IBM Corp sees a three-way future for its mainframe business, saying that while it will continue building monolithic ES/9000s as long as people want them – and suggests that that will be well into the next decade – it will in parallel offer parallel 390 architecture machines, with the first being a moderately parallel dedicated database query processor built of 390-type microprocessors, and a commercial parallel Unix mainframe built of RS/6000 RISCs – Not everyone sees the world from the MVS point of view, Nick Donofrio, senior vice-president and general manager of Enterprise Systems, said with classic understatement; IBM said that follow-on offerings are being developed for specific transaction processing environments and they are being designed to be compatible and to share data with the current ES/9000 line of mainframes.
