LinuxPlanet: Test Plan Charlie Unplugged: An Interview with David Boyes

“…Linux itself wasn’t the core of the idea for me. What I
contribute to the process of creating these kinds of solutions is
really the architectural stuff. What I’m into is ‘How do we glue
these things together?'”

“Linux by itself, as a technology exercise, is an interesting
hack. It’s a lot of fun to play with. In terms of sheer
inventiveness, it’s a really neat piece of work. But in terms of
real world scenarios, there are going to be places where it’s not
the right tool. In order for Linux to be successful in the
enterprise, it’s got to operate in an ecosystem where there are
different kinds of tools. It provides a sort of mediation layer,
where what it is presenting is a way to move information through an
enterprise, and possibly some point solutions. Linux helps you glue
all that stuff together so you can present a unified solution.”

“That’s what intrigued us about Linux 390. From an enterprise
perspective, there is little question that System/390 is the most
reliable system in existence. If you look at where enterprises
store their critical data, it’s not on UNIX systems. It’s on the
S/390. After 30 years of ‘the mainframe is dying’, 70% of the data
is still on the mainframe. The idea of Linux in this environment,
especially when combined with VM, represents a way that you can get
enterprise access to this huge amount of data in a way that doesn’t
involve teaching OS/390 all these tricks. OS/390 is really a batch
system with interactive access bolted onto the side, and I mean
that in the Frankenstein sense of bolts sticking out of the side of
its neck. It’s not really what it’s made to do. IBM has made it
better over the last decade, but it was a fight.”

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