Why on Earth Is IBM Still Making Mainframes?
IBM quit making PCs in 2005, and it quit making servers last year. But it looks like Big Blue will keep pumping out its mainframes forever.
On Tuesday, IBM launched the z13, which it bills as the first mainframe specifically designed to accommodate the booming mobile app economy. Mainframes—the refrigerator-sized, pre-PC computers beloved of government, corporations, and Tron—were long synonymous with IBM, which introduced its first mainframe in 1952. The company has long since reinvented itself as a provider of business services rather than hardware. But it turns out the old standby is still around.
The first mainframes were designed to serve Cold War clients like the US Department of Defense. (Its first mainframe, the IBM 701, was known as the Defense Calculator while under development.) The mainframe of today is designed to serve a very different world—and economy.
