[Info-vax] Moving away from OpenVMS

[Bob Gezelter]

On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 3:08:17 AM UTC-4, Eric Smith wrote:
> So the writing appears to be on the wall, and after scouring the web
> and chatting to colleagues, I've finally been convinced that our large
> business-critical application currently running on OpenVMS (IA64) has
> to be moved to something that will be supported fifteen years down the
> line.
> 
> Since this is a niche community, I'm appealing to anyone in the know
> to find out who specialises in COBOL system migrations, specifically
> *from* OpenVMS, to any modern platform (interpretation: Windows or
> Linux)?  I'm looking for someone to come in and do the whole job and
> leave us with a system that behaves just as it did before.



On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 3:08:17 AM UTC-4, Eric Smith wrote:
> So the writing appears to be on the wall, and after scouring the web
> and chatting to colleagues, I've finally been convinced that our large
> business-critical application currently running on OpenVMS (IA64) has
> to be moved to something that will be supported fifteen years down the
> line.
> 
> Since this is a niche community, I'm appealing to anyone in the know
> to find out who specialises in COBOL system migrations, specifically
> *from* OpenVMS, to any modern platform (interpretation: Windows or
> Linux)?  I'm looking for someone to come in and do the whole job and
> leave us with a system that behaves just as it did before.

Eric,

That could be a tall order, in any number of different respects.

Most importantly, to the best of my knowledge, NONE of the base OS suppliers will commit to anything being available in 15 years time. Certainly, linux versions have a far shorter life, and MS Windows has not been a model of forward compatibility either.

That said, the first (or many) important questions is: How OpenVMS dependent is the code base. Without that information, it is not possible to know how difficult a task a migration would be.

I will be happy to speak with you offline.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com