All You Need to Know about Functions of a Mainframe Computers

By | August 30, 2013

Mainframes are a class of high-performing computing devices and find large scale applications in diverse businesses and industries. Mainframes are used for computation, storage, processing data and performing other tasks.

Large-scale organizations such as banks and financial institutions, business enterprises use mainframe computers to process their massive amounts of business data. These computers offer reliable computing performance and are stable. They run for several years without any trouble.

Modern mainframe computers offer more useful functions than other computers in terms of data repositories, data permissions, time allocation and running huge applications at a time.

Mainframes store all the users’ data in their own disk, whereas personal computers need hard drive for every workstation. Whenever a user logs in to a mainframe computer from a remote area or terminal to access respective files, a mainframe offers or facilitates the user to access files or programs to execute. Simply put, mainframes act as a central data repository.

Storing all business applications and data in a single mainframe is advantageous to the firms productivity and efficiency. However, if different users want to access these applications and data, the administrator should program user privileges to access that data only to the authorized users to implement security and eliminate serious implications.

Mainframes allocate processor time to each user based on their priorities attached to the accounts. However, allocation of mainframe processor time to user depends on system administrator of mainframe. Mainframes run several applications at a sheer level of speed.

Thus, we can say that mainframes are ideal for running huge applications at a reliable speed.