U1DF1@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU ("John Neubert") (02/18/89)
Comments-of: "John Neubert" <U1DF1@WVNVM>
Had some problems sending this originally.
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"John Neubert" <U1DF1@WVNVM>
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>In article <8902162247.AA28231@multimax.encore.com>, bzs@ENCORE (Barry Shein)
> writes:
>>The point is obvious, organizations which have built their empires by
>>providing MIPS are, in most cases, doomed...
>Most MIS groups have built their empires on accounting and services, not
>on MIPS. You're still going to need someone to work out the corporate
>licencing on Lotus 1-2-3, not to mention storing the backup tapes.
>Bill
Isn't it interesting that Novell can run it's whole corporation (admin,
order processing, *EVERYTHING*) with a LAN and PCs. Distributed
processing (the catch word over a decade ago) is the catch word again
(with a little different meaning). With OSs like Mach, Helios, NCS,
and the other experiments at parallelism for Unix, the battle for
mainframes to be anything but big database servers is now engaged.
That is the perfect function for an IBM 3090 with a large disk farm --
a server! Why anyone would need to compute on a mainframe, with
departmental systems, workstations, LANs, and supers for real number
crunching, is now the primary question. Why do you think IBM is tying
the note as closely as possible (SAA, etc, to get everyone thinking they
need big iron to run all that cycle hungry s/w)? Will it work?
Who knows. I certainly am not going to count them out. Other analysts
say the mini vendors must be worried. This has all been said before,
BUT the big things lacking then and starting to come together now are:
LANs, very fast backbone communications (FDDI), very powerful desktop
systems, and maybe even the s/w to do it all.shibumi@well.UUCP (Kenton A. Hoover) (02/19/89)
In article <8902171939.AA04717@multimax.encore.com> U1DF1@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU ("John Neubert") writes: >>Most MIS groups have built their empires on accounting and services, not >>on MIPS. You're still going to need someone to work out the corporate >>licencing on Lotus 1-2-3, not to mention storing the backup tapes. >>Bill >Isn't it interesting that Novell can run it's whole corporation (admin, >order processing, *EVERYTHING*) with a LAN and PCs. Distributed >processing (the catch word over a decade ago) is the catch word again ... >systems, and maybe even the s/w to do it all. I dont think that things are that clear cut at this point in time. Though the hardware end of things is getting better interconnected, the software interconnections are still at little better than dream stage. At H&Q, we have two Stratuses and a System/36, and all of the account processing is done on a 3081 run by ADP. At this point in time most real world organizations, like banks, airlines and insurance companies are not going to attempt to make all of their accounting dependant on a very tempermental bunch of PCs and file servers, all riding on software that costs them two to four times the cost of comperable centralized software to produce. Furthermore, MIS really is not just about processing and availability -- its about providing computing resources to users who know far less about computers than you and I. You cannot give a secretary -- or worse an EVP -- instructions like "Oh, dont ever turn your machine off." Centralized resources OF VARIOUS SIZES are going to be needed to make all of this work. And you also have decentralized resources that are required to make it work. Until however, you can fully automate support, you are always going to have a function called MIS, and you are always going to have mish-mashes of systems that serve the information needs of an organization. -- ! Kenton A. Hoover {att,pyramid,uunet}!acad!speedo!shibumi ! ! Phoenix Project Manager SNAIL: One Bush Street ! ! Hambrecht & Quist San Francisco, CA 94104 ! ! "Evil will always triumph over good because good is dumb!" !