But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the midrange computer has taken flight once again, bringing users higher levels of performance and the advantages of newer technologies, all at lower costs and without the proprietary baggage of the past.
In fact, vendors say that state and local governments are showing renewed interest in midrange computers as their reliance on technology continues to increase. This interest is reflected in a recent report by G2 Research Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.), that shows state and local government information processing on mainframe platforms dropping from 78 percent in 1988 to 42 percent by 1998, with midrange and PC computing growing substantially.
While PCs have made tremendous inroads in government information processing, agencies and departments are finding certain limitations with desktop computers. "PCs are great for productivity, but not availability," said Steven Aucoin, director of Data General's Aviion product marketing program. "For mission-critical applications, you want computers that are available all the time - like the midrange."
Vendors point to superior performance, systems support, connectivity, high fault tolerance and a wide choice of departmental applications when discussing the difference between midrange computers and high-end PCs. But a recent report by research firm Computer Intelligence/InfoCorp says that emerging PC technologies and a new generation of high-performance processors will intensify the competition between midrange computers and PCs.
Midrange Performance Increasing
Since 1989, the performance of midrange computers has increased sixfold while the price per MIPS (millions of instructions per second) has dropped eightfold during the same period. The price/performance changes of midrange computers have occurred at a faster rate than PCs, partly as a reaction to the rapid growth of the PC market, according to the report.
However, technology changes in midrange computers must continue and performance levels will have to remain much higher than PCs if midrange systems are going to avoid the fate of the mainframe. PCs have driven the cost of performance to less than $400 per MIPS, while the number of MIPS per PC have increased fivefold, according to Computer Intelligence Corp.
But don't just look at MIPS performance when comparing midrange computers to PCs, argue vendors. "A better measurement of midrange computers is their performance in a range of tasks, from multitasking to multiprocessing," said Data General's Aucoin. In addition, vendors point out that if you factor in the high degree of functionality of midrange computers, their value increases substantially when matched against PCs.
Midrange computers differ from high-end PCs with their support for large memory and storage needs as well as for large numbers of users and peripherals. They also provide better systems and network support. Here's what some of the leading midrange vendors have to say about their products and strategies:
DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION
As a full service vendor, Digital provides a line of high-end PCs running on Pentium microprocessors, but its midrange strategy is centered around the Alpha, Digital's 64-bit, RISC (reduced instruction set computing) chip, which ranks as one of the fastest commercially available microprocessors.
What sets Digital's midrange computers apart from the others, according to Bruce Augenstein, Digital's marketing manager for government and education, is not just their speed, but their support of multiple operating systems. In addition to UNIX (DEC OSF/1) and VMS (the operating system for the VAX), Alpha also supports Windows NT, the network operating system from Microsoft.
Alpha servers are designed for fast, low-cost upgrades and many provide symmetric multiprocessing, an emerging computing strategy that puts several processors into a computer to handle process-intensive applications. Digital has just announced a new line of midrange server products, ranging in price from $16,000 to $120,000.
HEWLETT-PACKARD
Since 1986, Hewlett-Packard has been producing midrange computers using its Precision Architecture (PA) RISC technology. Today, the HP 9000 Series 800 midrange computers come in three different classes, with the low-end E class capable of running 100-190 transactions per second (tps), the midrange class running 80-400 tps and the corporate server class capable of running 300-2000 tps. The operating system for the Series 800 computers is HP's version of UNIX.
Michael Nixon, an HP product manager, listed price, performance and easy upgrade capabilities as key features of HP's midrange strategies. "We offer a minimum of three to four performance upgrades within the same package," he said, "therefore it's very easy for the customer to ratchet up their computer's performance without having to move to a higher product line." He also stressed the Series 800's high degree of integration for storage and memory needs, interoperability and the wide range of available applications that run on the HP 9000.
DATA GENERAL
Data General has converted its minicomputer business into a UNIX-based server strategy that is focused on high-availability, mission-critical applications. According to Steven Aucoin, specialization is key to survival, along with leveraging new technologies to keep ahead of others and the PC world. He said that Data General was the first firm to incorporate disk array technology into its midrange computers, giving them near fault-tolerant storage capabilities.
Data General's midrange product line is the Aviion, a symmetric multiprocessing system, which has anywhere from two to sixteen processors, depending on the computer model. Aviion's customers tend to be organizations that need nonstop availability of information processing. "More state and local governments are falling into this category," he pointed out, "as their reliance on computers grows."
IBM
Is the minicomputer dead? Not quite. It still lives on as the AS/400. The last true proprietary minicomputer, the AS/400 also happens to be biggest midrange seller in the world. More than 275,000 AS/400 units have been installed since the system was introduced in 1988.
With such a large installed base comes an enormous breadth of applications - some 25,000 - making the AS/400 an important system in today's government market, according to William W. Porter, Jr., IBM's segment leader for state and local government in the Midwest. "Many local governments don't have the staff to develop the kind of applications they need," said Porter. "So rather than spend scarce tax dollars trying to develop custom-made applications, they can pick from many government-specific programs designed specifically for the AS/400."
The AS/400 provides superior connectivity compared to PC systems, along with comprehensive database capabilities and data security, two features of growing importance to local governments, according to Porter. As for its proprietary status in an open systems world, IBM is in the process of introducing a number of improvements that give the AS/400 client/server capabilities and allow it to run IBM's version of UNIX. IBM has also announced plans to migrate the AS/400 to 64-bit RISC technology based on the PowerPC microprocessor in 1995.
UNISYS CORP
Another mainframe producer, Unisys has added midrange products to its A6 and 2200 line of computers. G.W. Smith, Unisys' director of client/server marketing, described his firm's midrange strategy as one that provides high transaction capabilities in a multiple operating system environment, including Windows NT, UNIX and Unisys' own proprietary operating system. He added that Unisys has a broad range of government-based applications designed to run on midrange systems.
"The midrange market is changing rapidly toward a transaction-based, distributed environment," said Smith. "Customers want solutions, not just hardware." He added that in government, as elsewhere, the focus is on developing client/server applications and enterprisewide databases, two trends that depend on midrange computers to work.
GOVERNMENT AND THE MIDRANGE
Few, if any, government agencies have a strategy to develop applications based solely on midrange computers. Instead, they are looking for turnkey solutions to problems that may or may not involve midrange hardware. However, it is safe to say there are certain areas of government where midrange computers are used more frequently than others.
Finance and administration, especially at the city and county level, have been frequent users of midrange computers to drive payroll, human resources, accounting and other applications. Public safety is another area of government which relies on the high availability of midrange systems, especially for computer-aided dispatching. A third key area is the growing field of imaging applications. Midrange computers typically have the performance to drive the complex software and the numerous devices that make up an imaging system, including such peripherals as optical storage jukeboxes, scanners, faxes, printers, as well as high-performance workstations.
Two significant trends are behind the increased use of midrange computers in state and local government. One is the shift to open systems. "Government agencies want open systems because of price/performance improvements and the flexibility to expand applications to handle future needs," said Lynn Gardner, HP's marketing manager for state and local government. Using midrange computers running UNIX, agencies have the ability to expand cost-effectively, she added.
The second trend is government's growing dependence on networking. "The use of networks in government is increasing substantially," said Digital's Bruce Augenstein.
Gary Franck, vice president of public sector marketing for Unisys pointed out that governments want to share more information between agencies, but in a distributed environment so that each agency continues to control their own data. "Midrange computers are more suitable for these kinds of applications," he said.
Meanwhile, some agencies are finding that as their PC local area networks add more users, they are not powerful enough to run applications at peak performance. They need the strength of a midrange computer to handle the job of running systems, such as imaging, GIS and even mission-critical applications, over the network.
But as Jack Rothschild, marketing manager for Data General, explained, midrange computers are not in competition with PCs, but are in a state of co-existence. He added that computing networks, for imaging as well as other applications, are often best configured by having a midrange computer as the server and PCs on the users' desktops. Augenstein agreed. "The future of computing will not come down to a choice between one hardware platform or another," he said, "there's going to be a blend of both."
