Maybe that HP was stupid when they dumped PA RISC as they currently seems to singlehandedly finance another manufaturer's processor line into the sunset?
What??
"Seriously Matt, what do you want to say?...." Er, read the post, it's all pretty simple English, no big words. Maybe you should get an adult to help you.
"......That Itanium will yet prevail and is just currently resting?...." That Itanium is still selling, despite Larry's monumental FUD exercise. I find it very amusing that fact causes you such pain.
".....That Xeon is the best thing since the Hitachi Massage Device?...." Try to stay on topic, chap, it might help. Then again, a course of meds would probably help you more.
"......That you hate Sun and even more SPARC?....." Sun is dead, didn't you get the memo? SPARC in any form is on life support, it deserves pity more than anything else.
".....That you hate IBM and Power?....." LOL, I use AIX and Power, I just don't fall for the IBM ra-ra routines.
".....That you have a huge stash of HP shares going nowhere?...." Nope, no hp shares. Does it hurt you that much that someone might disagree with you that they have to have a monetary motive? What a narrow-minded little individual you are.
".....Maybe that HP was stupid when they dumped PA RISC.....". Why were they stupid to replace a design hitting the limits of RISC with a design with years of scale to come, which was cheaper to produce, and offered them the chance to reduce costs by sharing components and eventually even sockets with their other major server range? Sorry, was that too complex for you to follow, should I do one argument per paragraph so you might keep up?
Huh?
You seem to know more about me by analysis of a simple posting than a truth teller, who has practiced clairvoyance in the Mexican highlands with only Peyotl and a book by Castaneda as company for ten years, could find out in half an hour facetime. But anyway.
Picture this....
"Yes, young Jedi. It is a trap. Soon all the CPUs that you love and cherish will be destroyed by this fully operational Matt Brainstation. Good. I can see the anger rising within you...."
"Eh? Listen old man, I don't really care. Do they have good coffee around here?"
Seriously, why all the hate and trollololling? I can only picture you as a potty-mouthed arm-waving red-faced garden gnome reaching apoplexy in front of his screen as he tries to claim some sort of high ground for HP for reasons which still elude me.
> Maybe you should get an adult to help you.
May you should *be* an adult, Matt. Not that I would want any help from the sort of you.
P.S. I think AS/400 looks far better than anything HP could come up with ever.
"P.S. I think AS/400 looks far better than anything HP could come up with ever." Really? So how come mainframe is a shrinking market, having been comprehensively gutted from below by UNIX over the last twenty years? Even IBM admit is a declining market."
First, AS/400 is a mini, not a mainframe. Second, the lower end of the mainframe market, System z, was dealt a blow like 20 years ago by Unix. Mainframe has actually been growing, slightly, over the last say five years because those people who are on mainframe are the large financial services, governments, etc who have no intention of getting off of mainframe. If they wanted to get off, they would have and could have done it many years ago. I don't think IBM has ever called mainframe a declining market. It certainly isn't a rapid growth market, but pretty stable by the overall MIPS count which is released every quarter.
"......I don't think IBM has ever called mainframe a declining market....." You haven't been paying attention. Third paragraph of this IBM's own analysis piece:
".....As Linux competes with Windows and Unix, the long, slow decline of the mainframe platform becomes hard to ignore. The IBM mainframe software ecosystem, which has consisted of independent software vendors (ISVs) providing application development (AD), system management and infrastructure solutions for this platform, has been shrinking during the past 10 years....."
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/info/websphere/partners4/articles/gartner/garmainframeeco.html
You may now admit your incorrectness and promise to do more research before posting again.
"You haven't been paying attention. Third paragraph of this IBM's own analysis piece:"
Possibly your most unintentionally hilarious post thus far. Where to start... First, this is an article which is 9 years old. Second, this article was written by Gartner, not IBM... completely different company. Third, this article was written on an IBM reseller, Business Partner, page regarding WebSphere, not System z.... completely different organization within IBM (and WebSphere is closely aligned with Linux). Fourth, this is speaking about the *ISV ecosystem*, not the actual number of MIPS being used. I am sure that the new social collaboration apps and other new ISVs coming on the market don't create a z/OS port. Not relevant to the mainframe install base. Fifth, if you keep reading, your article states exactly what I stated in my post: lower end mainframe market left mainframe (around the time of your article and before), higher end mainframe users that need mainframe's I/O performance, reliability, security, centralization, etc will stay on mainframe:
"IBM mainframe enterprise less than 500 MIPS are the most likely to successfully migrate to Windows or Unix platforms. However, this is heavily dependent on application and environmental complexities.
Gartner believes it's difficult for enterprises with a mainframe environment greater than 1,000 MIPS to migrate their entire application portfolios off the mainframe. Enterprises with many thousands to tens of thousands of MIPS face even-greater challenges, and we do not expect them to leave this platform."
I agree, Gartner.
Were you actually digging through decade old IBM web archives, or is this some article link that HP passes out to all of their resellers?
"Possibly your most unintentionally hilarious post thus far...." Your constant denail is so much funnier! The article's age just shows how long trolls like you have been shrieking your denial. Even relentless IBM fanbois like TPM have been admitting mainframe's gradual death for years (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/25/gartner_q1_2010_server_nums/). Please do scream and dribble at TPM if you wish to disagree, I'm tired of having to read your floam-flecked and fact-free rants. Now back under your bridge like a good little troll, and don't forget to try and learn a little Linux if you want a future career.
"Now back under your bridge like a good little troll, and don't forget to try and learn a little Linux if you want a future career."
I am not a mainframe operator, but mainframe skills are the most in demand in IT at the moment. They can't find enough people to fill open positions. Windows/Linux admins are everywhere. If you know z/OS/MVS, CICS, MQ, IDMS, etc well and have experience with them, you can basically name your price. Those are not positions which are likely to be outsourced or sent to Amazon EC2 either. Mainframe applications are too important, too mission critical to be pushed out to save a little cash. They are not going to be automated away either because mainframe is a mature platform where job schedulers, virtualization, self-provisioning, etc have been around for decades.
"I am not a mainframe operator, but mainframe skills are the most in demand in IT at the moment. ...." Oh puh-lease! Just go to any jobsite and count the number of MS Windows jobs advertised for every mainframe one! Monster.co.uk has 51 mainframe jobs for all mainframe vendors, but stops counting at 1000 for Windows. I can't believe you were so quick to flail at your keyboard you didn't even think to do a simple check like that just in case you were amazingly, stupidly wrong! And you were.
".....They can't find enough people to fill open positions....." That's because young people coming into IT simply aren't bothering to learn mainframe skills as they see it as a dying tech. Again, do some checking - go look on LinkedIn at the average age of people with mainframe skills and then compare to Linux or Windows or even UNIX. Don't worry, I'll wait, but mainly because I'll be laughing at you when you come back.
"....Those are not positions which are likely to be outsourced or sent to Amazon EC2 either. ...." Evidently you missed this article on The Register, which is just one example of "safe" mainframe jobs not only being outsourced but outsourced to cheaper admins abroad:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/26/rbs_natwest_ca_technologies_outsourcing/
"....They are not going to be automated away either because mainframe is a mature platform...." No, instead they will be replaced by Linux and UNIX systems, maybe some Windows systems, as has been happening for twenty-odd years. Enjoy!
"Monster.co.uk has 51 mainframe jobs for all mainframe vendors, but stops counting at 1000 for Windows."
Several points on that comment. First, I am not saying that the *raw* number number of job openings for mainframe is higher than Windows. Obviously not. I am saying that the *supply* of mainframe talent is low for the number of positions. I would imagine that most mainframe positions are not advertised on Monster because the companies are looking for a very specific skill set, they hire recruiters. Even if we take your numbers though, there were probably 5 qualified people applying for those 50 mainframe jobs and 5,000 Windows admins applying for those 1,000 Windows jobs. Second, I wouldn't rank a career by how many openings, of any sort, are available. There were probably less than 10 openings for neurosurgeons on Monster, but it is a highly attractive career in which it is easy to find a job with the requisite education and experience. You can also find thousands of jobs for fast food workers. If there are thousands of openings, it is generally a low skill job with low pay which is easy to fill. If there are a few openings, it is generally a high skill job with high pay which is difficult to fill.
"That's because young people coming into IT simply aren't bothering to learn mainframe skills as they see it as a dying tech. Again, do some checking - go look on LinkedIn at the average age of people with mainframe skills and then compare to Linux or Windows or even UNIX. Don't worry, I'll wait, but mainly because I'll be laughing at you when you come back."
I agree that young people are not learning mainframe because people lead them to believe it is a dying tech, which it isn't likely to be anytime in their working careers. If you are looking at a high paying field which already has a shortage of workers with many to retire in the near future, that sounds like a pretty good field. Some of this is just experience required too. A mega bank is unlikely to let a 25 year old loose on their core transactional systems. A small business is fine with letting a 25 year old loose on their Windows systems. If they go down, not the end of the world. Unix/Windows is often the training ground at those companies for those that would ascend to the bet your business systems.
"Evidently you missed this article on The Register, which is just one example of "safe" mainframe jobs not only being outsourced but outsourced to cheaper admins abroad:"
I am familiar with the NatWest CA-7 batch scheduling debacle. I am sure there are companies that move parts of their mainframe workload, lower level functions like batch runs, offshore. It is definitely the minority of companies with mainframe. Unix or Windows is much more likely to be offshored or automated than mainframe. I imagine that RBS will never allow anything have to do with mainframe out of their sight again. When they screwed up a batch job, pretty simple process, it was international front page news with huge regulatory fines and massive customer/brand loss. Can you think of any Windows application that would have that sort of impact?
"No, instead they will be replaced by Linux and UNIX systems, maybe some Windows systems, as has been happening for twenty-odd years. Enjoy!"
It has been steady for years. I am sure some people moved off and large mainframe shops added more workload as part of that process. If mainframe is dying, it is, as Larry Ellison said, "like watching a glacier melt. Even with global warming it is taking a hell of a long time." Watching HP-UX going down is measured in months, not generations.
Ah, watch the ickle mainframer wriggle and try and justify his daft statements before senility hits in!
"....I am not saying that the *raw* number number of job openings for mainframe is higher than Windows....." Sorry, you said mainframe was in most demand, very obviously it is not. What you should have said you think mainframe jobs are the ones that companies are having the most trouble filling - you somehow think having trouble filling a small number of vacancies is a good thing? LOL! It's because they cannot find people that want that job, they are preferring to do other tech like Windows. And then you make some bizarre comparison with neurosurgeons!?! WTF? Seriously, I know you mainframes have some massive ego and reality issues, but you really need to step outside and see which way the wind is blowing. You do NOTHING that other admins don't already do with other platforms except live with your head in the sand. Just ask TMP - he used to run a workgroup/website for mainframers, but he had to give it up to come work for the all-tech Reg because there simply wasn't enough interest to keep it going.
Mainframe has been in decline for years, it is only those stuck with applications that they cannot afford to shift that are staying on it, not because they do not want to shift off it because mainframe is just stupidly expensive. This is clearly shown by IBM's paranoid attacks of anyone that threatens their scam such as PSI, Hercules, etc. IBM needs to screw as much out of those still stuck on mainframe whilst they can, because they know they cannot use it to subsidise the rest of their hardware bizz forever.
Ah well, at least you gave the readers a good laugh.
"Mainframe has been in decline for years, it is only those stuck with applications that they cannot afford to shift that are staying on it, not because they do not want to shift off it because mainframe is just stupidly expensive. This is clearly shown by IBM's paranoid attacks of anyone that threatens their scam such as PSI, Hercules, etc. IBM needs to screw as much out of those still stuck on mainframe whilst they can, because they know they cannot use it to subsidise the rest of their hardware bizz forever.
Ah well, at least you gave the readers a good laugh."
I remember people like you saying mainframe would be dead in the 90s. It managed it past the year 2000. Then, it managed it past 2010. It must really annoy you that it continues to live. By the way; I know of several new (good sized) apps that have been put on mainframe recently for several companies. Yes, the general trend is downwards, but it's a very slow downward creep. IBM will be making money on mainframes for a long time to come.
I guess we'll see in the years to come, but I bet Itanium is dead first!!
"..... It must really annoy you that it continues to live...." Oh boy, is that beyond the pot and kettle! Just look at the IBM fanbois getting shrieky here just because their heartfelt wish (and often incorrectly predicted) death of Itanium hasn't happened! You lot are so tragic it's just über funny. Seriously, take a step back and a deep breath, I'm worried that a fossil like you might have a stroke if you continue!
/SP&L
"It must really annoy you that it continues to live...." Oh boy, is that beyond the pot and kettle! Just look at the IBM fanbois getting shrieky here just because their heartfelt wish (and often incorrectly predicted) death of Itanium hasn't happened! You lot are so tragic it's just über funny. Seriously, take a step back and a deep breath, I'm worried that a fossil like you might have a stroke if you continue!"
Like I said Matt. I laid down a bet. I bet mainframe will be around longer than Itanium. I take it from your abusive reply that you're not intending to take that bet. Really confident aren't you!!
"What you should have said you think mainframe jobs are the ones that companies are having the most trouble filling - you somehow think having trouble filling a small number of vacancies is a good thing? LOL! It's because they cannot find people that want that job, they are preferring to do other tech like Windows."
Several points on your retort. First, you can manage an incredibly large mainframe environment with a handful of people, thousands of virtual servers. It would take a hundred people to do the admin for that workload on Windows... just to handle Patch Tuesday. As a result, there will inherently be more Windows admins than mainframers due to the limitations of Windows and x86. One guy driving a bulldozer vs. 100 guys with shovels.
Second, I wouldn't say there is a lack of interest in mainframe at the highest levels of enterprise tech. You will find that the largest FS firms, governments, Fortune 100 are still very interested in mainframe. That is a narrow range of the market that even has a use case for mainframe as compared to tens of thousands with Windows. If you are running a blog, you will have more hits if it is on Windows rather than System z. No doubt about it.
Third, I suppose some of this is a definition of "in demand." What I meant by "in demand" is that companies are looking all over the place to find mainframe talent. They pay search firms thousands of dollars to find mainframe talent. No one is looking all over the place for Windows talent. Can you think of any other IT position where companies cannot find enough qualified applicants through the standard job posting process so they need to go to search firms to track down talent? By your reasoning, a fast food worker is more "in demand" than a neurosurgeon because there are thousands of opening for fast food workers and relatively few for neurosurgeons. If you are an experienced Windows admin, you will probably find a job. If you are an experienced z/OS engineer, you will have recruiters calling you at your current job asking how much money and other benefits it would take to pull you to another firm. I would prefer the mainframe definition of demand.
"IBM needs to screw as much out of those still stuck on mainframe whilst they can, because they know they cannot use it to subsidise the rest of their hardware bizz forever."
Firstly, System z, the hardware, is not costly. Starting price for a z114 is $100,000. A mid-sized, 1,000 MIPS, system will probably cost you about $160,000 for the hardware (make the UK conversion). Now, mainframe software can be expensive, especially if you are using software from CA, but mainframe is not inherently costly. It can be based primarily on the software running on that machines, much like a Unix/x86-Linux machine with 50 cores of Oracle 11g EE RAC can be an extremely costly environment.
Second, mainframe doesn't subsidize anything. Power is more than self-sustaining. System x is self-sustaining. IBM's x86 servers primarily benefit from IP sharing with Power, not mainframe (IBM's eX5 chip set came from Power). If you are concerned about a company with business units subsidizing other business units, then you should be concerned about HP. HP's ink and legacy Itanium (NonStop and VMS) and HP-UX subsidize ProLiant and everything else at HP. All of their cash cows are not looking healthy. What is HP going to use as a revenue source to develop ProLiant, to the extent that you need R&D in a commodity server market, and make ridiculous software acquisitions after that goes away?
"....I think we should stop feeding the troll at this point...." Laughable! The article is about possible costs to Oracle for losing their court-case against hp, and then you mindless IBM fanbois come in and insist on shrieking anti-hp and anti-Itanium FUD, then suggest someone else is trolling!??!!? Seriously, you need professional help. Maybe you can get some whilst you read up on the twenty years of computer developments that you missed living in your mainframe bubble.
"The article is about possible costs to Oracle for losing their court-case against hp, and then you mindless IBM fanbois come in and insist on shrieking anti-hp and anti-Itanium FUD, then suggest someone else is trolling!??!!?"
You were the one who brought up mainframe.
".....You were the one who brought up mainframe." Actually that was kicked off by Destroyed All Braincells's mention of AS/400 at 0011GMT Feb 3rd. What is really funny is you didn't even have to go learn about something outside your mainframe bubble to see that, all you had to do was scroll through the thread!
"".....You were the one who brought up mainframe." Actually that was kicked off by Destroyed All Braincells's mention of AS/400 at 0011GMT Feb 3rd. What is really funny is you didn't even have to go learn about something outside your mainframe bubble to see that, all you had to do was scroll through the thread!
House Rules"
"Re: Re: Destroyed All Braincell's rant
"P.S. I think AS/400 looks far better than anything HP could come up with ever." Really? So how come mainframe is a shrinking market, having been comprehensively gutted from below by UNIX over the last twenty years? Even IBM admit is a declining market."
Ha, ha, ha. This is really funny. If you sorted the replies to this thread from oldest to newest and then searched for the word mainframe, you will note that the first person to mention the mainframe was actually YOU. It was in one of your posts. Yes, it might have been in response to a comment about AS/400, but it was YOU who referred to mainframe. Nobody else. I've posted both your latest stupid posting and the one in which you mention the mainframe. Your insults to AC now show that all YOU had to do was read the thread correctly and you would have seen that it was YOU. Now that really is funny. You can't even sort the replies into date order!!! Ha, ha, ha. Feeling stupid? You really ought to!!
A truly EPIC FAIL.
"......If you sorted the replies to this thread from oldest to newest and then searched for the word mainframe, you will note that the first person to mention the mainframe was actually YOU. It was in one of your posts. Yes, it might have been in response to a comment about AS/400.....". Hooooboy, intelligent thought is obviously such a struggle in that mainframe bubble! Sorry to break it those of you that somehow think the difference is worth wasting time over, but the rest of us with viable careers tend to lump all the IBM dinosaur products into the same category, including the baby mainframes like the AS/400 and System/3x products. What you consider an epic fail the rest of the computer industry considers the norm, so it is simply more proof that you need time outside that mainframe bubble, Bubi.
So, no answer and simply more abuse to hide it. Never mind.....
For your information, most people know AS/400s and System 3/x are not 'baby mainframes'. They have far more in common with Unix systems than mainframes. That's probably why they use Power processors and p-Series hardware now!!
"So, no answer and simply more abuse to hide it....." Plenty of answers, they just didn't penetrate your thickness. Try getting someone with some tech knowledge to read and summarise the posts for you, it might help.
".....most people know AS/400s and System 3/x are not 'baby mainframes'....." They are both attempts to retain mainframe customers by offering them cheaper and smaller mainframes, the so-called i-series using shared tech with the Power-based p-series but capable of running the same applications as they ran on the bigger and older mainframes. The System/3x systems were so poor they got raped by DEC, who used to take glee in demonstrating just how much faster their kit was. I used to know a DEC tech salesgrunt who used to say that IBM's System/32 was his best sales tool.
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