IT Essentials: Of Mickey Mouse and mainframes

Old rides, like old tech, compare poorly to their successors

Just as laser pointers pale in comparison to 3D motion tracking, mainframes are being replaced - sort of - by new competitors. But the big blue gorilla that is IBM won't go down without a fight.

Last week I only worked three days out of the last five.

That's not much of brag; I made up for it at the weekend, when I travelled to Orlando for an event run by our sister site MES Computing. The break was great, though, taking a long weekend to visit Disneyland Paris with my wife.

I hadn't been to the park in 30 years, and predictably, there were some differences. Theme parks might not change as quickly as software, but it's had plenty of time for transformation.

One of the newest rides was an interactive Spider-Man experience, where you wear 3D glasses and throw your hands forward to shoot webs at virtual enemies. It was such good fun we queued for it twice.

Compared to the much older Buzz Lightyear ride, which had a similar concept using tech that wasn't exactly pushing the envelope when it was built, the experiences were night and day. The newer one was slick, accurate and provided clear feedback and scoring, while I seemed to gain points at random in the older ride, with no idea if what I'd done was good or bad, or even how I'd accomplished it.

If you think I'm using this as an analogy for legacy versus modern software, you're only half right.

Back in the '50s, a plucky little company called IBM started producing mainframes, and dominated the computer market for the next three decades.

Today personal computers have largely taken over, but some organisations still run core apps on mainframe tech - apps that can't be easily lifted and shifted to newer hardware.

Mainframes are obviously the Buzz Lightyear here, but PCs aren't the Spider-Man. That honour goes to virtual mainframes, a way to run mainframe apps on modern architecture - some developed with the blessing of IBM, and some notably not.

The case of IBM vs LzLabs, ongoing for two years at this point, is soon due to come to trial in London. On the surface this sounds like a simple case of patent infringement, but has implications for competition law across the UK and EU.

This is hardly the first case of a tech giant butting up against competition law, but is one of the few to proceed all the way through to trial. Regulators around the world - and the industry - will be watching closely.

IT Essentials: Of Mickey Mouse and mainframes

Old rides, like old tech, compare poorly to their successors

Just as laser pointers pale in comparison to 3D motion tracking, mainframes are being replaced - sort of - by new competitors. But the big blue gorilla that is IBM won't go down without a fight.

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