Mainframe Alive at Merrill Lynch

A recent article in Baseline Magazine highlights how Merrill Lynch & Company reinvigorated 420 financial programs stored on the mainframe by building Web services that can handle millions of interactions a day.

Merrill was looking to leverage its continuing heavy investment in mainframe applications and hardware by making functions in legacy applications available as Web services. Indeed, many companies with robust mainframe systems should be looking to do this - it can breathe new life into the applications without requiring a complete global re-write of still-working programs. And maintain the high availability, security, and performance of the mainframe.

According to the article, "Merrill has a huge IBM mainframe installation—one of the largest in the world—with 1,200 programmers supporting some 23,000 mainframe programs that process 80 million Customer Information Control System (CICS) transactions per day."

Yes, there is still life in mainframe systems. Wise organizations will continue to utilize their existing and vibrant mainframe systems by building web services on top of them.