In one of the more dramatic examples of downsizing, Merrill Lynch & Co, New York has dumped a top-end IBM mainframe, model not specified after it decided it was wasting $1m a year on service and leasing charges for a glorified library system, and has replaced it with a $500,000 Unix server from Sequent Computer Systems Inc: Joseph Freitas, director of investment banking systems, told BusinessWeek that since more and more data and applications have been brought down to the personal computer, the mainframe has been reduced to a database for the 1,100 connected workstations – and was giving an inadequate response time.
