According to a study conducted by the Ministry of Industry and Energy and SEDISI, the Spanish Association of Information Technology Companies, IBM Corp continues to dominate the large systems arena in Spain – but its mainframe market share is nevertheless rather lower than in most other markets. Of the total business generated in the mainframe sector, reports Computerworld Espana, IBM has been responsible for 45%, followed at a distance by Unisys Corp with a still high 17.2%, Compagnie des Machines Bull with 12.4%, Fujitsu Ltd, despite its favored position with the Spanish government, only 6.5%, Comparex Informations-systeme AG, 6.4%, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, 5.9% and NCR Corp, 2.7%. The study reports that of the business generated in 1995, IBM’s market share rises to 67%, while Comparex, Fujitsu and NCR also better their over-all figures. Of a total of 959 machines currently installed in Spain, 76 were sold in 1995 – 51 by IBM. Speaking to Computing Espana, direct or of the large systems business unit for IBM Espana SA Alvaro Alvarez-Santullano claimed that the importance of the mainframe is unquestionable, as it learns to find a new role in systems technology without surrendering its historic values of reliability, security and scalability. The world of Network Computing and the Internet, with the need to attend to millions of connected users, will create new growth opportunities for the S/390 system, simply because it is the most suitable system to provide this kind of access and to guarantee transactions, Alvarez-Santullano said, ignoring the fact that if IBM cuts software prices enough to make them competitive with Unix, its profits go out of the window. Ian Sullivan, in charge of marketing mainframes at Fujitsu Espana SA, observed that in response to pressure from open environments and particularly Unix and Windows, the main challenges facing the mainframe are: to improve its price-performance ratio, continue the process of integration with open networks, reduce operational costs, maintain high levels of reliability, improve productivity with respect to the development of applications and, finally, achieve greater processing power. Sullivan said that in 1995 Fujitsu Espana sold 39 % more Multi-purpose Information Processors than the previous year, notching its highest figure in five years.
