Mainframe systems were displaced by PC-based and mid-range systems such as Portia, InvestOne, CAMRA, PAM, Axyis, HiPort, Eagle Global Plus and Dimension.
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"What got me interested at the time the original came out was that I had just begun working as a mainframe systems programmer, " Maynard said.
Micro Focus is in the business of providing better value from mainframe systems, which sometimes means taking them off the mainframe and moving them to open platforms.
This contrasted with the batch processing or time-sharing models which allowed larger, more expensive minicomputer and mainframe systems to be used by many people, usually at the same time.
Relatively quickly many of the older industry standard firms that sold mainframe accounting systems disappeared, said Cytron, who is betting that the industry is ready for another major shift.
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Contrast that with 6% growth for mainframe operating systems.
Masaharu Miyachi, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, says that Japanese companies continued to pour money into mainframe-based systems until well into the late 1990s.
Forrester's Day argues that IBM's new system announcement should be read not as anti-competitive, but instead a demonstration that x86 and Unix systems place real competitive pressure on the mainframe business.
The new systems design combines IBM's new zEnterprise mainframe server with new technology--the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension and the IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager--that enable it to manage workloads running across System z, and select POWER7 and System x servers.
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The company aims to grow its U.S. presence by about 30% a year, largely through its subsidiary Fujitsu Computer Systems, an amalgam of its PC, server, mainframe computer and services businesses formed in 2003.
Meanwhile, Day says that the new mainframe--combined with virtualization software--is far more efficient than IBM's previous systems.
The core processing systems of insurance companies, airlines and banks, for instance, are built on a mainframe-computer technology that celebrated its 40th anniversary this year.
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