Posted on 05/17/2007 10:24:57 PM PDT by dayglored
NYSE undertakes IBM mainframe migration to Unix and Linux
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is migrating off a 1,600 millions of instructions per second (MIPS) mainframe to IBM System p servers running AIX and x86 Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) servers running Linux, with the first part of the move going live today...
...(SIAC), the NYSE's technology arm, said the bottom line for the migration was the bottom line. He estimates the move will halve the cost of transactions, and though he wouldn't detail how much that would mean on a yearly basis, he said it is "serious financial savings, very serious." ...
SIAC could have continued on the mainframe, outsourced to another vendor or tried to rewrite the code to run cleaner, but the group felt that moving to another platform was the most feasible solution. Then came the hard part: finding out who could help them get its JCL and COBOL logic to a distributed platform...
Clerity Solutions Inc... uses its UniKix software to ingest the mainframe code and compile it to run on a distributed platform. The recompilation is then tested in the company before it goes live. The AIX platform executes the application of the recompiled code while the Linux boxes handles FTP transfers on the front end. Feldman wouldn't disclose what Linux distribution was running on the HP servers.
Of course, the migration has not gone live yet. SIAC divided the move into a handful of application groups. Feldman would only describe the first application group migration, which will go into production today, as running internal business applications. Down the road, the NYSE will migrate applications supporting online transaction processing and different lines of the NYSE business. The migration is expected to be fully complete by the end of the year.
(Excerpt) Read more at searchdatacenter.techtarget.com ...
Most of the NYSE's programs' heavy lifting will be done by Unix, with Linux doing peripheral tasks like data communications. The Unix is IBM's AIX, of course; the particular Linux distro in use was not disclosed.
Windows may still own the business desktop for a while, but *NIX has the credibility when it comes to serious reliability and stability requirements. For fans of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), it's particularly refreshing to see that bastion of capitalism, the NYSE, choosing Unix and Linux -- often derided as anti-capitalist operating systems -- for such mission-critical use.
IBGE
Oh wait, I posted the article... no fair. ;-)
How long before they move it China?
2008.
Some ladder climbing middle manager will come up with the idea of outsourcing the NYSE and the execs will do it and give him/her a big year end bonus.
I’m sure International Business Machines has the next contract already ready.
> How long before they move it China?
Somebody had to say it.
Yeah, so much of America's business is being done overseas, I suppose it's only a matter of time...
Seriously, I worry about the degree to which we have our gonads hanging in the breeze with all this outsourcing. America is dangerously open to blackmail by our enemies. This is NOT GOOD.
Yeah we have so much to thank those like IBM for selling their PC business to the Chinese government and for now moving our stock market system over to the same freeware system all the communist governments use. That was a real stroke of genius, how can we ever repay them?
Trust me.
I work in IT at a major US financial company. Your fears are warranted.
Well, we breathe the same air as them, too, and that doesn't make it bad.
I'm less worried about the use of Linux, per se, than about the fact that America is now so deeply indebted to China -- we went from being the world's creditor to the world's borrower, and handed over the keys to the communists. WTF were we thinking????
America is dangerously open to blackmail by our enemies.
Congress?
So am I, but I find it hard to believe those who belive in free Linux transfers to China really care about what's happening.
we went from being the world's creditor to the world's borrower, and handed over the keys to the communists.
So why are we giving them free software? And then moving our stock market over to it?
WTF were we thinking????
Depends on who you are calling "we"? Conservatives have nothing to do with sellouts to China. Conservatives don't want to give free software to China either, wouldn't be conservative would it. Have to blame it on LIBERALS, who else?
> Depends on who you are calling "we"? Conservatives have nothing to do with sellouts to China. Conservatives don't want to give free software to China either, wouldn't be conservative would it. Have to blame it on LIBERALS, who else?
Well, one of my past employers was a fellow who was as Republican (and I presume conservative) as they come, yet when his business needed to cut costs, he moved our manufacturing operation to China. I was running Engineering stateside, and dealing with the Chinese over the phone and email. It was never clear to me that we actually saved that much, although the unit prices of the equipment we had them make for us were lower than stateside, the overall hassle ate lots of that advantage.
What -really- hurt was when they put the squeeze on us with regard to schedule (they had other larger customers to take care of first), and then -- the final blow -- we discovered that they were selling equipment based on our designs, to our competitors under another name.
And we couldn't do a damn thing, practically speaking, because they effectively owned our tooling and manufacturing processes. Horrific experience.
So it's not just the LIBERALS doing this to us -- it's American business people who care only about the BOTTOM LINE.
If that were the case they'd be getting us some better deals. IBM sold their PC division to the Chinese governement for about $1.5 Billion, even though it was bringing in $10 Billion/year and IBM hasn't made that money back up yet. They're also giving them free software, this free Linux has some of the most powerful supercomputer technology there is but they can download it for free. Already did in fact, named it "Red Flag". How is that helping anyone's bottom line? Give technology away, instead of sell it? That's liberal, pure and simple.
Well, for sure it's STUPID, pure and simple.
And there's some of our technology that I wouldn't want to see us sell at ANY price. Our precious competitive advantage disappears once we are no longer the folks who own it.
Well hopefully then you’ll agree they should have kept the NYSE on Tandem or some other other US product rather than starting to port it over to this Linux that came from Finland and is so big in communist countries like China and Cuba. Doesn’t make any sense at all, probably some New York liberal behind it all. Yep, matter of fact that is where IBM is based, isn’t it.
Yeah, Armonk is down by NYC.
Actually, as mentioned above in the article and my initial comment, the most critical NYSE software is going to run under AIX, a solid proprietary American Unix developed stateside by IBM based on AT&T SystemV Release 3 Unix in the mid-1980's and maintained by IBM for the past 20 years on a wide variety of hardware.
The use of Linux for the peripheral communications functions may reflect the fact that it has to interoperate with a variety of other non-IBM systems and is more adaptable to constantly-changing communications needs than AIX. That's a guess, but I'll bet it's not far off.
IBM would be crazy to run a Linux they didn't have good control over. The distro they're using is not disclosed here, but I'll bet it didn't "come from Finland" (although yes Torvalds is Finnish). I'll be interested to learn which distro they chose for this application.
And yet another "When will the huge savings we were promised ever materialize?" story is born.
I'm a Unix/Linux fan, but at least the last time I used it 6 years ago, AIX was garbage.
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