[sanswork]

I disagree. Factoring support, downtime, and hardware I think a mainframe will in an appropriate domain be just as cost effective as a cluster of small servers.

Mainframes are the best system for a lot of jobs and problem domains and dismissing them because they are "old school" is silly at best.

To put it in car terms. If you are moving papers it doesn't matter if you have one large truck that can carry 1 million papers or 1 million small cars than can only carry 1 paper.

But when you want to move a space ship it's better to have 1 big truck that can carry it at once instead of having to disassemble it fit it into your cars then reassemble it at the other end.