Originating Author: Dave Vellante

A CIO friend of mine, when asked about migrating large legacy applications says you have two choices: "Lose or lose big." What he means is politically, you can't win. Facts like high maintenance costs, vendor lock-in and nobody wants to do Cobol seem insurmountable. On the other hand, freezing an application for 6 months (if you're lucky-- 18 months if you're a realist) means productivity goes down the tubes. Worse yet, if your crazy enough to try to migrate without a freeze you might put your company into bankruptcy. My advice: 1) Avoid the migration/conversion and wage a war of attrition instead; 2) Give Cobol programmers a raise or outsource; 3)Find a package and instead of converting code, go to a packaged application; 4) prepare three envelopes...-Dave Vellante

Does this mean no one will ever get off their mainframe?

Is that what you're saying?

If they can get off, they're off

No, what I'm saying is two things: 1) If they're still on the mainframe it's for a reason-- the vast majority of work that should be moved off the mainframe has been moved off and 2) Organizations who want to get work off the mainframes should stop investing there and put new applications on new platforms-- eventually the mainframe will go away.

I know dozens of organizations where management said "we're moving to save money," not thinking about the business impact of freezing an application for 9-18 months while trying to save some money on Cobol programmers.

Be careful. Be smart.