About 10 years ago I was working at a firm in Southern California.  They
hired a new VP over the technology area.  His goal in life was to get off
the mainframe.  He convinced the powers above that he could run the entire
workload currently on a S/390 on a quad processor running Windows, saving
the company tons of money.  One of the many things people who suggest
migration off of mainframes fail to realize is that you can run big iron at
100% all day long with no real impact.  You can run a Windows or Unix box
at only about 50% max, maybe 60%.

128 quad processors later, and an increase in the budget of almost $2M over
the mainframe, they still could not handle the workload.  I have no idea
where the insanity ended (I left the firm for another job, having no
interest becoming a Windows admin as opposed to an IBM s/p).

The last I heard some years ago, they were still running z/OS on a small
box because one of the major systems written in assembler absolutely could
not be replaced/reproduced in any software that provided the response times
required for that application.  Wonder where they are now and what the IT
budget is.

Ramsey

On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 6:45 AM Colin Paice <[email protected]> wrote:

> It would be interesting to see the true cost after migrating to the new
> systems.  20 years ago I remember seeing a comparison which showed going
> off the main frame was going to save Mega bucks for someone.  When  you dug
> into it little things like
>
>    1. They had configured a top of the range z/OS box and it ran at 10%
>    The mid range boxes were spec'ed just right.
>    2. With the mainframe the costs included backing up data, and taking
>    tapes off site etc.  The midrange did no backups.
>
> And so on...  But let's not look at the facts too closely ... the director
> said  "let us look Strategically!"    I met people from the company a few
> years later.   They were not happy bunnies - "with z/OS it just worked"
> they sighed into their beer.
>
> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 12:12, Robert Prins <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> https://www.infoworld.com/article/3617936/how-companies-are-moving-on-from-cobol.html
> >
> > Commenting on the many very questionable claims is of course not
> possible,
> > sigh....
> > --
> > Robert AH Prins
> > robert.ah.prins(a)gmail.com
> > The hitchhiking grandfather - https://prino.neocities.org/
> > Some REXX code for use on z/OS -
> > https://prino.neocities.org/zOS/zOS-Tools.html
> >
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