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NEWS&ANALYSIS
Eric Lundquist: Up Front
Golden-oldie lessons
Vendors and prognosticators are either
wringing their hands looking for the next big
thing or worrying that IT has become a lowpriced
commodity to be purchased like electricity
or paper clips. They could learn a thing
or two from mainframes, pay phones and backhoes.
Here’s why. The mainframe business has been predicted
to die ever since IBM developed the Model 704
in 1957. Full-time venture capitalist and part-time Fortune
columnist Stewart Alsop predicted that the last
mainframe would be unplugged in 1996. This month,
IBM once again proved Alsop’s and others’ predictions
to be ludicrously off the mark by introducing the z990,
code-named T-Rex. The advance of Intel-based microprocessors and Microsoft
software was supposed to be the equivalent of the cataclysmic asteroid impact that
wiped out the dinosaurs. It has been little more than a summer meteor shower.
Why do mainframes continue to
inhabit the planet? That they work as
advertised is probably the immediate
answer. The stories about old mainframes
still cranking out reports and
doing financials on some proprietary program
written in the 1970s are legion. A
second reason is that if you are willing
to invest—say, about $1 billion over four
years—you can make a mainframe
that looks a lot like what IBM is selling.
“We continue to invest in those features
and capabilities our customers
are asking for,” Peter McCaffrey, IBM’s
director of product marketing for the
zSeries of mainframes, told me. Combining
the reliability and scale of mainframes
with recent developments such
as Linux has created an alluring platform
for e-commerce.
What’s more, working on a platform
that pundits are forever declaring extinct
has proved motivational to IBM engineers.
“Every once in a while, they
have a good laugh over it. In the end, it
drives our engineers to constantly reinvent
the platform,” said McCaffrey.
26 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003
Now, pay phones. They are ubiquitous
and yet underused in this era of cell
phones. When Intel introduced its
wireless chips under the Centrino
label, it produced a movie, ostensibly
humorous, that included a spoof on
pay phones. Now, Verizon is striking
back by adding wireless hot-spot capabilities
to its pay phones. Starting in New
York, Verizon is making hot-spot access
for 802.11-enabled devices free for Verizon
Internet access customers.
This is a smart move for Verizon
and a challenge to all those venture
capitalists who were betting on the
vendors of equipment you’d need to be
wirelessly logging on at McDonald’s as
you scarf down your Big Mac. Philip Nutsugah,
executive director for broadband
wireless at Verizon, said the company
intends to have 1,000 pay phone hot spots
in New York by year’s end.
Now take a guess what the following
quote refers to. “Every feature was
designed with productivity, serviceability
and reliability in mind.” No, it’s not
Scott McNealy trying to persuade you to
buy more Solaris, and it’s not Bill
Gates contending he finally has the security
thing under control. The quote was
part of a press release for the new John
Deere 710G backhoe introduced in
January and replete with new features
and technologies. In a 1997 article on
HotWired.com titled “50 Ways to Crash
the Net,” security expert Simson Garfinkel
included buying 10 backhoes as
one of the 50. That’s because, back
then, critical Internet backbones too
often ran through underground cables,
which too frequently fell victim to the
digging of backhoes.
When a backhoe blade sliced through
a cable and cut off Internet access to a
big chunk of Boston on May 13, I started
to wonder if backhoe technology is evolving
faster than the physical security of
the Internet.
I tracked down Garfinkel, now going
for his doctorate at MIT. While it
might take more than 10 backhoes to
do the job now, the physical security
of the Internet’s routers, name servers
and associated hardware remains far
too vulnerable for the elevated threats
the Net faces, Garfinkel said. “There
ERIC_ LUNDQUIST@ZIFFDAVIS.COM
Why do mainframes continue to inhabit
the planet? That they work as advertised
is probably the immediate answer.
is a very high risk of physical damage.
People tend to forget about physical
security,” he said.
Part of progress is the illusion that we
leave some things behind. But some
golden-oldie technologies stick around
for a reason. They’re good at what they
do. Still, that backhoe technology remains
one step ahead of Internet architects
should give us all pause. ´