The PMU is not alone
The case of the PMU is not isolated. IBM faces the defection of some of its iconic clients. The main reason is the very high price of the Mainframe compared with « distributed » technologies based on servers sold in larger volumes, under Unix, Linux or Windows.
In France, the movement is well underway. CNAM (Caisse Nationale d’Assurance Maladie) had already migrated its mainframe to Unix when its CIO Maryvonne Cronier was in charge. The Total group also left the world of Mainframe and cheers it. Other future cases as the CNAF ( Caisse Nationale des Allocations Familiales) should start their own migration in the coming months, following a market consultation launched last summer.
The reasons for migration are primarily budgetary matters, but it is also to improve the agility of information systems, and incidentally to attract young developers, for example IMS skills are no longer very widespread.
Two main actors for this project
The project of the PMU is led by two companies, Metaware and Oracle. Metaware is a French company specialized in migrating mainframe environments towards Open systems , Unix or Windows. The company has to its credit the migration of mainframe environments Bull GCOS to Unix, and has many references with IBM mainframes since 2005.
Oracle brings in particular its transactional brick Tuxedo inherited from its acquisition of BEA. The power and the robustness of administration of Mainframes are increasingly challenged by their availability on ten times cheaper environments.
IBM Mainframes activity under pressure
The customers of IBM Mainframes are going to have more and more difficulty to justify the budget of this platform, said the Gartner cabinet in a study published last October.
Gartner observes that customers who have a computing power less than or equal to 5000 MIPS, are the ones who show the most interest to exit completely the Mainframe. As comparison, it is necessary to see that the heart of a Power7 processor system under Aix (the proprietary UNIX of IBM) can deliver computing power equivalent to 450 IBM MIPS.
For those who manage a power between 5,000 and 20,000 MIPS, the battle is underway and IBM defends this market forcefully underlines Gartner. The cabinet noted in passing that there is a surprising obstacle at this level: the companies are struggling to accept the idea that they can actually run the equivalent of a Mainframe on a few unmarked servers. In addition, IBM has established a pricing system that does not promote progressive migration.
Over 20,000 MIPS, the customers rarely consider a total migration. They are considering the passage of certain applications on distributed systems in order to free some « space » for the remaining applications. These companies are more likely to be interested in the technological advances offered by IBM on mainframes.
