Portfolio
Development heading for a client-server future
Source: Computing Canada Published: Apr 1990
Two software futurists put their views on the line in a debate over industry issues at
Database ’90 held here earlier this month. If attendees expected a battle, they were disappointed as George Schussel, president of Andover, Mass.-based Digital Consulting Inc., and Jeff Tash, president and founder of Database Decisions in Newton Centre, Mass., generally agreed on most issues.
The role of the mainframe will change in 1990s computing as more processing power is available on workstations, both predicted. “The word mainframe becomes obsolete,” said Schussel. “It really becomes a server.”
Tash described two main computing environments he sees unfolding in the ’90s. The first is based on IBM’s Systems Application Architecture (SAA) and involves PS/2s hooked up to mainframes. The other approach will be Unix and its open systems concept which will probably consist of X-terminal workstations connected to RISC-based (reduced instruction set computing) Unix hosts, he said. The real difference, said Tash, is that with IBM’s strategy, the processing power will be on the desktop, while in the Unix world, it will reside on the backend.
Both Schussel and Tash pointed to the Unix solution as the less expensive way to go in terms of cost per MIPS. But they indicated the real issue is software. “All hardware goes into museums; all software goes into production every night,” commented Tash, adding if SAA has an advantage over Unix it’s in the “huge installed base” of software already out there.
Schussel said most companies will continue to run their mainframe software, even if they plan on moving to a Unix environment. “That’s your challenge,” he told his audience. “How do you maintain compatibility with the past yet develop with new technologies?”
