How things have changed. Back in March 1991 (PDF), Stewart Alsop, venture capitalist and one-time editor-in-chief of InfoWorld, said, “I predict that the last mainframe will be unplugged on March 15, 1996.” In 2010, while IBM doesn’t break out its profits by individual server line, IBM’s systems and technology group, reported 1st quarter revenue of $3.4 billion. While IBM’s System z, aka mainframes, revenue fell 17%, a billion bucks or so of business still isn’t anything to sneeze at.

So what happened to give the mainframe a new lease on life? In a word: Linux.

Complete story: http://blogs.computerworld.com/16284/ten_years_of_ibm_mainframe_linux