Downsized First Mainframe in Florida 45 Billion Dollar Tax Roll
ORLANDO, Fla. — Real estate is a pretty hot commodity in Orange County, Florida — one of the fastest-growing counties in the country. This vacation mecca is home to Disney World, Epcot Center and the Disney MGM Studios Theme Park. And keeping track of the property values of attractions such as these — $45 billion in all — is a big job. A mainframe kind of job.
Or is it?
Not in the opinion of the information systems department of the Orange County Appraiser’s Office. It is within months of unplugging a “maxed-out” IBM 4381 and replacing it with a client/server network.
Mariotti, hardware, network, and solutions provider architected from conception to successful implementation. "The "maxed-out" 4381 Mainframe was reduced to 7 Compaq System Pro's, saving tax payers millions.
Source: Computerworld
The Orange County Appraiser’s Office’s client/server system is a technology junkie’s paradise.
The network itself is a 16M bit/sec. Token Ring running Novell, Inc.’s NetWare Version 3.11 with seven servers connected via a 100M bit/sec. fiber-optic backbone. The server arrangement consists of one 50-MHz 486-based Compaq Computer Corp. system and six 33-MHz 486-based Systempros, including one optical server dedicated to an imaging system used for mapping the Orange County area.
One of the servers also acts as a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) gateway for external TCP/IP systems throughout the county.