The advent of minicomputers in the seventies and desktop PCs in the eighties was expected to ring the death knell for mainframes, which were considered to be large, inflexible, expensive and difficult to use. Desktops were not only inexpensive, but could also be connected through a network to a central server, enabling organisations to store huge amounts of data. But doomsayers were proved wrong when despite stiff competition, the mainframe continued to maintain a steady growth rate. And in the current scenario, where organisations (after 9/11) have increased spend on storage solutions, there is a trend which indicates that mainframes may gain a bigger share in the IT budgets of CIOs.

Kishore Modak feels that Linux has been the main engine for the growth of the mainframe market in India

For instance, other than traditional mainframe users like the banking-financial services sector and manufacturing behemoths, even unlikely candidates like universities and the travel industry have been choosing mainframes over newer technologies. Says V L Mehta, director of IT at Mukand Engineers, “More than 70 percent of the world’s data still resides on mainframes. The market is growing in terms of revamping the older mainframes and adding new features and software to the oldies. Also, the new mainframes are smaller, cheaper, more powerful and e-business ready, so the market is growing steadily.”

Though these are small encouraging trends, the picture is not completely clear. For instance, a Meta Group report states that mainframes won’t be able to match the price and performance improvements (close to 35 percent a year) of Intel-based servers, which are emerging with mainframe-like capabilities. In India too, very few mainframes have been purchased and installed in the past 3-4 years. But this has been due to policy issues rather than technology choices. India missed an era of mainframe and legacy systems due to the absence of global IT majors in the country from the late seventies till the early nineties. Barring large government organisations and public sector companies, mainframes were not seen anywhere else. The mainframe market grew in the late nineties during the Y2K scare, and many companies seized the opportunity. Agrees Kishore Modak, country manager for the zSeries Enterprise Systems Group at IBM India, the only global mainframe vendor to have a presence here, “IBM exited India in the seventies and returned only in the nineties. This gap of close to 20 years put a dampener on the adoption of mainframes here. Awareness about mainframes is only now picking up. The industry is realising the importance of converting mission-critical and large volume applications from distributed processing back to centralised processing for better control and management, disaster recovery, security and business continuity.” According to market sources, IBM’s mainframe business has been growing at a steady 12-15 percent per quarter.

The impact of client/server
One reason for the slow adoption of mainframes has been the advent of client/server architecture. Client/server technology with its myriad attractions was expected to dry up the market for mainframes. Not only was this technology capable of storing macroscopic amounts of data, it was also flexible, extremely easy to handle, and comparatively inexpensive. But while many organisations did adopt client/server systems, very few actually gave up the mainframe. Most companies have managed to achieve a perfect blend of the two technologies to meet their computing needs. However, smaller organisations, due to the huge cost associated with maintaining mainframes, have migrated to client/server systems.

The high cost of owning a mainframe was also expected to influence corporate decisions to opt for client/server technology. Though this has certainly made client/server an attractive proposal to many, companies desirous of using IT for strategic purposes do not mind the added cost of a mainframe. Mainframe loyalists say that there is also a myth about the cost advantage of client/server over mainframes. Explains Modak, “A single mainframe can reduce the cost of maintaining hundreds of servers. The cost difference seems high when you compare the price of a single server with that of a mainframe. But people have to look at it from the point of view of a total data centre. Only then will they realise that the actual cost difference is not much.”

The IBM zSeries, for example, enables server consolidation by handling the workload of hundreds of servers. It not only provides organisations with a lower total cost of ownership—through consolidation of Unix, Windows NT, and Linux applications to Linux on zSeries—but is also an application development platform for large customers. Further, fault tolerance is built into all mainframes, reducing downtime to the bare minimum. Another problem which customers face with client/server systems is that unlike mainframes these systems often come from different suppliers, and the various components may not be integrated or adapted to the user company’s needs. This issue is minimised by a mainframe.

Sectors
Verticals currently using mainframes include stock exchanges and depositories, utilities, airlines, railways, armed forces, e-business portals with heavy traffic, oil-sector PSUs, manufacturing giants, the travel industry, banks and financial institutions. These industries cannot do without mainframes since they run mission-critical applications that require high security and reliability. They also have huge databases, which can be managed only by a mainframe.

The banking segment has traditionally been a heavy mainframe user. But with many banks migrating to client/server, this sector has seen a sharp decline in mainframe usage. Says Modak, “It is true that many of the smaller banks with fewer branches have opted for client/server, but most of the larger banks remain loyal customers. There has actually been increasing demand from banks for mainframe technology—especially after 9/11—for managing their disaster recovery needs; this is because the quality of service offered by mainframes is very mission-critical oriented.” The Reserve Bank of India, one of IBM’s largest customers in the banking segment, is also one of the most intensive mainframe users in India.

Usage of mainframes has also increased in the airline industry with Indian Airlines running mission-critical applications on IBM’s zSeries. Even universities have shown a keen interest in training students on mainframes.

Another vertical that is a heavy user of mainframes is what is popularly known as the computer-related services industry. Elaborates Modak, “The software development industry has been a key focus area for us as we expect to see strong growth in this sector. IT giants like Wipro and Infosys do their development work here in India due to the cost/benefit factor. Since they deal with terabytes of data and also run mission-critical applications, a mainframe is the safest bet. Not only does it offer a favourable cost/benefit ratio, it also provides high reliability and security required in large-scale processing work, which no other currently-available technology can provide.”

More than 70 percent of the world’s data still resides on mainframes, says V l mehta

Benefits
Return on investment (RoI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) are the key factors organisations look at before installing something as expensive as a mainframe. But according to Mehta, RoI is a very relative issue and such comparisons cannot give a real picture unless it is case-specific. Says he, “RoI and expensive are relative terms and depend on what one is looking for in terms of mission criticality of a business application. Of course, if one can get the same solution at a cheaper price one should go for it.”

Compared to client/server, mainframes do work out cheaper in the long run. A study conducted by LinuxWorld on the subject states that running one IBM mainframe uses less power than running 750 Sun or PC servers. This would be a real benefit, however trivial, next to the cost of the Linux and VM (virtual machine) licenses, if the mainframe could handle the same load. Another benefit is that the mainframe allows partitioning of resources to run different applications simultaneously. Using partitioning software, a mainframe can be split into several independent computers that share the same hardware. IBM has demonstrated the running of tens of thousands of Linux computers on a single mainframe. Mainframes also offer easy access to open source and Internet-related applications.

Linux
But which catalyst will provide the necessary boost for the growth of the mainframe market in India? Replies Modak, “The main engine for growth has been the adoption of Linux. Customers have discovered that Linux provides a favourable TCO and gives them flexibility in management of costs.” But there are various conflicting reports on whether Linux will actually help IBM grow its mainframe business. A report published by the Meta Group says that though mainframes running Linux have some advantages in the short run, in another 4-5 years these advantages will be irrelevant as Unix and Windows 2000-based systems flesh out increasingly robust, mainframe-like management capabilities—partitioning, workload management, reconfiguration and prioritisation. This will make users think twice about the premium they would have to pay for mainframes.

However, a Giga Group report thinks otherwise. According to Giga, mainframe technology is beyond the first phase of adoption, and has already made deep inroads into the financial services sector. While it’s true that other technologies have been trying to bridge the gap, IBM has not been sitting idle. The company has been making substantial investments in research and development.

IBM’s introduction of the z800 makes it possible to run Linux as a single operating system, ensuring ease-of-use. This, plus its ability to run hundreds of applications together makes it attractive to many organisations. Says Modak, “Earlier there were a lot of applications in the open space but you couldn’t run them on mainframes. We had specific applications available only on the mainframe. But Linux has changed that by offering higher uptime. A whole host of applications are now being made available through Linux.” Companies are under pressure to optimise their existing IT investments. This, plus other factors like availability of lower-cost systems, increasing support for Linux applications, and newer workloads from IBM, are expected to drive the growth of mainframe technology. Giga also predicts that more companies will use zSeries Linux environments for application serving combined with back-end database serving residing in a zSeries z/OS environment.

Conclusion
While it is difficult to predict the general future of mainframes, in India it may be a different scenario altogether. IBM may be able to gain a stronger foothold in the Indian market with its cost-effective Linux-based mainframes. Also, unlike earlier mainframes, the current set of machines are easier to handle and occupy less real estate—which may swing the tide in IBM’s favour.

Most analysts whom Express Computer spoke to believe that while small organisations will continue to prefer client/server based architectures, sectors like telecom and the government will continue to favour mainframes.