Just to share some fear with you guys. That's more scaring than having to fight with sendmail...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123735970806267921.html

Had 2 or 3 messages from coworkers in my inbox this morning about it. lol

Yes. It's the kind of news that has some kind of periodicity. It does scare me, nontheless.

Why does it scare you? IBM has the best quality OS and compilers I've seen in 35 years in the business.

I don't know what it means but maybe Solaris will be ported to the z/OS hardware. I think somebody said this was already being done.

Well, to counterpart your statement, as far as it concerns Java, I find NetBeans superior to RSA under many aspects and since pretty much time, at least as far as it concerns support for Java EE 5 technologies, for which IBM has legged behind Sun for a while. Let EJB 3.0 support be a clear example of this.

What scares me is that this move could be a death toll for most of the software portfolio IBM and Sun have and which overlaps: UNIX, Java techonologies implementations, etc. I don't expect the Java Enterprise System, which Sun has been giving for free, or even Solaris maybe, survive such a move.

I haven't got much exposure to IBM sales reps on the past 2 years but we've been struggling in two banks during a COBOL to Java migration (and Sun was part of the project) to enforce decisions already taken because from time to time some IBM sales rep showed up with a beautiful powerpoint (sometimes with some code on an RSA) to "demonstrate" that the best platform *ever* to run Java applications was the z/OS...

Maybe I'm a nostalgic, but I still buy Sun HW and find that Sun workstations (with Solaris) are a great Java development platform. While I have no doubt that some way or another IBM will be pushing Java, I cannot imagine where Solaris and other software will fit in the picture. I you know how much the software portfolio of the two overlap. And most of the times, I prefer Sun's rather than IBM's. Moreover, wherever I saw IBM, a mainframe there

What is RSA? Rational? IBM seems to be taking the config control and letting the core Rational development stuff die. IBM does have a bad track record of buying wierd stuff and then saying it is the best, but it usually doesn't last too long But remember, Rational is an IBM purchase, it doesn't represent IBM's core software or hardware. For that, you have to look to MVS and now z/OS as their flagship OS and hardware. It has been around longer than UNIX and it is a superb development platform and commerical OS. It's the clear leader. Stability, security, and throughput have no challengers in the commercial sector.

I think you shouldn't worry. Everybody agrees that Sun is the leader in Java. I think we'll see Solaris running on IBM servers and AIX being kept in the portfolio because it has a large install base. I think we'll get a lot of benefit with Solaris and AIX technology transfer, I think IBM will let Sun continue to grow Java. It's probably better for them to abandon Java on the mainframe (where it really doesn't have much purpose except as a front-end) and let Sun develop it on Solaris and AIX. But Java is a very tiny part of IBM's business. If this is what you are focused on, you won't see the big picture. Look at the mainframes, the z/OS, and the market penetration. Virtually all big shops run this hardware and software combination.

Yes, I was referring to Rational Software Architect. I know it's an acquisition, but it's what I see in the Java Enterprise developer's world branded "IBM".

By the way, your point is clear and I agree with you: IBM has great platforms and, indeed, more than once I (as a Java architect) had to warn my management against the idea of "Java is better than [your-platform-here]". That's an error that I ran into so many times: I wouldn't, in fact, deploy Java where the mainframe is a better choice and there are plenty of examples you could bring, especially in financial services.

Resuming: I made not myself so clear, I was speaking about Java-related software portfolio _and_ Solaris. Moreover, remaining in the Java domain, Sun is one of the firms who seems to really be focusing on the developers' too and for me it's always been a great advantage to be able to download Sun's product and use them at home and in my development environments. Not only: Sun's idea of publishing specifications in order to defeat vendor lock-in and promote compatibility across implementations always seemed a win-win approach to me, even if the reality is sadder than this and sometimes "standards" are just sheets of paper. I fought with poor standard implementations in WebSphere (and not only) recently and it's a great pain to deal with.

At the end, if the hypothesis you've described came true, it wouldn't be a bad picture indeed.

My take -- it ain't gonna happen.

I don't care much about Java. I think it is over hyped.

However, I've always liked Sun systems and never liked IBM systems that much. The integrated hardware/software combination from Sun is a really nice synergy. Their new CMT servers with the T2 chips are awesome. My T5220's are 8 core, with 8 threads per core, an FPU per core, an encryption accelerator per core, and circuitry for two 10GigE ethernet connections on the chip. The ILOM, Solaris 10, Live Upgrade, fssnap, SMF, the choice and/or combination of SVM, raidctl, or ZFS, and lots more make it easy to configure and maintain as well as full featured and high performance.

While Sun has maybe stumbled with some of its licensing and its management software for, say, some of the StorageTek products, their new "Open Storage" or 7000 series storage servers and the J series expansion arrays are awesome. There have been a couple of discussions on some of the systems administrators lists with people talking about (either already or planning) replacing their NetApps with Sun 7000 series storage servers.

Coming around from a different point of view, CPU's, there used to be more options. Now, the DEC Alpha and the HP RISC initiatives have both been collapsed into Intel. PowerPC is still being used by IBM, but when they started catering too much to Microsoft and the X-Box, Apple dumped them and went to Intel. Given Apple's competitive environment, that was probably a good move on Apple's part. The use of the Motorolla 68000 series in workstations and servers ended long ago. Silicon Graphics uses Intel now. We're left with Intel, PowerPC and Sun's Ultra and T2. Collapse Sun into IBM and then what? Practically zero competition on the chip front.

For me, personally, there is the issue of the education market. When was the last time an edu site saw an IBM rep? Or, wanted to? Sun, on the other hand, is all over the edu market. We typically only buy Sun when they come out with their edu specials. My T5220's were essentially half price. If Sun were folded into IBM, I would have no choice but to shift to X86 and Linux. The pressure is already there, and there would be zero pressure or rationale for any other alternative.

Agree 100% on Java. But if we are talking about Web, that is the part of Sun that's interesting to IBM, they never really made any inroads.

Not sure which hardware and software from IBM you had a chance to work with but I have never found a better OS or development platform than MVS. It's the original example of an OS tighly coupled to the hardware. The compilers are great, the whole environment is a pleasure to work in.

I wish I could buy a setup like that and run it at home!

I can't afford that so I use Linux, *BSD, and now Solaris 10.

I never trust a computer that anyone can lift!

Well, I think we're typically not talking mainframes here.

Although I had some experience with IBM mainframes in the days of JCL and their bad attempts at TSS/360, my experience in the last couple of decades has only touched on machines that one or two people can lift.

IBM's compilers have tended to be good. When I worked at Specular, the Infini-D 3D modelling software on the Mac was for a while compiled for PPC on an AIX machine. Code developed on Macs, ftp'd to the AIX machine, compiled, and binaries ftp'd back. This was before CodeWarrior took the mantle from Think C on the Mac. When that happened, they shifted back to compiling on the Mac with CodeWarrior. (All of this in the mid 1990's).

My most recent decade has been as a Solaris Sysadmin. My current machines are T5220's. If need be, I can sling one under an arm and carry it the length of the building. But, then, lots of 1U and 2U rack mounted servers are falling into that weight and size class with lots of compute power.

The mainframe is my standard of reference since I'm in my 35th year of coding on that platform. I love everything about it. It is a brilliant OS and hardware combination that can't be beat for performance, throughput, or security (0 exploits in something like 60 years). They've been so careful to grow the OS and hardware properly that programs written in the 1970s are still *object code compatible* on today's boxes!

Try that on any other machine or OS!

P.S. JCL is still around and going strong.

hmm. Answering that claim in a serious way would require way too much research effort. I doubt it, however.

Back when I was working on mainframes, I recall at least a couple of exploits. The attitude was very different in those days. Demonstrate that you knew enough to be able to hack into a mainframe, and you could get a job with the manufacturer. They also weren't publicized much, so you wouldn't hear about them unless you knew someone. One of the instances I recall required a bit of phone hacking as well to gain remote access, since the internet didn't exist back then. That one was done through a model 33 teletype -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASR-33_Teletype.

Nonsense, there haven't ever been OS exploits. If you're talking about breaking into some application, that is worthless on MVS, there's no way to do privilege escalation from an unauthorized program and you can't damage anything.

Your link doesn't document anything except show a couple of pictures of a teletype machine. What was the point?

You can read about MVS in Eric Raymond's The Art of UNIX Programming. There he documents that the IBM filesystem security has been bullet-proof from 1980 through 2003 (time of his writing). The actual system security is much stronger, and there haven't been any OS exploits (privilege escalation, system damage, system modification, etc.) ever. I worked closely with IBM for years (since 1975). Some of the software we wrote is marketed by IBM and some of it is run by IBM and we have never heard of anything in that time.

randux2, I understand your point but mine was another: no doubt about the quality of both companies' products (well, some of them) but one point doesn't imply the other. I doubt that Sun vision is compatible with IBM one, including the way the do business, at least for my experience. Saying that an OS is good does not mean that I want to run it for the following years. It doesn't even imply that it would suit my needs: that's why mainframes are where they are. For some of the reasons you cite, I could say that Apple's OS/X is the best platform, as well as another, as far as it concerns myself. Microsoft's .net and its Visual Studio development environment is a great piece of software, integrated with its own system and integrating with your own is always easier than integrating with others'. That's why many organization fear vendor lock-ins and IBM is great at playing that game. Everyone has got its needs and that's why different OSs had different niches and market penetrations. Solaris has its own and I don't think some clients of mine would (or could) substitute one with the other.

I mostly use Java and my parameters are different from yours, which I respect, and I didn't want to make an hit parade here. I like, when I can, download and use the very same products I use at the client site which now I can also run in the same machines I use at the client site. One client of ours used RSA to code and build its software and you have to buy a (costly) license for it, and it doesn't seem like a great piece of software to me. WebSphere is another products which gave me headaches and I'm not comparing it with Sun Java Application Server: take Oracle's (former BEA) WebLogic, it plays in another league. I also saw IBM sales rep doing demos to show how the mainframe was the best platform to run Java apps... A mainframe is not that "anywhere" that comes to my mind where I think about "write once, run anywhere". Maybe some bank would run Java processes in the mainframe, but I strongly doubt that would be the most common use case.

As far as it concerns the number of exploits, as other readers have pointed out, it's a difficult to prove statement, but it's not the point.

I understood from your first post that you were concerned about the acquisition. Therefore I tried to say based on what I know, that IBM is a company who develops top-quality products and markets them well. Not only that, but their flagship product which is the MVS hardware/software combination is a developer's delight. It's the original combination of tightly coupled OS and hardware optimized for it (that's why the OS hasn't been ported, but the hardware has been- to an emulator called Hercules).

Every big company, every government runs z/OS. Even though smaller platforms were designed to replace the mainframe, they never did, they just got added to the site. There is a lot of positive knowledge transfer that can happen with Solaris benefitting. People who are used to working with smaller computers and systems are not usually aware of the tremendous advantage MVS has in stability and performance. They just never saw that kind of processing power and reliability. Therefore the comment about the lack of security holes is also relevant.

People who work on twin-engine planes have a lot to learn from the people who designed and fly the Concorde. To say otherwise is just silly. Nobody would be paying hundreds of thousands or even a million dollars for mainframes and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single copy of mainframe software unless it was worth it. It is worth it. Now come find out why...

There was announcement that Solaris was ported to run on IBM hardware. This should also be of interest since IBM hardware is among the absolute best hardware available. They had smart communication channels and DASD devices before any other major business.

I wanted to answer you that from my view of IBM, which includes working inside their labs at times, and long and close associations with their staffs, IBM is (was) an excellent company to work with and I don't think anyone should worry. That's all I wanted to say.

As far as write once run anywhere, there is a cost to that that major companies and operations like banks and governments don't accept- poor performance. It has not been an IBM goal nor a goal of the developers who work in that performance/reliability/security sector to have portable code. Portable code is expensive and in many situations has no benefit. As I said, today's OS and hardware can still run *object code* generated in the 1970s. Therefore, portability is not on anyone's list of priorities in our world. And it's a much much bigger world than you think.

When something has to work and perform flawlessly, they run it on a mainframe. Even though Java is popular for UI, the back-end (where money is concerned is always on the mainframe.

I understand the benefit of being able to run the same exact setup at home as you do at work. I wish I could do the same, I agree with you this is a huge benefit. I think IBM should make their OS and emulated hardware available for the very same reason. Not doing it has made a lot of good software never be written.

Again, don't judge IBM on Java, that's like judging the French on hamburgers! Now if you look at their wines and cuisine, you will have a better idea!

Judge IBM on what made their company, which is MVS and their hardware.

If my original answer didn't target your first comment then I'm sorry for stretching out the thread! The last part of this post is just based on what you said in your last post.