[hueving]

That equivalence is bogus. If a search was as simple as a single CICS transaction, Google would just run that and be done.

Mainframes are overpriced and inefficient, but they are the only option for a F500 without the in-house talent to build any kind of distributed, fault tolerant system.

[jussij]

If as you say mainframes are overpriced and inefficient, that means there is a great opportunity for some organization to move with a much cheaper, more efficient option.

But people have been predicting the death of big iron for several decades now, yet they live on.

I don't doubt mainframes might be overpriced, but I also suspect the reason they persist is they have yet to come up with a cheaper option, offering the same performance figures.

[graycat]

Long one of the main reasons for IBM mainframes was the bet your business software that wouldn't run anywhere else and that would be too expensive to rewrite to run somewhere else.

Also, there is a remark that in major parts of the financial industry, running an IBM mainframe is nearly a necessary condition for compliance.

[jussij]

> would be too expensive to rewrite to run somewhere else.

I'm don't doubt that is a major factor. Add to that the major risk that what every new system you move to might actually fail to work or end up costing more.

[toomuchtodo]

> If as you say mainframes are overpriced and inefficient, that means there is a great opportunity for some organization to move with a much cheaper, more efficient option.

But isn't that what Facebook, Google, and Amazon are doing? Using massively distributed commodity x86 hardware to eat away at incumbent businesses that would outsource their IT services to mainframes? Last I read, Google is about to go into auto insurance, and all three companies I listed do payment processing.

If software is eating the world, SV behemoths are eating business verticals.