>The money spent trying to make that environment fast, IMHO, would be better
>spent getting away from that environment.  Big NT iron is pretty cheap at
>this point.

Indeed, it has always been an expensive struggle to get mainframes to
serve at speeds proportional to their expense.
I could only add that big linux iron is even cheaper than NT, and
becoming a mission-critical platform for many companies (who are uncomfortable
depending upon a monopolistic software supplier).
I've heard rumors of IBM coming to support linux, and perhaps we
will see an ADSM server for it.  Linux has made tremendous strides in
the past year, with an ever-increasing amount of commercial software
becoming available for it.
      Richard Sims, BU