Mainframe For Dummies

Future for Mainframes in SOA While it is far too early to get an answer it is now possible to ask, as a serious rather than trivial question, whether there is scope to see new sales of zSeries mainframes grow into the SOA and web services-based market sectors as a result of new developments in integration tools, such as the recent appearance of DataDirect Technologies' major upgrade of its Shadow integration platform, for the traditionally back-office machines. Will it be enough to prove to be a positive lever on green field zSeries sales? It might still be a brave person who answered ‘yes’ right now, the opportunity now exists where the mainframe can start to play a full part in a web-services/SOA environment, running applications that can proactively participate in that environment rather than just be a passive contributor to it. While it may not be natural to think of a mainframe as a core system in such an environment, Version 7 of Shadow does offer the potential to move IBM...