The risk analysis for conversion projects comes out with a negative result every time.
You spend a lot of money, and the best case is you end up with the same services as before.
Ask HN: Why hasn't the cloud killed the mainframe?
11–20 of 88 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't the cloud killed the mainframe?
#12Also if you are in banking or insurance and so on. Do you really want to put your trust in someone else? Cloud going down is not uncommon, but what if there is catastrophic loss of data? Or somehow their security systems break and everything or even last day is wiped?
Not that legacy will do better, but keeping your own fate in own hands does feel better. And these are at this point pretty proven systems. They most likely would have already failed.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't the cloud killed the mainframe?
#13Or perhaps some industries would rather have servers on premises than trust an external provider? Could be part of the inertia (mainframe being the old way of doing things), but if there is any safety, confidentiality, or trust issue, relying on servers you don’t own may be frowned upon.
IMO companies that use mainframes are so beholden to their vendor (for maintenance, upgrade, consulting,...) that the trust they must have in their external provider must be 10x bigger than what you would have if you were relying on a cloud service, particularly from a business continuity angle.
Put another way if IBM says they are closing shop in a month time, or they were stop upgrading a particular product line this will royally screw many of their clients who will start scrambling for alternative solutions (although I would imagine they baked in significant notice periods into their contracts).
But if you use the cloud and have done it right, it is much easier to migrate from a cloud service to another.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't the cloud killed the mainframe?
#14First of all, I find I kinda funny that you call banking, retail and insurance "legacy industries". I would rather be without Netflix and Google, than banking and food ... but each to their own.. While some is inertia (mostly doing to rewriting truly large applications are hard and expensive), there is also the the point that most of those industries cannot easily handle "eventually consistent" data.. Not all transac…
legacy industry is sort of standard term not sure why you found it funny. It not meant to say they are less important. From quick google: "Legacy industries are those that have been around for a long time. These industries dominate a specific market and have not always had a positive approach to innovative ideas."
Well this is Hacker's news, you label something legacy like code, its never a nice thing or showing some respect to product/creators, rather contrary. TBH its also the first time hearing about this term, its simply not common, not even here and much less in general population.
And I have to strongly agree with OP, I couldn't care less about fate of FAANGs of these days, but I do care about those 'legacy' businesses tremendously.
As for original topic - if it works for 3-4 decades, don't be the stupid guy and change it. Tremendous risk to core business with little to gain.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't the cloud killed the mainframe?
#15You statement and question are different things. Its also worth pointing out that a mainframe can mean different things. Here I will use the definition of a large central machine (or cluster) designed for HPC.
> Why hasnt cloud killed the mainframe
A mainframe is typically a very powerful machine/cluster. You may be able to get those in the cloud (although I doubt you can get a single machine with >32TB RAM, for example) , but why pay a premium to the cloud provider on top of the base cost?
> Why do newer companies not use mainframes
Some do, but with your examples, its because they have been engineered to scale horizontally instead of vertically - i.e. using lots of less powerful machines instead of a single big machine.
> Are mainframes used because of lock-in
In some cases, sure. But there are many cases where big powerful machines are needed (where you cant have any of the issues that come with distributed computing - i.e. CAP trade-offs)
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't the cloud killed the mainframe?
#16Also if you are in banking or insurance and so on. Do you really want to put your trust in someone else? Cloud going down is not uncommon, but what if there is catastrophic loss of data? Or somehow their security systems break and everything or even last day is wiped? Not that legacy will do better, but keeping your own fate in own hands does feel better. And these are at this point pretty proven systems. They most l…
See my response to another comment. If you use a mainframe provider you are far more beholden to your vendor than if you were using a cloud service provider and engineered it right.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't the cloud killed the mainframe?
#17It is simply about a wholly different level of reliability that mainframes provide.
They are not at all a trash or a product of corruption or nepotism as many tend to think. That stuff works all the time, and did since ~1960, while we serfs spend our lives fixing bugs resulting from never-ending updates in that hodgepodge of javascript libraries our "efficient", "cheap", "FOSS-based" products are made of.
We all don't use mainframes because marginal or downright dodgy business cases of our products simply won't pay for it, thus we are stuck in this race to the bottom.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't the cloud killed the mainframe?
#18First of all, I find I kinda funny that you call banking, retail and insurance "legacy industries". I would rather be without Netflix and Google, than banking and food ... but each to their own.. While some is inertia (mostly doing to rewriting truly large applications are hard and expensive), there is also the the point that most of those industries cannot easily handle "eventually consistent" data.. Not all transac…
legacy industry is sort of standard term not sure why you found it funny. It not meant to say they are less important. From quick google: "Legacy industries are those that have been around for a long time. These industries dominate a specific market and have not always had a positive approach to innovative ideas."
Legacy is mainly a marketing term for someone wanting a piece of an existing, big market. It also usually implies that you expect it to be closed down and replaced...
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't the cloud killed the mainframe?
#19You statement and question are different things. Its also worth pointing out that a mainframe can mean different things. Here I will use the definition of a large central machine (or cluster) designed for HPC. > Why hasnt cloud killed the mainframe A mainframe is typically a very powerful machine/cluster. You may be able to get those in the cloud (although I doubt you can get a single machine with >32TB RAM, for exam…
No, the questions are related. I am asking does the mainframe really deliver better cost/performance than the cloud (some of the mainframe prices are quite huge without even accounting for maintenance and recruitment costs)? Is this the reason why it is still a significant market?
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't the cloud killed the mainframe?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
legacy industry is sort of standard term not sure why you found it funny. It not meant to say they are less important. From quick google: "Legacy industries are those that have been around for a long time. These industries dominate a specific market and have not always had a positive approach to innovative ideas."
Well this is Hacker's news, you label something legacy like code, its never a nice thing or showing some respect to product/creators, rather contrary. TBH its also the first time hearing about this term, its simply not common, not even here and much less in general population. And I have to strongly agree with OP, I couldn't care less about fate of FAANGs of these days, but I do care about those 'legacy' businesses t…
Your comment doesn't make sense, why in Hacker News should I show more respect to Walmart and JP Morgan rather than google or apple by calling the former legacy industry and the later big tech, and why are you so worked up about it?
Relying on the existence of one vendor with highly unportable and unmaintainable code carries its own risk and my post is asking whether it justifies the cost.