On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, William Donzelli wrote:
> > Think of all the companies who are right now weighing whether or not those
> > old mainframes that have been chugging away in their data centers for
> > years, perhaps even decades, are worth one more upgrade to support 4-digit
> > years or whether it would make more sense to finally take the painful
> > route of scrapping their old iron and moving on to PCs or AS400s or
> > whatnot. I predict a tremendous flood of old mainframe and mini hardware
> > coming to market like so many cattle which will only peak on December 31,
> > 1999.
>
> I do not think we are going to see a huge influx of oldiron at the
> scrapyards come the turn of the century. It has been happening steadily
> for the past five years or so. The mainframe world tends to be
> similar to the consumer desktop word, with the old S/360 standard being
> the dominant force and the Unisys standards being a distant second (like
> the Macintosh). Both of these companies foresaw the Y2K problem and came
> out with new machines and operating systems, and they have been selling
> lot of them (well, IBM and company anyway - Unisys seems to be fading).
> The hardware Y2K problem, for the most part, has been solved. But that was
> the easy bit...
Of course the issue is not hardware, but rather software. And the
continued maintainence of that software beyond 2000. And I'm sure a lot
of companies will decide, irregardless of the platform, that its just not
worth maintaining that decrepit code anymore and it would be a better
investment to take the hit and upgrade to some modern platform with new
software.
I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I stand by my assertion, and my
garage is ready and waiting.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
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Received on Fri Apr 24 1998 - 10:35:48 BST