S/360 legacy

IBM dominated the computer industry in the 1960s and 1970s with its S/360 architecture mainframes. With the introduction of the PC, IBM's ability to control accounts from the center - a key part of its sales strategy - disappeared, and the company has been trying to find its way in a "post S/360 world" ever since.

But despite the rise of client-server and the web, S/360 will be around for a while. Companies invested in COBOL applications and customized MRP systems that can't easily be replaced and indeed in might not be cost justifiable to do so. So MVS, VSE, VM, IMS, CICS and CMS are likley to be around for quite some time.       

Corporations face a dilemma - when their core business is shrinking slowly but not going away, they are held hostage by the past, committed to supporting those legacy systems and customers and unable to make a clean break (even if they could come up with another 'killer app", which is anyway far from certain).

Microsoft is in the same position today that IBM was twenty years ago.  And Apple may well be there twenty years from now.

As the 21st century matures, the tech landscape may well become littered with semi-zombie companies that are dying but haven't quite stopped moving yet...