Legacy Application Modernization Strategies Hinge on SOA
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Aberdeen Group has just completed a detailed study of the legacy application modernization plans of small, medium, and large enterprises, and not surprisingly, companies are looking to the services oriented architecture (SOA) approach to creating distributed applications to help them both modernize their legacy applications and to make their composite applications more flexible and therefore giving their businesses more agility. Some companies, however, are looking to simply get rid of legacy applications on mainframes, i5/OS and OS/400, and Unix servers to get rid of the legacy problem. READ MORE >

Top Mainframe Stories and Vendor Announcements

(PC Pro) When you want information on the mainframe, where do you turn? PC Pro is not likely to be high on your list. Nonetheless, the experts there are on top of the story that IBM is investing $100 million to make the "out of fashion" mainframe less complex. READ MORE >

(Baseline) The story about IBM's $100 million investment in mainframes is told here in a different light, focusing on the growth aspects of this business and highlighting topics such as server consolidation, performance monitoring, security, and special processors dedicated to specific workloads. READ MORE >

(Information Week) Tying the shortage of mainframe professionals to the $100 million investment in diminishing mainframe complexity is yet another angle on this well-published IBM System z story. According to this report, nothing is more important to this simplification program than replacing the green-screen interface. READ MORE >

(IT Jungle) A week ago, Big Iron covered this same IBM investment in simplifying the mainframe announcement. In case you missed it, this insight covers the mainframe opportunity in the developing Chinese market, the training and education objectives, and the middleware and application development interplay. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

October 9-13 -- Orlando, Florida - The IBM System z9 and zSeries Expo features z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE, and Linux on System z. The conference is set up to provide insight into System z mainframes and how they provide the foundation for integrating and managing mixed IT environments. Sessions will spotlight such topics as virtualization, business continuity, intelligent workload management, autonomic functionality, and the capability to process highly secure transactions. LEARN MORE >

October 20 & 21 -- Chicago, Illinois - The Network and Systems Professionals Association annual conference, NaSTEC, features educational tracks on large systems/mainframes, distributed systems, and professional development and includes 24 total sessions. Topics include IT compliance, TCP/IP network health checks, and security, as well as others. LEARN MORE >

December 3-8 -- Reno, Nevada - Performance and capacity management for enterprise computing systems is the focus for CMG2006 hosted by the Association of Systems Management Professionals. Session topics include software performance engineering, stress/load testing, benchmarking, BPM, BAM, and new technologies such as service-oriented architecture, and Web services. Specialized content is also provided for operating systems that include z/OS, Linux, Unix, and Windows. LEARN MORE >