Future of Tandem Mainframes

ipavan · New User Joined: 12 Jun 2005 Posts: 28 Location: Hyderabad

Hi,

I am having an offer to work on Tandem Mainframes. Presently I am working on IBM Mainframes. How is the future for Tandem Mainframes(HP Mainframes). Can I shift from IBM mainframes to Tandem Mainframes. I request the members of the forum whoever has knowledge about the above topic to advice me.

Thanking you,

Pavan

khamarutheen · Active Member Joined: 23 Aug 2005 Posts: 677 Location: NJ

Hi frnd,
The final decission is up to u dear. Since IBM mainframe is used in 80%-85% in many of the organization.. only few uses Tandem Mainframes. so i m not saying it as poor. if u need to jump or need to shif then u have only less options.. so keep in mind and then go ahead.

ravipichukala · New User Joined: 18 Dec 2007 Posts: 1 Location: bangalore

Bill O'Boyle · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 9:25 pm

Tandem's are still the backbone of many large worldwide ATM and Merchant Credit-Card Acquirer systems. They are an expensive machine, but you get what you pay for, because they're very stabile, as in "Tandem Non-Stop". However, I've never thought of them as a Mainframe.

Tandem has a neat (and powerful) Assembler named TAL (Tandem Assembler Language) as well as their own version of COBOL, named SCOBOL.

Tandem's also use "C".

IMHO, if you have the chance to educate yourself with Tandem's, then I would.

"Legacy" (I've grown to despise this term) is not a curse and this platform as well as other's, will be around for quite some time.

Regards,

Bill

Devzee · Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 1:31 am

rkbuckle · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 5:17 am

G'day,

I am the Marketing Director for the IBM SHARE user group here in the US, and the former Chairman of the ITUG (Tandem; NonStop) User Group. I live in both worlds, and there's a place for both System z and the NonStop server.

No matter how you cut and dice it, the NonStop server has now scaled to mainframe size - and it's no coincidence that each vendor is pursuing server consolidation with IBM centered on the System z (with both zOS and zLinux) and HP centered on the NonStop (with Neoview, and Linux).

For the NonStop and Mainframe I maintain a blog - you may want to take a look: Use [URL] BBCode for External Links and I welcome community feedback.

As for the future of NonStop? It certainly has really kicked up a gear now that HP has control and I feel a whole lot better. As for the future of System z - it's clearly growing in the Linux market more than with zOS.

Cheers,
RB

HappySrinu · Active User Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 194 Location: India

As most of the poeple cover this point before, Tandem still uses in some of the largest banks in world and the availability of paid high as less supply of tandem resource on knowledge on mainframe.

Secondly learning new legacy systems is always a value add to your career rather working on same machine.

rkbuckle · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 7:00 pm

When talking about IBM mainframes and Tandem NonStop servers, in both cases, it concerns me whenever I see the term Legacy. Gartner once said any application or solution is legacy the day it goes into production! Today IBM and HP support Java, APplication Servers, SOAP server / XML protocols, SQL data bases, C/C++ - again, exactly what part of the mainframe or the Tandem is legacy? Why does this term continue to persisit?

Cheers,