But there must have been a lot of successful mainframe migrations
otherwise the mainframe install base wouldn't have shrunk to where it is
today. My wife has worked on a few mainframe to SAP migrations and they
were all successful with very happy customers. Small applications
though. I also know of big sites failing miserably and wasting hundreds
of millions of dollars.
I think one thing is for sure and that's very few companies if any will
choose the mainframe for green fields applications.
On 16/10/2017 12:59 AM, Bill Wilkie wrote:
After many years of writing Assembler and Cobol on a mainframe, I have seen a
lot of technologies rolled out with big promises. THEY ALL FAILED.
I remember one time there was a product that let you code logic tables that
would generate code. Management billed it as the solution to long lead times
for changes and orderly development. It screwed everything up and took a long
to get rid of it and get things back to normal.
Then I worked for a vendor and had to attend change control meetings.
Management complained about how long it took to get changes in and looked for
other alternatives yet kept adding more restrictions On changes in the
mainframe group. While Open systems attended the same meeting and when they
were asked, do you have a backup plan, they said what's that. Management
thought that was fine because they could get stuff done.
But the biggest BOONDOGGLE of all times, was what management spent a few
million on and that was Four Quadrant Leadership. If discussed something with
another person and YOU made the change you were operating from Quadrant 1. If
you discussed it with another persons and THEY did it you were operating from
Quadrant 2. No one ever figured out whay it was important but everyone in the
company had to take the course. We spent millions and the manager who bought it
was called a VISIONARY. I suspect or should I say HOPE he is on the
unemployment line with the rest of the visionaries.
________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of scott
Ford <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 2:22 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Somewhat Interesting Mainframe Article
Ed,
I agree with you. Machines are faster and faster. But customers are demanding
changes to code and fixes faster. This to me is a problem, especially if
'caution is thrown to the wind'. Dealing with the security subsystem, I.e.;
RACF, ACF2 and TOP-SECRET , many customers are ignorant of these products ,
especially in how and why they work.
I write in COBOL and my first love Assembler, so we have exits that support our
product.
I have seen like everyone else a lot of craziness. The approach of using the PC
and Java for everything to me is a cop out . This is the apparent trend I have
been seeing. To this t-Rex this is not the only path to product development.
Scott
On Oct 15, 2017, 1:25 AM -0400, Edward Gould <[email protected]>, wrote:
On Oct 14, 2017, at 8:50 PM, Clark Morris <[email protected]> wrote:
As a retired systems programmer and applications programmer analyst
whose primary languages were COBOL and Assembler, I have serious
doubts about that statistic. There have been many successful
migrations from the 360/370/390/z series systems. There also have
been many successful if overly expensive migrations to SAP, Oracle,
and the rest of the bunch. I would be amazed Facebook, Amazon, and
Microsoft have any z series or BUNCH successor mainframes. Take a
look at the job postings. Many applications systems, including ones I
worked on needed to be redesigned and replaced. It could have been
done in COBOL but getting management to buy into upgrading the way
they do things to at least the 1985 standard and its facilities let
alone anything later was too difficult.
Clark Morris
Clark:
Look at it this way though. As machines get faster and faster, there is little
need to revamp (any) code. That is one of the issue now days. management is
just to happy so they do not have to rewrite code they just get a bigger
machine. Maybe that is the undoing of Z?
Ed
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