Conclusion
The mainframe operating systems continue to be a major force in computing. They are extremely reliable and quite versatile. In the server world, the day of the proprietary OS—software designed exclusively for and sold with a specific hardware platform—seems to be fading. The most important such systems extant, VMS and OS/400 are successful and strong, but growth is in the various forms of Unix and in its sibling Linux. Both system managers and software developers like the flexibility of having application software that can run on a variety of platforms. Of course, Unix and Linux don't define the market for server software. Novell and especially Microsoft are key players in server operating systems. We haven't covered these here, since ...
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