Can anythink kill x8664

they sold IBM PCs in lieu of mainframe terminals (at about the same price) ... as part of this, the communication group acquired a big install base of terminal emulation products

the millions of installed mainframe terminals could be upgraded with a pc that cost about the same as the terminal ... and with a single desktop footprint for display and keyboard ... provide both online mainframe connectivity as well as some local computing capability.

with the spread of (peer-to-peer) networking and client-server, the comminication group responded with all sorts of tactics ... including SAA (late 80s) in an attempt to contain the migration away from terminal emulation.

there is even an infamous internal world-wide networking conference ... where a senior person from the disk division gave a talk about how the communication group was going to be responsible for the dissolution of the mainframe disk division. the disk division had been coming up with all sort of innovative client-server solutions that provided high-speed-high-thruput access to data on mainframe disk frames ... and there were constantly being blocked by the comminication group defending their install base of terminal emulation products.

we had come up with 3-tier archtecture in the late 80s and were out pitching it to customer executives ...

and taking a lot of heat from the communication and SAA forces.

a couple recent posts on the