IT Management: IMS Modernization Survey Reveals Concerns for the Future

by Alan Radding
January 29, 2009

Despite these significant technical and HR challenges, less than half of our respondents have put in place a defined plan to migrate away from IMS/DB. A similar number have reviewed and dismissed the idea of rewriting these applications, owing to the huge cost and considerable risk inherent in such a move. Database transparency, facilitating the interception of IMS application calls and their rerouting to a migrated DB2 database, has seen increased uptake, providing a possible solution for the 64 percent of our respondents who felt that a way to eliminate the costs of IMS/DB and related tools while minimizing risk would be well-received by their management. (IBM is endorsing this technique for VSAM-based applications through its “CICS VSAM Transparency” solution, though solutions for IMS/DB users remain in the third-party domain.)

So, with 30 percent of our respondents citing “no plans to migrate,” our survey shows a divergence of intentions between the rest of the group. Of the 40 percent who plan to “rewrite,” slightly more than half plan to do so on the mainframe and using DB2. Less than 15 percent plan to “replace with a package,” which the related comments suggested continued to be ERP-based solutions. A similar number plan alternative solutions.

The surprisingly high volume and detail of the response we received to this survey demonstrates the critical view taken toward IMS/DB applications in our respondents’ organizations, as well as the seriousness of the considerations being made toward their future. This “warhorse” technology clearly has a long and prosperous future, provided the skills to maintain it can be found, though this is likely to be in conjunction with critical applications (such as banking) where performance and the risk of change are at their greatest. Many other applications will likely migrate as part of SOA strategies now being evolved.