Although there may be some 'success' stories the issue I have with most vendors is where they tout - We migrated this company off the mainframe and save 10,000+ MIPS. In reality they probably moved a small application of about 1000 - 2000 MIPS which happened to be the last one on the mainframe.
What is also interesting is that they only really changed the platform. My questions are: What is the transaction rate? What response time do they achieve and/or expect? What SLA do they have for availability? How many staff is required to support the new environment? Etc. I have seen these 'migrations' or 're-hosting' and the final costs usually end up higher than they were with the mainframe. I know of a company that ran their financials, AP, PO, Payroll, etc. on 9 total CICS regions, 3 test, 3 QA and 3 Prod. They decided that SAP was a better way to go and started the migration. Ended up with over 400 servers and still have a small piece on the mainframe. Need to do an upgrade? Took over 7 days. Is there a place for products like this, as well as Alchemy and Micro-Focus? Yes. But take it with a grain of salt. Glenn -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Roberts, John J Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2012 5:18 PM To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Subject: Re: 21st Century Migrates Mainframe with Clerity >Subject: Re: 21st Century Migrates Mainframe with Clerity >Last I heard, they were a relatively small Prop/Casualty insurer.... >Certainly not a State Farm, Prudential, Farmers, Allstate,..... Just the same, Clerity has had a few high profile successes doing migrations. The NYSE used the Clerity solution back in 2008 to migrate a major trading application. 10 million lines of code were re-hosted and a 1660 MIPS mainframe complex was retired. So it can be done. Back in 2004-2005, I was part of a small team at the Washington State Department of Licensing that migrated the Driver and Vehicle licensing apps off their UNISYS mainframe onto Windows Servers running Fujitsu NetCOBOL. This too was entirely successful. I have heard good things about the Oracle solution which is built upon Tuxedo. There have been some big failures too. It seems that you need to be very selective about what apps you attempt to replatform. CICS/DB2 seems to be the sweet spot. But once you start introducing the complexities of SYSPLEX, IRC, MRO, VSAM, DL/1, PL/I, etc. you are heading into uncharted waters and need to be very careful. My opinion is that such replatforming projects will continue. But I don't think IBM listers need fear, since I believe that the rate of system programmer retirements will far exceed the rate of mainframe platform retirements, at least for the next decade. John P.S I have no relationship with any migration vendors mentioned here. I used to work for Fujitsu/Amdahl/DMR, but that career ended in 2008. Now I am just an independent contractor. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN LEGAL DISCLAIMER The information transmitted is intended solely for the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of or taking action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you have received this email in error please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer. By replying to this e-mail, you consent to SunTrust's monitoring activities of all communication that occurs on SunTrust's systems. SunTrust is a federally registered service mark of SunTrust Banks, Inc. Live Solid. Bank Solid. is a service mark of SunTrust Banks, Inc. [ST:XCL] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
