Spyros Sakellariadis, director, mainframe migration at Microsoft and director of the Mainframe Migration Alliance, coordinates activities with groups involved with mainframe migration around Microsoft. We recently caught up with him for a “state of mainframe migration.”

WFS: Beyond the growth in mainframe migrations, it still comes down to return on investment. Is all this quantifiable?

SS: By definition, ROI is quantifiable. Some vendors have ROI calculators specifically for mainframe migrations, and you can use those to project your expected ROI. But the proof only comes after you’ve completed a migration and tallied up the receipts. Typically, customers are reporting a positive ROI within 12 to 18 months of deployment, a rather short time because their TCO savings are huge. Individual customers point to savings of millions of dollars a year, and one study I saw reported an average of 70% savings on costs for hardware, software and services.

WFS: What’s new in mainframe migration since we interviewed you for last year’s profile?

SS: It’s been a year of growth with new products, service offerings, alliances and new arguments, new twists on old arguments and new migrations.

Microsoft recently launched new versions of SQL Server, BizTalk and Visual Studio with excellent performance and features for mainframe users. Micro Focus, Fujitsu Software and Sophisticated Business Systems have new versions of their software helping mainframe customers migrate to the Windows platform. Accenture, EDS, Fujitsu Consulting, HP, Infosys, Sonata, TCS and Unisys have dedicated practices for mainframe migration to Windows seeing great success. I’m also pleased to see positive reviews of hardware from all the OEMs with mainframe-class boxes, such as PrimeQuest from Fujitsu, Superdome from HP and ES7000 from Unisys.

WFS: How can vendors justify that level of investment?

SS: The same way anyone does – projected sales. They’re seeing what we’re seeing – a growth in the capabilities of the hardware and software ecosystem built around the Windows Server System over the last few years, and a continued decline, or at best steady state, of the mainframe ecosystem. They see that the number of companies producing new products for the mainframe is negligible, that the population of skilled mainframe administrators is declining to an unacceptable level, that the overall value of the mainframe is no longer a compelling proposition. The demand for products or skills in mainframe migration is high, and increasing.

WFS: You mentioned new alliances?

SS: There have been numerous announcements from members of the Mainframe Migration Alliance about new partnerships to help customers. The MMA has seen a great growth in membership and activity too, with companies such as Intel and SunGard recently joining, and a new chapter launched recently in Singapore. You can see the current membership at its Web site, www.mainframemigration.org, and read some of the press relating to the activities of its members on our Web site at www.microsoft.com/mainframe.

WFS: A last question. What’s new that our FSI readers would care about?

SS: I just loved the demo that was shown at our SQL Server 2005 launch a few months ago of the EDS Merchant Acquirer application that was migrated off the mainframe and onto .NET utilizing Micro Focus tools, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005.

Following on the heels of EDS SOLCORP’s core life system, Accenture’s Alnova core banking application, SunGard/Sherwood’s Amarta pension system, and Insurity’s core property and casualty system as well as the Australian Workers’ Comp FNS system, the financial services sector is seeing a lot of movement of commercial applications off the mainframe and towards Windows. We also saw an increase in migrations of custom COBOL applications off the mainframe by insurance companies and stock exchanges, two industries characterized by very high-volume activities and huge costs of downtime.