At the end of April, the New York Stock Exchange unplugged its last running mainframe, the climax of a yearlong migration to Unix and Linux.
By all accounts, the merger has been successful, and performance has improved, said Francis Feldman, the vice president of the shared data center at Securities Industry Automation Corp. (SIAC), the NYSE’s technology arm.
“We’re pushing product out substantially earlier than before … which gives us a greater window to support additional applications,” he said. “We are more than pleasantly surprised with the results.”
That doesn’t mean Feldman is completely tickled about saying goodbye to big iron.
“It’s been a long process and we’re actually here and it’s like, ‘Wow,’” he said. “It’s kind of sad on one hand being an old mainframe hack. But it is a project that came to fruition and we recognize that it’s a positive thing.”
Though migration off mainframes does happen, most mainframe shops stay on a current platform or increase investment in it. In a purchasing decisions survey that SearchDataCenter.com conducted last year, only 8% planned on decreasing their investment in the mainframe in 2007 compared with 2006. Still, plenty of shops have moved off mainframes, usually because of cost issues.
