> The cost to switch is already very high. > There is an amazing inertia to production computing workloads. Once value is being delivered, think payroll, the cost of moving to another platform is gigantic. There are billions (litterally) of lines of COBOL/PLI/Assember code out there in customer S390 shops doing supposedly useful things.
Payroll is actually harder in most European countries, which is one reason why it was largely outsourced or packageised in the 1970s. http://www.isham-research.com/low_end_mainframes.html contains a note about "lines of COBOL added". It's generally accepted that about 5 billion new lines of COBOL are created each year. Not all of it is newly written - much is 'cloned' from existing code. Sun's "rehosting" that they trumpet so loudly isn't even keeping pace in proportion to their market share. -- Phil Payne http://www.isham-research.com +44 7785 302 803 +49 173 6242039
