They pointed to the rapidly increasing power of the PC and its ability to foster productivity and efficiency. This makes the PC easy to use because programs and files are displayed with graphics.
Mainframes are cumbersome because their user environment is character-based.
The Year 2000 crisis forced agencies to pay attention to their aging mainframe systems and reinvest in them. Government agencies were forced to deal with Y2K whether they liked it or not, says Bill Smithson, group vice president for information technology at Matcom Corp., an Alexandria, Va., systems integrator. Agencies were forced to recognize the value and importance of their mainframe-based systems, Smithson says. Y2K struck a major chord, says Rob Morris, director of product marketing for Jacada Ltd., a software company that creates Web user interfaces for mainframes. They were left with the bread and butter of their organization.