Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 12, 1993 TAG: 9309100063
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: John Levin
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's a decision that's been a year in the making and could take another several months or longer to implement. The Roanoke-based company is waiting for development of specialized software before making the switch.
"The mainframe does everything we want it to do," said William Battle, president and chief executive. "It's just such an inflexible bugger."
The company decided it needs "a system that allows operating departments more flexibility as changes in the marketplace occur," Battle said.
The change will be expensive, Battle said, declining to put a figure on the plan. But he said it's not very different from upgrading the mainframe that Shenandoah leases.
And while he's been warned about limitations of small computer systems, Battle said his company is willing to wait for the software it needs to be perfected.
At Norfolk Southern Corp., vice president for information technology Gerald Durand said, "There's no way I could get rid of the mainframe, even if I wanted to."
Norfolk Southern's big electronic brain in Atlanta is tied to a network of 15,000 computer terminals and local computer networks in every field office of the 20-state company.
NS was among the first railroads in the 1970s to put computers in its rail yards. "Our philosophy is the local office and freight yards need to know more information about local business than the central office does."
But, he added, "there is a lot of information that has to be centralized and protected." And that's NS' mainframe's primary function.
Durand, like many computer experts in American corporations, today faces increasing demands for the quick analysis the machines provide workers. He also must balance that against tightening budget scrutiny.
"At few companies can people stand up and truthfully say they've spent exactly enough on computer gear and bought exactly the right equipment," Durand said. At Norfolk Southern, "we've probably underspent," he said without revealing the company's budget for the technology.
The dollars-and-cents approach to buying computers is leading many big companies down the wrong path, said William Carico, an Austin, Texas, consultant to large-system users. His current message is to think twice before tossing out the mainframe.
Carico is president of Acts Corp., a company he founded in 1981 after stints with Intel Corp., a California maker of microsystems, and International Business Machines Corp., the company that made many of corporate America's original mainframes. He joined IBM in 1973, the year he graduated from Roanoke College.
The problem Carico sees is that computers have become a fast-paced and confusing product for executives charged with buying and maintaining them. That's especially true since IBM, the industry's traditional leader, has fallen on hard times and seemingly lost its own focus.
"We've got an industry in chaos and lots of people are exploiting that chaos," he said.
Companies stung by multimillion-dollar price tags on mainframes they're now being told are obsolete are too quickly replacing them with less-expensive - but also less-robust - personal computer networks. Within a few years, some of those same companies will discover the small systems aren't as reliable, can't be forced to do new work or easily expanded and have high hidden costs in terms of lower productivity and technicians to maintain them.
The enticement to switch is the huge difference in the more obvious costs. Running a mainframe easily can cost a company millions of dollars a year, said Barton Wilner, general manager of Entre Computer Center in Roanoke. A piece of software for a mainframe runs $250,000 to twice that amount; for a microcomputer software is about $200.
Wilner used to sell mainframes to banks before switching to mainframes and local networks.
"What we say is the mainframe doesn't have to do all the work," he said. A bank may store data about its accounts on a mainframe but still needs smarter computers on the desktops of loan officers, he said.
Both Wilner and Carico concede the computer industry's growth over the past decade has been because of proliferation of small computers at the expense of big machines. Both the media and computer users have been misled, Carico said.
"After 10 years of personal computers, people think they're literate in the industry. Executives are confused, ill-equipped and don't know what they're doing. We call it management by magazine article."
John Levin is business editor of the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB