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Despite the manifold attractions of client/server systems, the mainframe seems to be sticking around, according to Garth Saloner, Robert A. Magowan Professor of Strategic Management and Economics, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
"For several placid decades, before the rate of technological change hit warp speed, corporations in search of computer power had basically one option: the mainframe," said Saloner.
"These large, inflexible, and costly machines often required special climate-controlled rooms and weren't easy to use," said Saloner.
The operating system on a mainframe was cryptic, requiring a specialized skill set, and it was difficult for ordinary users to get information from the computer. So when minicomputers came on the scene in the 1970s and user-friendly personal computers became widely available in the 1980s, it was thought that mainframes soon would be relegated to the attic to molder with the buggy whips.
"With desktop PCs hooked through a network to a central 'server,' capable of storing large amounts of data, companies now had at their disposal an architecture-known as 'client/server-that...