I started my career in the seventies, working as a programmer for a Governmental Service Bureau providing service to most of the public sector organizations in my country. We used IBM 360 Mainframes with MVTOperating System.

The V did not stand for Virtual (There was no Virtual Storage support), but stood for Variable, because it was an Operating System capable of managing Variable length partitions.

MVT predecessor was SVS (Single Virtual Storage) followed by MVS (Multiple Virtual Storages).

MVS is the basis for current Mainframe Operating Systems.  It was extended on 1995 and branded OS/390, which was replaced by current Mainframe z/OS Operating System.

In the 1990s many people believed that "the Mainframe is dead".

However, the Mainframe is still a valuable and profitable asset for IBM used by most of the large enterprises.

On July 22 2010, IBM announced the new z-Enterprise system, which is actually a Data Center in a Box, The new z-Enterprise computers supports Mainframe systems (including Linux on Mainframe), AIX servers and Intel based Windows servers. All systems share common Management implemented by firmware.

The new announcement, described by IBM as "The revolutionary new design of the z-Enterprise System", may extend the Mainframe platform era for additional years.

• Data Center in a Box
• Software Development Center In-A-Box: a New INTSPEI Service
• Coyote Point and iXsystems' New "Modular Data Center In A Box" Is Finalist for LinuxWorld's "Best Clustering Platform" Product Excellence Award