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 ...
Microsoft started their game console division long ago and they don't expect it to break even until next year. Some companies think long-term. IBM finished the Lenovo deal almost exactly two years ago. It will take Microsoft seven years to make a profit.
As part of the deal, IBM owns a 20% stake in Lenovo. Nice to see us partially owning businesses in China for a change. IBM also becomes the preferred service partner for Lenovo, giving it direct inroads into the Asian market.
This has been explained to you before. If not for the license that allowed the Chinese to make Red Flag, the company Red Hat would not even exist to provide American jobs.
And for this issue the GPL is superior to the license for operating systems you give a pass on, like BSD. At least the Chinese are forced to give back any improvements they make under the GPL. With the BSD you like, the Chinese could just take our code and we'd never see it again.
This issue does come down to conservatism. Do you believe in protecting constitutional rights? The Constitution gives the authors the right to control their copyrighted works for a stated purpose. To say that authors cannot openly license their works, especially in a way that promotes that stated purpose, is to deny them their constitutional rights.
Now is it a smart thing? Maybe, maybe not, depending on the case. My software is proprietary closed-source, while others decide differently for their creations as is their right. Freedom includes the freedom to be dumb, unless you promote the nanny state concept.
BTW, Lenovo just signed their second billion-dollar+ licensing deal with Microsoft. They are becoming the biggest seller of legitimate US proprietary software in Asia.
The “Big Iron” you so disparagingly speak of is in itself very modern. It’s just a difference in processing power. You can’t run large systems such as Equifax, GE Financial and Choicepoint on Unix servers. It’s economy of scale. You actually need less people to run a large mainframe than a bunch of small boxes. Of course that’s a cultural decision also. Instead of a bunch of Gen-X,Y,Z booger-pickers talking on cell phones to their homies and text messaging during meetings you have a few old farts like me.
It sounds like they can still keep their COBOL and JCL, though.
> The “Big Iron” you so disparagingly speak of is in itself very modern. It’s just a difference in processing power. You can’t run large systems such as Equifax, GE Financial and Choicepoint on Unix servers.
I understand well, and I wasn't being disparaging, just commenting on the fact that damn few applications have gone the OTHER way (from small servers to Big Iron) in my 35 years of working with computers. I probably shouldn't have implied that mainframes weren't "modern", and you're right to take me to task for that slight, which was accidental -- what I meant by "modern" here was really "younger, more recent vintage".
> It’s economy of scale. You actually need less people to run a large mainframe than a bunch of small boxes. Of course that’s a cultural decision also. Instead of a bunch of Gen-X,Y,Z booger-pickers talking on cell phones to their homies and text messaging during meetings you have a few old farts like me.
And me, too. My first computer was a Burroughs 5500 in the basement of Drexel University in 1970. I ran engineering sims on that for years before I discovered the EE Dept's PDP8 lab (in 1973) and started fooling around with smaller stuff. I'm not a mainframe guy by trade, but I do respect them, and happily grant them their place.
I have to work with some Gen-X/Y folks (I'm older than most of their fathers) and it's a real culture shock. Somewhere along the line the kids lost the attitude we grew up with.
Sure. It's a question of what's the best way to run the application. AIX is a solid old-line SysV-based Unix and supports a lot of stuff for back-compatibility.
Not sure what you mean by "garbage". It's a SysV Unix, not a BSD, and quite unlike Linux in many important respects. I've worked with it, found it solid but somewhat abstruse and unyielding; not very hackable.
What characteristics do you refer to as being garbage?
The main difference isn't even really processing power, but I/O. Mainframes strength is I/O, whereas today's clusters are computing power. Heck, most desktop P4s these days have as much or more CPU processing power as the typical mainframe. However, mainframes can really shove the data through some fat pipes.
As a result, mainframes are ideal for large database processing, account processing, financials, etc. But clusters are better suited for analysis, modeling, anything that takes a lot of CPU power.
Exactly. In fact, Linux running on z-Series is catching on as a way to reduce server sprawl. But it’s only practical for applications that don’t need a lot of CPU.
When our lab moves operations to Linux-based solutions, we find that the applications run anywhere from 1.5x - 5x faster on the same platform. We’ve never (to the best of my knowledge) found an app that is slower. Linux (Unix) also tends to be far more reliable after the (inevitable) initial bugs are worked out of the system.
I wonder how much royalties M$ is intending to attempt to extort from the NYSE now? Somehow, I have a sneaking suspicion that IBM and NYSE are ready for anything MS thinks it has up its sleeve.
This announcement will to a great deal to calm the fears that some small operators have in the wake of MS “patents are being violated by Linux” foolishness this month.
I’m interested in your answer, too. I found AIX quite good when I used it... long ago now (~12yr)... I assume that by now tools are available for it that have greatly upgraded its power and usability.
We had to migrate several Perl scripts to IBM's web servers. We never had any problems migrating these exact same scripts to any other version of Unix, but with AIX, it was a major-league nightmare. I'll never forget having to work 36 hours straight in the IBM building in Atlanta, cursing out AIX the entire time.
The AIX version of sendmail was retarded too.
Reply 35 was for you tooo.
I generally have the same feeling as you on outsourcing. It's complicated though. Let's take the simple case of an American clothing manufacturer moving 1,000 jobs to Ecuador:
1,000 Americans out of work, that disturbs me.
But those Americans may have been unionized and driving costs up, and I like anything that hurts the leftist unions.
American company makes more of a profit with the cheap labor.
Even though it's cheap labor, the Ecuadorian workers are probably getting double or more the pay that they could have gotten otherwise.
This raises the standard of living in Ecuador.
Higher standard of living in Ecuador means less illegal immigration here.
As I said, it's complicated.
As far as IBM/Lenovo, it can be boiled down to a couple simple things. IBM owned a 100% stake in a company with a 6% US marketshare (5% worldwide, little in Asia), and bleeding a quarter-billion dollars a year. IBM now owns a 20% stake in a company with a 19% marketshare in the fast-growing Asian region, 7% worldwide, and a one that's growing faster than the industry average. Plus IBM's services division is the preferred service provider for all Lenovo products, giving IBM huge access to the Asian market for its services.
I think we came out ahead on that deal. As for manufacturing jobs, most computer parts and most computers (especially notebooks) are made in Asia regardless of the nationality of the company selling them.
Yes Linux originated from Finland, please don't claim you didn't know. And no IBM doesn't have control of it either, it uses this crazy license communists love that allows free copies to be made and distributed without any return to original provider. You really don't understand this very well, or actually aren't concerned about free technology transfers out of the country. I'm starting to think it's the latter, already had a pretty good hunch when you started the thread cheering for FOSS when that is the main vehicle they use to teleport software technology over to other countries for free.
ROFL! The head traitor speaks!
But let's do it anyway, since it raises the standard of living in Equador? I don't believe it disturbs you at all, since you'll say or do anything to defend it.
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