isham research
(The WWW is a living place, and a LOT of the links in these older items are now obsolete. Some companies are now in different businesses and some are even downright ashamed of what they said back then. The 'cached' versions of pages held on Google and the Wayback Machine are sometimes hilarious.)
18 November 2005 - Could Platform Solutions change the world?
Will Hewlett-Packard - assisted by Platform Solutions - finally offer economically viable solutions to the low-end mainframe users ignored by IBM for well over a decade?
26 July 2005 - The IBM System z9
The latest midlife kicker to the z900 series - a kind of NonStop mainframe.
13 June 2005 - A Mainframe Roadmap
To the question: "Is IBM going to stop building mainframes?" - the answer seems to be "No".
12 May 2005 - Rebirth of UMX Technologies' Virtual Mainframe?
Almost a year after UMX Technologies went into bankruptcy, the trustee's frantic beating of the industry's undergrowth has finally paid off and a buyer has been found for the assets. The amount paid may not have covered the postage.
5 May 2005 - IBM flattens Europe
After decades of groaning about inefficiencies in EMEA, IBM has flattened its EMEA management structure and eliminated EMEA headquarters. Dancing in the streets.
Listen to isham research on BBC Radio Five Live
28 April 2005 - IBM cedes the low end mainframe market
All of the remaining pre-G5 low end mainframes will probably be out of maintenance by the end of 2007 - and IBM has no replacement products.
28 April 2005 - MIPS tables for obsolete systems added
MIPS tables for the Multiprise systems and the G3/G4 have been added to help users plan their replacement after IBM's pending 'End of Life' announcement. In most cases, the only viable option is emulation on Intel.
21 April 2005 - Platform Solutions signs T3 Technologies
In one of the oddest decisions in recent years, T3 Technologies has acquired world wide exclusive rights for a non-existent product with no IBM software pricing agreement. Or did they?
18 April 2005 - Platform Solutions - deja vu all over again?
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck, quacks like a duck and lays duck eggs, the chances are it's pretty duck-like. Even more so if it's got feathers, a bill and webbed feet. PSI's P5210 is just another zSeries emulator - this time on a Hewlett-Packard base. But no VM support, it would appear.
15 January 2005 - Mainframe Emulation looks in the Mirror
So an emulated mainframe can attach "real" peripherals - but what happens when a "real" mainframe can attach emulated peripherals? Some of the rules have changed.
20 December 2004 - FLEX-ES Release 7 - the ball starts to roll and the bell starts to toll
Fundamental Software's stranglehold on the low end mainframe market is tightened - more, perhaps, by the failings of others as by their own achievements.
Updated 4 August 2005
18 November 2004 - New zSeries z990 MIPS tables revisited
IBM formally releases 24-way LPAR information.
14 April 2004 - New zSeries z990 MIPS tables
All is not as simple as it seems with z990 LSPR data in the light of the announcement of z/OS support of 24 processors in a single domain.
7 April 2004 - pTerodactyl - IBM's newest mainframe - glides to earth on System/360's 40th birthday
Despite the graphic, modern research suggests pterosaurs didn't flap - they soared much like today's eagles.
7 April 2004 - IBM reduces the cost of mainframe Java
zSeries processors have more personalities than Peter Sellers - Instruction Processors, System Assist Processors, Coupling Facilities, Integrated Facilities for Linux, zSeries Application Assist Processors, etc. No wonder MIPS are going out of fashion
7 April 2004 - New zSeries MIPS tables - for what they're worth
Which is not a lot - single metrics were never much use and when a 26 MIPS machine can have three other engines enabled at 366 MIPS each but invisible to z/OS there's even less point. The disclaimer looks frivolous but it's not
7 April 2004 - The z890 versus emulation - the overlap grows
Riding the xSeries performance curve - laptops that run z/OS faster than mainframes, although there are still a few things they cannot do
7 October 2003 - "Mainframes" are back - OFFICIAL!
13 May 2003 - IBM's T-Rex finally roars.
Did dinosaurs roar? Few lizards make noises. Sales were a little inhibited in some sectors because of crypotgraphy support, but the end of 2003 saw a recovery.
20 January 2003 - The end of the System/390 - survived by zSeries and the Multiprise.
But not all Multiprises - the Multiprise 2000 is rapidly running out of supported operating system levels.
13 January 2003 - The mainframe-on-Intel emulation market matures - first FUD.
31 December 2002 - IBM's next mainframe - not as simple as that.
28 October 2002 - EMC extends storage analyst bullying to financial analysts.
14 October 2002 - A zSeries - or a Linux/390 mainframe with legacy tolerance.
2 September 2002 - The original WLC/ILM discussion has been split into two pages - one for Workload Level Charges and one for the IBM License Manager.
26 August 2002 - IBM rejigs software strategy in preparation for its next mainframe.
9 August 2002 - Further analysis of IBM & Hitachi's co-operation in the storage sector.
4 June 2002 - a discussion of the future for low-end mainframes.
16 May 2002 - UMX - is it for real?
18 May 2004 - not it wasn't - UMX went bankrupt as predicted in this item.
28 March 2002 - Sun's crack competitive analysis team shows its mettle.
19 March 2002 - Sun jerks awake after IBM z800 announcment.
04 March 2002 - IBM's License Manager - Broken As Designed
Scorned at its pre-announcement briefing, derided at announcement and critized throughout its painful gestation - it finally mis-carried, taking perhaps a hundred man-years of effort into the abyss.
19 February 2002 - z/OS.e - the security of z/OS at a tenth of the price.
8 February 2002 - Raptor surfaces as the z800.
26 January 2002 - Out from under the covers - a LINUX-only zSeries
And, so far, IBM's least popular computing system ever. Possibly due, to some degree, to not preparing the market for it.
23 November 2001 - EMC dips - but what's with software?
EMC's software revenues fell in 3Q01 by as much as their hardware revenues - isn't software revenue supposed to bridge fluctuations in hardware revenues?
11 October 2001 - Six months with a Microdrive - IBM cuts the price and misses the point
Revisited just to note that the Microdrive is now available in a 4GB version.
7 October 2001 - Subway - has Hitachi opened the kimono on the next zSeries?
As it turned out, they pretty much had. IBM's final announcement of the z800 on 19 February indicated a range from 80 to 636 MIPS.
4 May 2001 - IBM and Hitachi taking on EMC - will it still be there?
"Will it still be there" seems extraordinarily prescient in the light of EMC's 3Q2001 losses and what other analysts were saying at the time:
As EMC’s stock price sinks into the mire, some analysts see this as a buying opportunity for a leading company that’s struggling through some temporary hard times. Shebly Seyrafi, an analyst with A.G. Edwards, doesn’t expect the storage market to get any worse: “I see a bottom in Q3, a pickup in Q4, and a meaningful turnaround in 2002.” Seyrafi, who rates EMC a Buy, expects 17 percent annual earnings growth for the storage industry over the next several years, and he thinks EMC will top that with around 30 percent growth.
A G Edwards, 18 July 2001 - EMC's stock stood at $18 at the time.
23 March 2001 - zSeries below 80 MIPS - emulation is the key
And it remains the key. IBM's zELC and z/OS.e are potentially extensible to smaller platforms - possibly sometime in 3Q2002. The somewhat ambiguous position with regard to emulators other than Fundamental Software's FLEX-ES - especially Hercules - will be resolved when IBM License Manager becomes a mandatory environment for z/OS.
2 March 2001 - System/390 Emulation on Intel
A sceptical view of IBM's attempt to market System/390 emulation on the overpriced x430 (previously Sequent) NUMA-Q system - borne out, as it happens, by events.
2 March 2001 - And then there was one - the beginning of the end for the mainframe
Amdahl and Hitach Data Systems left the industry, leaving IBM as the sole source of mainframe systems. By shifting revenue from hardware to software, IBM put the PCMs out of business but put a software pricing monkey on its own back in the process.
1 December 2000 - An early view of S/390 emulation - we're as wrong as Gartner sometimes
Not particularly accurate about emulation on Intel - which is now seen as a viable proposition for development, demonstration and small production systems - but prescient in its prediction that Flagstaff would be revived and built by someone other than IBM.
27 November 2000 - Will IBM now shift mainframe revenues to hardware?
After the internal announcments of Amdahl's and HDS' decision to leave the processor business, IBM has no hardware competitors in the mainframe arena. Competition drove hardware prices down, with IBM compensating via increased software charges - but getting out from under the problems that created will not be easy.
27 January 2000 - IBM reviews server platforms (now public as 'Mach 1')
This became the 'eSeries' relaunch almost ten months later (See Announcement Letter 100-322). Of almost as much interest is IBM's double renaming of MVS - first to OS/390 and then to z/OS. MVS certainly had a poor reputation for the complexity of its maintenance - but if one goes the extra mile to get competing systems up to the same general level of robustness and security, is the workload any less? As well as dumping bad associations with the MVS name, IBM may also have dumped some of the good - and awareness of security issues has never been higher.
27 January 2000 - Hitachi repositions Trinium after fixing the bugs
Actually, they weren't the only ones. Microcode bug fixes that degrade system peformance have been relatively common - Amdahl's 8650 and IBM's G7 (Freeway) were both affected.
20 September 1999 - Multprise 3000 announced - yet another new software licence
And one that was to prove very unpopular. GOLC was not defined for all products - in default, Group charges were used and these often biased calculations more than expected. But the Multiprise was still one of IBM's most successful products of recent years - Montpelier alone built and shipped more systems in the first five months than were planned for the product's life cycle.
20 September 1999 - Hitachi repositions Trinium?
As indeed they did - returning to the originally announced values in January 2000
10 August 1999 - A chronology of the IBM System/360 - to celebrate its 35th birthday in April 1999.
Entries are still sought - what do YOU think are the most significant milestones? Anchoring other technologies would also be a good idea.
22 July 1999 - An answer to the question below.
29 March 1999 - Has IBM abandoned the mainframe DASD market?
15 March 1999 - A review of the CMOS G6 announcement.
23 February 1999 - Carving up mainframes - has IBM missed the boat?
27 January 1999 - Important Note for potential users of Capacity Upgrade on Demand.
26 January 1999 - G5 Mid-life Kicker.
24 January 1999 - 'Lockdown' - or - will the corporate IT industry take a vacation in 2H1999?