EXEC I/O

Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems, famously asserted that, "the network is the computer." In its time, this was an important and insightful statement, as islands of computing joined together to form the Internet.

Indeed, we tend to think of computing as something accessible anywhere in the world from our own interface, be it a workstation, a handheld, a laptop, or some other device. So, in a sense, his mantra will continue to ring true.

However, I think we're now entering an era where the network extends beyond even the Internet to include every other network we participate in, such as cell phone networks and social networks - and the original insight in McNealy's observation has become so ubiquitous in its application as to be irrelevant through its obviousness.

At the same time, a much older, more deeply-entrenched reality is beginning to reassert its relevance. Who paid for all of these computers, anyway, and what is it they're supposed to be doing?

The fact is that every computer purchased by a business or similar organization of any kind, or even intended for use in dealing with such entities, is paid for with business money and intended for use in supporting and furthering business.

Which means that the time has come for a reckoning of sorts - even a bit of "natural selection" one might say. Why do we have all these funny boxes everywhere that seem to do every sort of thing in every different way? What is their business purpose and value?

After all, what business in today's economy can afford to have an overabundance of machines that run at 20% of their capacity (when they're working) and take an apparently exponentiating number of support staff to take care of them? Where's the business value in that?

Of course, I'm not advocating some sort of revolution. Inertia is a powerful thing, and as long as legacy distributed systems perform a needed role, good for them. Still, the mainframe has quite a legacy of excellent performance according to business requirements as well.

So, I guess what I'm calling for is just a bit of an awakening to the fact that, while bells and whistles are cool, we need to wake up and realize that no amount of technological innovation is more important than the businesses that are paying for functional information systems. So, innovations must serve to survive.

Bringing us back, of course, to the mainframe. It's not about the technology (which is excellent and leading edge, mind you). It's about the business.

That's why I say the business is the computer. And you can quote me on that!