Sometimes people get so caught up with the latest and greatest in technology that they immediately begin writing the obituaries for the older technology, declaring it obsolete and heading out the door. In some cases it’s the truth. Cars replaced horses, cel phones replaced phone booths (much to Clark Kent’s detriment), and indoor bathrooms replaced opening a window and leaning out. Then there’s the mainframe.

But all the same, there are even more predictions that are either premature, or just plain over-stated. While the print industry and the postal service have not been made extinct by the Internet, they have certainly lost a lot of their importance. But they’re not dead.

There’s nothing like computer and IT advances to really bring out the doomsayers. For instance, take the venerable mainframe. In the face of advances like client servers, mini computers, and mid-range systems, systems working in collaboration with tools like Hadoop, the pundits predicted that the mainframe would go the way of the dinosaur.

“Did you just call me a mainframe???”

As we observe the computer mainframe at 50 years old, we revisit the question: are mainframes a dying breed?

Not So Fast

Like the old man in the plague cart in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the mainframe is not dead yet. Many large Fortune 500 companies still rely on the size and reliability of big iron to handle the sheer amount of information, much of it the result of millions of transactions that are posted and processed, necessary to conduct financial transactions. Utilities, retailers, and especially banks have need of mainframes to handle the more than 30 billion transactions every day.

As impressive as things like smaller systems and efficient client servers are, the sheer volume and complexity of these big companies’ demands are enough to overwhelm these new toys. It becomes rather clear that the big boys are still needed.

Or to put it in terms of firepower, as sleek, swift, and sexy as those modern missile ships are, the big old battleships are still much needed. There are just some situations that call for a good old fashioned broadside.

But What About The Future Of The Mainframe?

Okay then, so mainframes are safe. For now. What about another decade or two down the road? Surely they’re living on borrowed time, right?

Not really. You’ve heard of the phrase “adapt or perish”? Thus far, mainframes have been able to adapt to the changes in technology, and as long as they continue to do so, they remain an important part of the IT world.

For instance, mainframes and Hadoop server clusters are working together, creating a level of processing power that is greater than the sum of its parts. Today’s mainframes are offering computing platforms that are completely virtualized and fully integrated. A normal mainframe system can handle more than 100 Linux virtual server instances, for instance.

Mainframe vendors are also making sure that these old dogs learn all the new tricks. Whether its service-oriented architectures, Web 2.0 applications, or business intelligence, these big boys are getting the job done, with the majority of people who benefit from them being blissfully unaware of how this relatively old form of IT is meeting the challenges of the 21st century. And with smart devices growing even more popular, the IT industry will need big machines to process, store, and manage all of that nice new data.

So, no worries. The mainframe is here to stay. It may not look or act exactly the same as it did a half a century ago, but all that means is that the mainframe has simply adapted to the times, though it’s central function remains essentially the same.