What is biggest hindrance in moving away from mainframes?

[Shalini Sameera]

Hi,

I am working for a company which is in process of moving one of the application away from mainframes which currently works on mainframes. I have read about migration projects online some talks the move as successful while other are that successful so I get a mix view. I needed to know, What is biggest hindrance in moving away from mainframes?

[Robert Sample]

What you are asking is an opinion question, not a factual question so every response can be totally different.

In my opinion, the biggest hindrance in moving away from mainframes is the fact that management does not understand the complexity of the systems running on the mainframe. It is common for projects to move applications away from the mainframe to run YEARS over budget, and a significant percentage of them wind up being canceled. At a previous employer, an application was to be moved off the mainframe; this project cost close to $10 million, took multiple years, and the servers used to replace the mainframe had to be upgraded several times as users consistently complained about how the slow the application ran. Another application's project to move off the mainframe was canceled after several years, and the last I heard the application was still running on the mainframe.