From: jedubins@unix.amherst.edu (Just a fellow traveller...) Subject: Re: Linux beoming a real choice? Date: 22 Jun 1993 19:47:29 -0400
James A Robinson (jimr@world.std.com) wrote:
: I agree, major business need large amounts of address space and easy
: access to things like Internet, and some of those things just come
: natuarlly to Unix. I just read an article that said a major business
: was not thinking about OS/2 because of the limited 2 Gig address space
: it has! :-) Apparently they had HUGE databases they needed on-line.
Yes, I read this article too. It was in the May Issue of OS/2 Professional.
Multi-gig files where used by the Traveler's insurance company. My
company probably also handles files this big for credit databases at least, and
possibly in other areas as well. I thought the article was interesting,
because at my company, the answer would just be to get another huge drive
array for one of the varied mainframe platforms we run under: Tandem,
Amdahl, IBM, take your pick. I just think it's interesting that large
companies are finally overcoming the mystique of large MIS departments
and second guessing many MIS managers feelings about not wanting to move away
from mainframe platforms-- as most mainframe MIS managers I have met are
actually scared of PC's and RISC stations, because they don't know the first
thing about them. Not saying there aren't definite advantages to mainframes
for many of our client-server database operations... at least with
the current level of technology, as well as how much it would cost us to
migrate all of our applications to a non-mainframe platform. It would easily
cost us many tens of millions of dollars.
Jim