Mainframe modernization: Accelerating legacy transformation

Mainframe powers much of global commerce and for decades—with its proprietary platform and legendary lock-in—was resistant to effective competition. Even years after most organizations began adopting public cloud, migrating off the mainframe remains too complex for many organizations to undertake.

Google Cloud brings a unique, automated approach to modernization enabling customers to go from mainframe to containers. This session talks through the challenges of modernizing mainframe and the key technical aspects of this solution that make it possible.

Speaker: Travis Webb

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#GoogleCloudNext

APP107

event: Google Cloud Next 2020; re_ty: Publish; product: Cloud - Containers - Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE); fullname: Travis Webb;

[billymania]

It's amusing listening to cloud vendors talk about jumping off the mainframe. They are naïve in their arguments and just about completely ignore all the capabilities that mainframes have around reliability, availability and performance. The cloud has it's place for off-loading compute and storage for moderate sized work-loads and can in theory save money but that's about it. Companies need to be careful about throwing their systems on clouds. Cloud vendors attempt to lock you into their platforms and force you to use their in-house clones of commercial database systems and other components. I humbly suggest a hybrid model if you leverage the cloud. Your crown jewels stay on premise but you use the cloud for run of the mill applications.

[yugandharj]

Small correction at 11:40(min: sec), in the video, i.e. Video says GCL actually it is JCL.

[MikhaelLiberman]

Interesting presentation, thank you. It would be benficial to update the subtitles when at 14:49. KIX should be CICS and DV2 should be DB2

[fitmainframe]

I have a question concerning the customer journey: How many transactions do they have per day, and how many MSUs were moved away from the mainframe?

[fatnikkormat]

Ah just a little friendly devil advocate :)

It would be worthwhile to get more information on your customer who migrated. 12 months is a very slim window given all the required due diligence. Shop sizes range from 1 LPAR with 50 MSU license to 200 LPARS spanning 20 mainframes with over 90, 000 MSU, etc.

You also mentioned lack of innovation and eluded to the mainframe being unscalable. I would say that is false. You mentioned containers. Mainframe is also fully capable of containers and dockers, as well as collaboration with Splunk for AI, running linux, cloud, etc. Mainframe also supports non proprietary languages and have agile products for devops. Scalability goes hand in hand with the mainframe.

Im wondering about the carbon footprint cost as you add more servers and use more floorspace. Many studies dont focus on datacenter overhead cost. Did you incorporate that into your case, as well as increase in technicians for manage the growing server farm? Did you look into showback to recooperate cost from various application/business groups?

Im a believer that not all workloads are right for a certain platform and there is definitely stuff we can move off the mainframe and onto servers. I dont think the worlds largest banks, financial institutions, insurance, and retailers are keen to migrate off, given their 99.999% uptime industry standard. Also the DOD uses the mainframe, along with many goverment entities. Dont mess with DOD please 🙃 Maybe someone like McMaster-carr with a small shops will benefit from this. Go get em :)🙂


Also technically the mainframe was the original cloud. Cloud is just a new era term. 🙂

[shridhargavai]

Though it converts the code what approach it takes in testing business logic.

[itsmebxv]

Are you claiming that G4 will convert Cobol to Java? without manually writing the Java code?? if that is true then why it took 12 months to migrate??

[ajitjalady]

Interesting to see this presentation. I have worked on Mainframe for around 15 years now and its interesting to understand how a non mainframe system can convert JCL and Cobol to Java. Will also be interesting to see how environments will be maintained in batch and CICS online transactions.

[alokrm]

Hey Travis, would like to know more on G4 platform and how can we leverage this platform? Could you please guide how to get more information on this or whom to reach?

[chetandesai]

Is it possible on the Ground, dont think so, no bank would take this risk

[Rocky_M]

After hearing his glorifying speech on G4, feels like he's from Sales & Marketing team @ Google.

[neerajmalik]

This looks interesting, but lot of things mentioned are still ambiguous. It would have been great, if you would have share more information on case study
Getting rid of MF would not be easy for financial institutes, but there are lot of shops using MF but actually they do not need this Beast ! and such a solution would be quite good for these organizations
#MainFrameModernization

[thecodemachine]

Are you guys hiring? I helped modernize all the device certifications for DellEMC. EMC has been a developer for decades.

[ankitSingh-gzfr]

HI... I am a Mainframe Developer and works in mainframe modernization project. I am having interview at GOOGLE in couple of weeks. Could anyone help me in preparing interview.