Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-10-22 Thread Clark Morris 
On 30 Sep 2015 03:07:25 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote:

>On 30/09/2015 4:37 PM, Shane Ginnane wrote:
>> On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 15:31:13 +0800, David Crayford  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> CentreLink is a 26,000 MIP customer
>>> http://www.techworld.com.au/article/303153/centrelink_ups_it_reform_keeps_model_204_legacy_/?pp=2.
>>> Phew, that's going to be a big blow for big blue when they move off.
>> Nope.
>> At that time (2009) Centrelink might (might ?) have been. It is now an 
>> amalgamation of Medibank and sundry others. Bigger and badder by large.
>> We as a community can not afford to lose this puppy. It was Amdahls 
>> trumpeted catch (along with quaint-arse) and look what happened to them.
>> If this goes, there is *NO* future for z/OS in Aus - simple as that.
>
>I had no idea they were so huge! An IT budget of $400m six years ago so 
>add another $100m to that by now. I predict a disaster trying to migrate 
>off a system of that scale. Government IT projects always fail
>and that's a big, big project. The talk is of a requirement for new 
>systems that can handle self-service but why can't they just integrate? 
>The UK government has blown billions of pounds on over ambitious IT projects
>for the NHS that were doomed from the start. The aussie government 
>should take note! The only winners in government IT projects are vendors.
>
>WA is a bit of a basket case wrt z/OS. When I first rocked up in 1998 
>the company I work for also had a FM wing which looked after about 15 
>mainframe customers, mainly government. They're all gone
>now. WA police, Main Roads, ICWA (who re-platformed from a small BC z9 
>to a single blade server 
>http://www.itnews.com.au/news/wa-insurance-commission-decommissions-mainframe-322780).
> 
>The only
>two z/OS sites left in Perth are Bankwest and HBF. I've been over east 
>several times to conferences in Melbourne/Sydney and conversations with 
>the customers (banks) are depressing. They all have mainframe
>exit strategies. I was told that ANZ spent in the region of $300M trying 
>to get off and failed miserably. Everybody wants off!

Companies wanting off the mainframe is not new and If I were heading a
major customer's IT department I might well be on the band wagon. The
zaap and ziip processors to make new work cheap while still hosing me
with high costs for my existing systems would be there for starters.
The EBCDIIC ASCII problem is another issue.  Where is the growth in
compute power and new applications in your shops?

Clark Morris 
>
>> Shane ...
>>
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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-10-22 Thread Paul Gilmartin 
On Thu, 22 Oct 2015 21:07:46 -0300, Clark Morris wrote:
>
>The EBCDIIC ASCII problem is another issue.  ...
> 
IBM should recognize this problem and complete the enhanced
ASCII support in the xlc runtime.  It seems pretty much there
in the preprocessor and the compiler.

-- gil

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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-10-22 Thread David Crayford 

On 23/10/2015 9:31 AM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:

On Thu, 22 Oct 2015 21:07:46 -0300, Clark Morris wrote:

The EBCDIIC ASCII problem is another issue.  ...


IBM should recognize this problem and complete the enhanced
ASCII support in the xlc runtime.  It seems pretty much there
in the preprocessor and the compiler.


It's not a problem if you use Java. And that's a strategic platform for 
IBM on the mainframe.



-- gil

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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-30 Thread Shane Ginnane 
On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 15:31:13 +0800, David Crayford  wrote:

>CentreLink is a 26,000 MIP customer
>http://www.techworld.com.au/article/303153/centrelink_ups_it_reform_keeps_model_204_legacy_/?pp=2.
>Phew, that's going to be a big blow for big blue when they move off.

Nope.
At that time (2009) Centrelink might (might ?) have been. It is now an 
amalgamation of Medibank and sundry others. Bigger and badder by large.
We as a community can not afford to lose this puppy. It was Amdahls trumpeted 
catch (along with quaint-arse) and look what happened to them.
If this goes, there is *NO* future for z/OS in Aus - simple as that.

Shane ...

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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-30 Thread David Crayford 
CentreLink is a 26,000 MIP customer 
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/303153/centrelink_ups_it_reform_keeps_model_204_legacy_/?pp=2. 
Phew, that's going to be a big blow for big blue when they move off.



On 27/09/2015 2:48 PM, Anthony Thompson wrote:

The big one in that is the Australian Federal Government's CentreLink. They are 
attempting to replace a mainframe-based solution with a SAP solution.

The then Federal Treasurer, the esteemed Mr. Joe Hocking (now out on his arse 
after we got a new Prime Minister), claimed it was because the applications 
were running on old IBM hardware. Simply untrue, they have z196's (not the 
latest and greatest), but the applications ran on the Model 204 database.  I 
think the only other organization on the planet that still runs Model 204 
applications is the US Department of Defence.

I'm pretty sure that $1.5 billion is going to blow out to a crapload more than 
that. Here, in my 'state' government, we attempted to replace a government 
asset control suite of mainframe applications with SAP. At a projected cost of 
$5 million. $70 million of tax payers money and five years later, they gave up 
and went back to the mainframe.

Allegorically, I've heard that 70% of major mainframe applications conversions 
to little-box SAP solutions fail (a Gartner statistic?).

Ant.

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Shane Ginnane
Sent: Friday, 25 September 2015 7:39 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

http://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-top-five-green-screen-systems-that-run-australia-409614

Some large (by Aussie standards) mainframe customers that may be no more in the 
foreseeable future.

Shane ...

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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-30 Thread David Crayford 

On 30/09/2015 4:37 PM, Shane Ginnane wrote:

On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 15:31:13 +0800, David Crayford  wrote:


CentreLink is a 26,000 MIP customer
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/303153/centrelink_ups_it_reform_keeps_model_204_legacy_/?pp=2.
Phew, that's going to be a big blow for big blue when they move off.

Nope.
At that time (2009) Centrelink might (might ?) have been. It is now an 
amalgamation of Medibank and sundry others. Bigger and badder by large.
We as a community can not afford to lose this puppy. It was Amdahls trumpeted 
catch (along with quaint-arse) and look what happened to them.
If this goes, there is *NO* future for z/OS in Aus - simple as that.


I had no idea they were so huge! An IT budget of $400m six years ago so 
add another $100m to that by now. I predict a disaster trying to migrate 
off a system of that scale. Government IT projects always fail
and that's a big, big project. The talk is of a requirement for new 
systems that can handle self-service but why can't they just integrate? 
The UK government has blown billions of pounds on over ambitious IT projects
for the NHS that were doomed from the start. The aussie government 
should take note! The only winners in government IT projects are vendors.


WA is a bit of a basket case wrt z/OS. When I first rocked up in 1998 
the company I work for also had a FM wing which looked after about 15 
mainframe customers, mainly government. They're all gone
now. WA police, Main Roads, ICWA (who re-platformed from a small BC z9 
to a single blade server 
http://www.itnews.com.au/news/wa-insurance-commission-decommissions-mainframe-322780). 
The only
two z/OS sites left in Perth are Bankwest and HBF. I've been over east 
several times to conferences in Melbourne/Sydney and conversations with 
the customers (banks) are depressing. They all have mainframe
exit strategies. I was told that ANZ spent in the region of $300M trying 
to get off and failed miserably. Everybody wants off!



Shane ...

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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-28 Thread Walter Davies 
EL Dorado county property system runs on in-house coded M204 application
written 30 years ago. They are trying to get rid of it.

On Sun, Sep 27, 2015 at 5:18 AM, Ted MacNEIL <eamacn...@yahoo.ca> wrote:

> Model 204:
> The Bank of Nova Scotia (under VM)
> Becker's
> The Canadian Depository and Clearing Corporation
>
> To name but 3.
>
> -
> -teD
> -
>   Original Message
> From: Anthony Thompson
> Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2015 02:48
> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
> Reply To: IBM Mainframe Discussion List
> Subject: Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.
>
> The big one in that is the Australian Federal Government's CentreLink.
> They are attempting to replace a mainframe-based solution with a SAP
> solution.
>
> The then Federal Treasurer, the esteemed Mr. Joe Hocking (now out on his
> arse after we got a new Prime Minister), claimed it was because the
> applications were running on old IBM hardware. Simply untrue, they have
> z196's (not the latest and greatest), but the applications ran on the Model
> 204 database. I think the only other organization on the planet that still
> runs Model 204 applications is the US Department of Defence.
>
> I'm pretty sure that $1.5 billion is going to blow out to a crapload more
> than that. Here, in my 'state' government, we attempted to replace a
> government asset control suite of mainframe applications with SAP. At a
> projected cost of $5 million. $70 million of tax payers money and five
> years later, they gave up and went back to the mainframe.
>
> Allegorically, I've heard that 70% of major mainframe applications
> conversions to little-box SAP solutions fail (a Gartner statistic?).
>
> Ant.
>
> -Original Message-
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Shane Ginnane
> Sent: Friday, 25 September 2015 7:39 PM
> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
> Subject: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.
>
>
> http://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-top-five-green-screen-systems-that-run-australia-409614
>
> Some large (by Aussie standards) mainframe customers that may be no more
> in the foreseeable future.
>
> Shane ...
>
> --
> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email
> to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
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-- 



Walter Davies
Supervising IT Analyst
walter.dav...@edcgov.us
(530) 621-5420

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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-27 Thread Ted MacNEIL 
Model 204:
The Bank of Nova Scotia (under VM)
Becker's
The Canadian Depository and Clearing Corporation

To name but 3.

-
-teD
-
  Original Message  
From: Anthony Thompson
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2015 02:48
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Reply To: IBM Mainframe Discussion List
Subject: Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

The big one in that is the Australian Federal Government's CentreLink. They are 
attempting to replace a mainframe-based solution with a SAP solution.

The then Federal Treasurer, the esteemed Mr. Joe Hocking (now out on his arse 
after we got a new Prime Minister), claimed it was because the applications 
were running on old IBM hardware. Simply untrue, they have z196's (not the 
latest and greatest), but the applications ran on the Model 204 database. I 
think the only other organization on the planet that still runs Model 204 
applications is the US Department of Defence.

I'm pretty sure that $1.5 billion is going to blow out to a crapload more than 
that. Here, in my 'state' government, we attempted to replace a government 
asset control suite of mainframe applications with SAP. At a projected cost of 
$5 million. $70 million of tax payers money and five years later, they gave up 
and went back to the mainframe.

Allegorically, I've heard that 70% of major mainframe applications conversions 
to little-box SAP solutions fail (a Gartner statistic?).

Ant.

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Shane Ginnane
Sent: Friday, 25 September 2015 7:39 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

http://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-top-five-green-screen-systems-that-run-australia-409614

Some large (by Aussie standards) mainframe customers that may be no more in the 
foreseeable future.

Shane ...

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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-27 Thread Anne & Lynn Wheeler 
vbc...@gmail.com (Vince Coen) writes:
> I think the stats on migration failures show that many fail regardless
> of the target migration mainly is that they over estimate project
> time, and quality of the target systems being used in place of m/f.
>
> Taking a straight view the mainframe is slow compared to running on
> servers on a instruction throughput basis.
>
> What they miss however is the data through put specs compared to
> mainframes where the m/f still wins hands down.
>
> I have tried (just for my self) to build a 8 core PC with separate
> Sata controllers for each 15000 rpm drive to match up with m/f
> performance but apart from the high costs of each controller there is
> still the speed or lack of it of going from the controllers to the
> application because of bottle necks in the data bus.
>
> I have not seen any PC/server design mobo that gets around this
> problem and until they do - the mainframe is still "the man"  for data
> processing in bulk.

Lots of migration failures are trying to make any change at all.

A simple scenario is the financial industry spent billions of dollars in
the 90s to move from "aging" overnight (mainframe) batch settlement to
straight-through processing using large numbers of parallel "killer
micros". A major source of failure was wide-spread use of industry
parallelization libraries (that had 100 times the overhead of cobal
batch). I pointed it out at the time, but was completely ignored ...
the toy demos looked so neat. It wasn't until they tried to deploy that
they ran into the scaleup problems (the 100 times parallelization
overhead total swamped the antificapated throughput increases using
large number of "killer micros" for straight-through processing). In the
meantime there has been enormous amount of work by the industry
(including IBM) on RDBMS parallizing efficiencies. A RDBMS-based
straight-through processing implementation done more recently easily
demonstation all of the original objectives from the 90s ... but the
financial industry claimed that it would be at least be another decade
before they were ready to try again (lots of executives still bore the
scars from the 90s failures and had become risk adverse).

In 2009, non-mainframe IBM was touting some of these RDBMS
parallelization scaleup efficienices. I somewhat ridiculed them
... "From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time" ... since I
had been working on it 20yrs earlier (and got shutdown, being told I was
not allowed to work on anything with more than four processors).

Also, in 1980 I got sucked into to do channel extender for STL that was
moving 300 people from the IMS group to off-site bldg. The channel
extender work did lots of optimization to eliminate the enormous channel
protocol chatter latency over the extended link ... resulting in no
appearant difference between local and remote operation. The vendor then
tried to get IBM approval for release of my support ... but there was
group in POK working on some serial stuff (and were afraid if it was in
the market, it would make releasing their stuff more difficult) and
managed to get approval blocked. Their stuff is final released a decade
later, when it is already obsolete (as ESCON with ES/9000). some past
posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender

In 1988, I was asked to help LLNL standardize some serial stuff they
have, which quickly morphs into fibre-channel standard (including lots
of stuff that I had done from 1980).  Later some of the POK engineers
define a heavy weight protocol for fibre-channel that drastically
reduces the native throughput which is eventually released as FICON.
some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon

The latest published numbers I have from IBM is peak I/O benchmark for
z196 that used 104 FICON (running over 104 fibre-channel) to get 2M
IOPS. At the same time there was a fibre-channel announced for e5-2600
blade that claimed over million IOPS (two such fibre-channel has greater
native throughput than 104 FICON running over 104 fibre-channel).

In addition, there hasn't been any real CKD manufactured for decades,
CKD is simulated on industry standard fixed-block disks. It is possible
to have high-performance server blades running native fibre-channel with
native fixed-block disks that eliminates the enormous FICON and CKD
simulation inefficiencies.

Related z196 I/O throughput number is all 14 SAPs running at 100% busy
peaks at 2.2M SSCH/sec ... however, they recommend that SAPs are limited
to 75% or 1.5M SSCH/sec.

I have yet to see equivalent numbers published for EC12 or z13. EC12
press has been that z196 @ 50BIPS processing to EC12 @ 75BIPS processing
(50% more processing) only claims 30% more I/O throughput. z13 quote has
been 30% more processing than EC12 (with 40% more processors than EC12).

Note that while fibre-channel wasn't originally designed for mainframe
... but for non-mainframe server configurations (that tend to run a few
thousand),

Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-27 Thread Vince Coen 
I think the stats on migration failures show that many fail regardless 
of the target migration mainly is that they over estimate project time, 
and quality of the target systems being used in place of m/f.


Taking a straight view the mainframe is slow compared to running on 
servers on a instruction throughput basis.


What they miss however is the data through put specs compared to 
mainframes where the m/f still wins hands down.


I have tried (just for my self) to build a 8 core PC with separate Sata 
controllers for each 15000 rpm drive to match up with m/f performance 
but apart from the high costs of each controller there is still the 
speed or lack of it of going from the controllers to the application 
because of bottle necks in the data bus.


I have not seen any PC/server design mobo that gets around this problem 
and until they do - the mainframe is still "the man"  for data 
processing in bulk.




On 27/09/15 07:48, Anthony Thompson wrote:

The big one in that is the Australian Federal Government's CentreLink. They are 
attempting to replace a mainframe-based solution with a SAP solution.

The then Federal Treasurer, the esteemed Mr. Joe Hocking (now out on his arse 
after we got a new Prime Minister), claimed it was because the applications 
were running on old IBM hardware. Simply untrue, they have z196's (not the 
latest and greatest), but the applications ran on the Model 204 database.  I 
think the only other organization on the planet that still runs Model 204 
applications is the US Department of Defence.

I'm pretty sure that $1.5 billion is going to blow out to a crapload more than 
that. Here, in my 'state' government, we attempted to replace a government 
asset control suite of mainframe applications with SAP. At a projected cost of 
$5 million. $70 million of tax payers money and five years later, they gave up 
and went back to the mainframe.

Allegorically, I've heard that 70% of major mainframe applications conversions 
to little-box SAP solutions fail (a Gartner statistic?).



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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-27 Thread Anthony Thompson 
The big one in that is the Australian Federal Government's CentreLink. They are 
attempting to replace a mainframe-based solution with a SAP solution.

The then Federal Treasurer, the esteemed Mr. Joe Hocking (now out on his arse 
after we got a new Prime Minister), claimed it was because the applications 
were running on old IBM hardware. Simply untrue, they have z196's (not the 
latest and greatest), but the applications ran on the Model 204 database.  I 
think the only other organization on the planet that still runs Model 204 
applications is the US Department of Defence.

I'm pretty sure that $1.5 billion is going to blow out to a crapload more than 
that. Here, in my 'state' government, we attempted to replace a government 
asset control suite of mainframe applications with SAP. At a projected cost of 
$5 million. $70 million of tax payers money and five years later, they gave up 
and went back to the mainframe.

Allegorically, I've heard that 70% of major mainframe applications conversions 
to little-box SAP solutions fail (a Gartner statistic?).

Ant.

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Shane Ginnane
Sent: Friday, 25 September 2015 7:39 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

http://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-top-five-green-screen-systems-that-run-australia-409614

Some large (by Aussie standards) mainframe customers that may be no more in the 
foreseeable future.

Shane ...

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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-25 Thread Barkow, Eileen 
I cannot resist mentioning this since it is on-topic.

The soap opera Young and Restless, which Is my favorite TV show, currently has 
a story line about hacking into
the fictional companies' computer systems in order to discredit the companies 
involved and the baddies even managed to get into the mainframe.
At least Newman Enterprises and  Jabot still have mainframes which are 
mentioned from time to time (in a usually unflattering context).
But someone needs to set these soap  writers right.


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Shane Ginnane
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2015 10:28 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

On Fri, 25 Sep 2015 08:00:37 -0600, Jack J. Woehr wrote:

>Seems like actually only one of the apps actually going away, the rest being 
>Web front-ended, which is entirely appropriate.
>
>And as we all know, some of these conversions never succeed and they're
>forced to drop back on maintaining the mainframe app.
>
>I'm more sanguine about this as I catch up on the architecture. The
>last time I studied the physical mainframe, it was ES9000.
>
>The z13 is a truly amazing machine.

The largest of the sites mentioned is z13 already - multi-CEC, multi-site. 
Running Model 204 (yep, just them and the CIA left in the whole world 
apparently) Ain't going to survive like that, flashy GUI front ends or no.

They have a lot of smart people, and a lot of smart tech, but they are fighting 
a Government that has snorted the tea-leaves. They have survived a big 
outsourcing push a few years back, and sundry departmental amalgamations, but 
they are in a barbed wire canoe paddling against the current..

Shane ...

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More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-25 Thread Shane Ginnane 
http://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-top-five-green-screen-systems-that-run-australia-409614

Some large (by Aussie standards) mainframe customers that may be no more in the 
foreseeable future.

Shane ...

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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-25 Thread Jack J. Woehr 

Shane Ginnane wrote:

http://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-top-five-green-screen-systems-that-run-australia-409614

Some large (by Aussie standards) mainframe customers that may be no more in the 
foreseeable future.

Shane ...


Seems like actually only one of the apps actually going away, the rest being 
Web front-ended, which is entirely appropriate.

And as we all know, some of these conversions never succeed and they're forced to drop back on maintaining the mainframe 
app.


I'm more sanguine about this as I catch up on the architecture. The last time I studied the physical mainframe, it was 
ES9000.


The z13 is a truly amazing machine.

--
Jack J. Woehr # Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of
www.well.com/~jax # thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe
www.softwoehr.com # with a fine understanding of human fallibility. - Carl Sagan

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Re: More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press.

2015-09-25 Thread Shane Ginnane 
On Fri, 25 Sep 2015 08:00:37 -0600, Jack J. Woehr wrote:

>Seems like actually only one of the apps actually going away, the rest being 
>Web front-ended, which is entirely appropriate.
>
>And as we all know, some of these conversions never succeed and they're forced 
>to drop back on maintaining the mainframe
>app.
>
>I'm more sanguine about this as I catch up on the architecture. The last time 
>I studied the physical mainframe, it was
>ES9000.
>
>The z13 is a truly amazing machine.

The largest of the sites mentioned is z13 already - multi-CEC, multi-site. 
Running Model 204 (yep, just them and the CIA left in the whole world 
apparently)
Ain't going to survive like that, flashy GUI front ends or no.

They have a lot of smart people, and a lot of smart tech, but they are fighting 
a Government that has snorted the tea-leaves. They have survived a big 
outsourcing push a few years back, and sundry departmental amalgamations, but 
they are in a barbed wire canoe paddling against the current..

Shane ...

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