NASA has announced that its latest mainframe, a Z9 IBM, has turned off. The whole system was to bezuinigingsredenen migrated to a server platform with Microsoft Windows as its operating system.
The costs of the mainframe to keep it going were not more in proportion to the computing power and the degree to which the system could provide new features that NASA needed. The migration will save the organization $ 5.5 million per year. NASA has in the past ten years, the use of mainframes, more and more reduced. This move was the last step in that process.
In the place of IBM’s Z9 is now a server platform with Windows. The reason is that there is more and easier to find people to play with the new systems work. The group of people who still have mainframes can work is getting smaller and is aging.
Mainframes are known for their rock solid stability, security and computing power. Some companies, especially in the financial sector, use still mainframes, but in many sectors the mainframe little by little replaced by mini-computers and server farms.