Although not a formal hypothesis, as expected, a greater number of firms had personal computers than
mainframe computers, indicating a considerable penetration of this technology in different logistics and marketing functions.
The Year 2000 problem is not limited merely to midsize or large
mainframe computers. Many agencies have local area networks and stand-alone computers that prove just as susceptible to the problem as larger computers.
Unfortunately, because of the historically high cost of electronic computing on large
mainframe computers and medium-size minicomputers, CAI has not been used extensively.
There aren't too many statisticians today who have fond memories of
mainframe computer labs.
Data warehouses run on Unix and Microsoft/NT client/servers at a fraction of the cost of a
mainframe computer. But as companies such as State Street Bank and Merck have discovered, the real payoff comes not necessarily in dollars, but rather in time saved, better decision making, and improved corporatewide communication.
Because of the massive data manipulation required, it runs on an IBM 3090
mainframe computer.
In conventional
mainframe computer design, history records at 20- to 22-percent compound annual improvement rate.
A decade ago, 20-megabyte hard drives were used in
mainframe computer systems as a mass storage device.
* Interactive response time from each customer-service terminal to the
mainframe computer must be immediate.
* As the price per megabyte for high-end disk drives decreases rapidly, there is a major impact on sales revenues for
mainframe computer disk drive arrays, which tend to use a large number of drives.
The year 2000 is proving a headache for the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the auditing standards board, the Internal Revenue Service and a lot of anxious
mainframe computer users.