A thought about mainframes

While sitting at breakfast with friends, i found the whole business case of modern mainframes: As long the costs for mainframes are lower than the real costs and the assumed costs for the perceived risk to migrate to open systems, IBM will be able to sell new mainframes. It´s that simple. The problem for IBM: The second part of the costs is a variable one, it depends on the personal views of the IT staff and the IT management. So this business model has it´s “best use before” tag …