>Also, I was nodding in agreement with John McKown up until he wrote that "most >successful migration projects [from mainframes] deliver a positive ROI
Actually, you blame the wrong John for this quote. And it was somewhat taken out of context. I was careful to point out that many migrations fail to deliver the quite rosy results initially claimed. And also that many such projects fail, for the same old reasons many other IT projects fail. But in my own experience, the migrations on which I had some involvement that were technically successful, were also financially successful (and not by stretching it out for "centuries"). I have also been involved in two failures. One failed because the prime contractor failed to perform due diligence and found themselves with a loosely defined scope and some migration issues for which there was no easy solution. The other failed due to deficiencies in the chosen tool regarding data integrity, and concerns about the migration tool vendor's ability to provide future support. I have also heard of several others that were successful, both technically and financially. First and foremost in my mind is the NYSE, which migrated a major trading application using Clerity (UNIKICKS) back in 2008. IMO, the participants on this list are unnecessarily fearful of the risk that legacy migration poses to their livelihoods. For these reasons: (1) Migration of a legacy application is almost always Plan "B". Or even Plan "C". Most projects start as a desire to completely replace the aging apps with brand new Java or DotNet custom apps. Or go with an ERP package like SAP or Oracle. Only when they get over the sticker shock for these alternatives do management start thinking about the half-measure of a migration. (2) Migration technology is mature only for the "sweet spot" of COBOL/CICS/DB2. Start throwing in IDMS, ADABAS, NATURAL, PL/1, ADSO, IMS-DC, or any of a thousand other things that are fairly common, and you quickly get to the "bleeding edge" of migration technology. (3) Sometimes migration is just another dead end, only cheaper than the original. (4) It is hard to do migrations piecemeal. So many are "big-bang" implementations, which are risky. So the risk-adverse clients like banks and insurance won't go for it ever. (5) Plan "A" for many companies is to merge with another. One result of such mergers is that often there is a merging of IT technologies over time, possibly resulting in lights out for more mainframes. (6) Successful migrations require people skilled in both the legacy and target environments. These are rare. (7) Many IBM listers fail to realize that Legacy Migration is a career opportunity for them. So even if more clients start doing them, they can leverage their legacy knowledge by participating on such projects. John Roberts ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
