Posted by Trevor Eddolls on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 399 views
In the future, IBM will be known as the PC maker of choice for most people, and those PCs will be running a GUI (Graphical User Interface) based on CP/M. Well, that was the view of some people 30 years ago when IBM gave birth to its first PC.
It was on 12 August in a ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria, New York that the IBM 5150 made its first appearance. And because IBM was known for making mainframes, this device was called a ‘personal computer’.
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Filed Under: cobol
Posted by Mike on Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 297 views
Just how hot is IBM’s most venerable computer line? Well, revenue from the high-end machines known as mainframes surged 61% in the second quarter, capping the best four quarters of growth for the segment in five years.
Not bad for a product that has repeatedly been written off as dead or outdated, as most computing chores shift to lower-priced servers that descended from personal computers.
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Posted by Mike on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 237 views
New zEnterprise System model links apps on blades to data on the mainframe.
IBM is introducing a mainframe computer to its zEnterprise System lineup that costs 25% less than the previous model, but still offers high-speed connections between the mainframe’s data and an attached blade server hosting an application that needs that data. An industry analyst says the new mainframe serves a growing industry trend for IT vendors to better optimize system performance and offer more affordable IT that is accessible for a wider array of customers.
The IBM zEnterprise 114, announced Tuesday, is a follow-up to the zEnterprise 196 mainframe introduced in July 2010.
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Posted by Mike on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - 524 views
The International Business Machines corporation is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. And to do so, the company has released a video lecture of its history that contains at least one very contestable assertion—that IBM gets credit for the personal computer.
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Posted by Trevor Eddolls on Sunday, June 19, 2011 - 310 views
IBM celebrating its 100th birthday makes you think you should write its age in Roman numerals – which is what I did in the title. How does a venerable old organization avoid being put out to grass and stay ahead of the business game? How does it become synonymous with cloud computing, smarter planet, and data analytics? I guess the answer is by completely re-inventing itself.
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Posted by Mike on Saturday, May 28, 2011 - 374 views
Tom West was project manager whose early work developing small business computers for Data General Corp. made him into a legend of the computer industry.
As depicted in the Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1981 book “The Soul of a New Machine,” Mr. West drove his team of pocket-protected nerds through highly caffeinated 90-hour weeks in the late 1970s to develop a miniaturized descendant of the mainframe computer that saved the company.
Mr. West, who died May 19 at age 71, could be abrasive and imperious, but he spurred his team with slogans like, “Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.” He compared tech projects to pinball, where the prize for winning is another game—a new and more challenging project.
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Posted by Mike on Monday, May 23, 2011 - 532 views
A 1963 photo of an IBM model 1410 mainframe computer at AMP in Sydney. Source: Australian IT
DEMAND for 50-year-old mainframe language skills is likely to stay high for at least this decade because the computing technology remains ubiquitous in large organisations.
Recruiters and analysts say those with mainframe skills such as COBOL and FORTRAN, a programming language created in the 1950s, are being lured out of retirement to meet the demand.
Corporate Australia and government agencies are major users of COBOL on mainframes.
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Posted by Mike on Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - 340 views
In 1957, Max Mathews invented a program that allowed a mainframe computer to play a 17-second musical composition. The technical breakthrough is still reverberating.
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