Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and Intel’s joint Application
Modernisation Initiative should be treated with caution as its
cookie-cutter approach to SOA migration will not suit the needs of
all mainframe customers, warns Ovum.
The three vendors have spent the last six months developing an
SOA reference architecture based on Oracle’s Grid Computing
Platform. This includes its Fusion middleware, 10G database and
Enterprise Manager software, which runs on Itanium-based HP
Integrity Servers.
The aim in going down this route was not only to demonstrate
what the combined technology could do, but also to create a
foundation for modelling how an SOA environment might work in
individual customer sites in order to demonstrate the potential
value of migration.
But Dwight Davis, vice-president of Ovum Summit, said: “There’s
no doubt that many mainframe applications could benefit by being
re-hosted on such a modern, standards-based system. But some
customers will question whether it makes sense to have a specific
target platform defined before analysing the nature of their legacy
applications and the best options for migrating and modernising
them.”
He also acknowledged, however, that, because “much of the
heavy-lifting” will be undertaken by consultants in HP’s Consulting
and Integration unit, “not every assessment will lead to the
reference architecture platform”, although “having that pre-tested
and SOA-friendly architecture in place as a ready target platform
should benefit a significant subset of existing mainframe
customers”.
Paul Evans, HP Service’s worldwide director of application
modernisation services, claims that some mainframe customers spend
as much as 70% of their IT budget on maintaining legacy systems. As
a result, although 10% will never move, a further 10% are in the
process of doing so, while the remaining 80% are interested in
migration but want to quantify the risks first.