With a new Downsizing Expo show due to open its doors in Chicago this week, the transition from mainframes to open systems is a hot topic of industry conversation right now, but is the phenomenon real, or just a myth put about by wishful-thinking Unix sales executives? According to new figures from market analyst Spikes Cavell in the UK – revealed this month in our sister publication, IBM System User – the widely reported erosion of IBM’s mainframe base has so far been slight – with the overall reduction in numbers of mainframe sites largely accounted for by other factors, such as data centre consolidation. The total number of UK mainframe sites fell to 1,102 from 1,221 between January and December 1991, a 10% reduction. Flagship MVS sites dropped to 517 from 537, an erosion of 4%. Spikes Cavell found that just 1.5% of the mainframe base is downsizing in the first quarter of this year. Of these, two thirds will move to the AS/400, 16% to the Digital Equipment Corp VAX, 10% to IBM’s RS/6000 Unix box and just 10% to other systems. It appears that Unix suppliers such as Pyramid Technology Corp and Sequent Computer Systems Inc have not followed up a few isolated successes among large IBM users with a string of migrations. And, paradoxically, those traditional suppliers that have most enthusiastically embraced open systems are those that could lose the most business. Some 55% of ICL Plc mainframe users, for instance, also have Unix, but most are not buying ICL’s DRS 6000 Unix systems. ICL appears to be more vulnerable than IBM because its customers are clustered in the public sector. The figures suggest that it will be many years before Unix computers are commonly used to run mission-critical applications in large corporations that previously used IBM mainframes. However, the research does not mean that most corporates are not interested in smaller machines or Unix. Rather, they are developing new and distributed applications on these machines, and maintaining core applications on the mainframe. US analyst Bob Djurdjevic said the fall in mainframe sites was not a serious problem. The shrinkage in the UK was very moderate and could be accounted for by consolidation. It would not necessarily mean a drop in revenues for IBM, as users were moving onto larger processors. Of 30,000 IBM 370 sites worldwide, he said, there are fewer than 100 clear cases of downsizing. However, he said, downsizing could become a trend in future.
