Ask a mainframe aficionado what he or she
thinks about utility computing, computing on demand and virtual computing, and
you'll often get the answer that they are great ideas and ones that have
been part of the mainframe architecture since about the 1970s. Don't even ask
about thin-client computing unless you want a lecture about time-sharing systems
from the 1950s onward.
It was with that
sense of historical trepidation that I stopped by the trendy W hotel on
Lexington Avenue in New York to hear the announcement of IBM's latest mainframe system. Where once it seemed that mainframes were due
to be relegated to the dinosaur exhibits at New York's American Museum of
Natural History (IBM's previous mainframe model was nicknamed the T-Rex), I'm
here to report that mainframes look healthy and alive and most important are
still pointing the way toward which computing should be headed.
The timing seemed
especially appropriate as IBM was talking up its new z9 mainframe at about the
same time that Microsoft was renaming its next-generation "Longhorn" operating system
to Windows Vista.
Both companies concentrated on security
as a jumping-off point in a discussion of their respective architectures' merits
and moved on from there.
The z9 is a formidable-looking box;
among the discussions of performance (1 billion transactions per day), bandwidth
(172.8GB per second) and transistors (18 billion in the fully loaded 54-way
configuration), IBM executives had the insight to focus on security as one of
the main selling points.
In IBM's mainframe vision, the z9 acts
as a hub for user authorization, access and detection services. The feature that
I think drew the most interest from potential users is the ability to encrypt or
decrypt data on the fly, whether that data is destined for an e-commerce
transaction or a tape backup. The loss of data through hacking or lax standards
and unauthorized access to systems and databases are by far the biggest concerns
raised by technology executives when I've talked with them about their corporate
concerns.
While I find it strange that a company
would want to instill excitement in a product by unfavorably comparing it with
the previous version, the security list is notable for hitting many of the major
problems that plague Windows users.
If previous versions of Windows included long
lists of features aimed at improving the user interface, offering tight integration
between the operating system and applications, or providing a world of
data at your fingertips, Vista's security offerings promise a way to be absolutely
forthright to narrow a user's vista into his or her corporate
computing environment.
IT administrators will find it much
easier to lock down systems to a specified range of user applications and to
narrow network access and filter content based on group policies. Encryption is
improved (although certainly not at an on-the-fly application level) and can
make use of Trusted Platform Module chips.
These are all good and much-needed
features that fix current problems. You also get a new Sleep state,
which seems to be a mix of Standby and Hibernate, two choices that always seemed
to me to be the same. But you still have to click on the Start button to shut
the system down; some things never change.
All of which brings me back to my original point
about mainframes. If you opt for the hub IBM mainframe pitch which
calls for services running applications on an IBM box out to a bunch of
narrowly locked-down Vista-based systems overseen and managed by a central IT administrator
aren't you running a system that looks a lot like the vista of
computing as imagined by proponents of the 1950s time-sharing services? That's
how it looks to me.
