"The mainframe is dead." How many times in the last 25 years have you heard that assertion? Maybe you're not a Fortune 500 CIO, but you have a bank account, you make travel reservations, and you file health insurance claims on a mainframe as a customer. We've heard about the demise of the mainframe since the 1980s but, surprise -- it's kicking. IBM recently announced that mainframe sales are up 10% with a 25% gain in the third quarter of 2006 [1].