It is odd, though, that all of the success stories on Funsoft's web site reflect systems of 1,2,8, and at most, 20 mips. From the PSI SHARE presentation, it appears that 60 mips single-engines are imminent. That stacks up to a pretty big system (600-800 mips?) if MP ratios are decent. I think PSI is in an entirely different league from FLEX-ES.

The vast majority of the profit IBM makes out of mainframes comes from the software, not the hardware. Solutions such as Flex-ES (which now has around 700 installations) provide a hardware equivalent consisting of a high-spec IBM xSeries server and a Flex-ES licence - typical prices are less than $1000/MIPS.

IBM competes in this space too - and can make a z890 f/c 6110 highly competitive at 29 MIPS. The days of high mainframe hardware prices are gone forever.

Far more important in this space is redcuing peripheral costs - replacing expensive external storage with onboard storage. Integrated disks have always been a feature of the lowest end systems.

Running IBM mainframe operating systems on Intel really isn't anything new. Hosting environments such as Flex-ES on UNIX or Linux, UMX or Hercules on Windows, do a very efficient job. I have seen z/OS running perfectly on a very low-spec laptop, slow but effectively. Just imagine what it could do on a big Intel server.

CA has customers doing it today. These are mostly clients who have a mainframe exit strategy but still have critical legacy processes that they've been trying to replace (unsuccessfully) for years.

Usage for these customers puts them in the SMB size of usage even though as a business most of them are anything but. Intel proves to be an effective and economical solution. Many expect still to be using this solution for years.

And the good thing is that they can continue to use the same management software that they've been using for years in order to guarantee Reliability, Availability and Serviceability.