BT taps Kyndryl to migrate mainframe apps to the cloud BT is has contracted infrastructure services provider Kyndryl to help migrate some of its legacy mainframe applications to the cloud. The former state-owned telecoms biz said the project will move critical legacy apps that "cannot be shut down in the short term" to the cloud. These are identified as ones servicing its legacy …
So,. I'm confused. The article mentions copper, but I thought that was end of life in 2025 for phone connections, but also mentions the target date of 2026.... which I doubt will get met anyway, so it looks like BT will be cloud managing copper connections they no longer have, some time in 2028?
Not sure how that saves money. I'm not convinced taking a mainframe application to the cloud is a path to cost saving either. Mainframes are becoming esoteric, so wouldn't moving to a more mainstream platform make more sense?
BT no longer have to support FAX, that means that they don't need to support POTS endpoints with 32kbit PCM CODECs
Essentially this means that they can now run the same lossy compression as other UK telcos (more than doubling the number of "voice" calls being carried over the existing infrastructure)
They can still choose to supply analogue twisted pair circuits (and 'pay' open reach to operate the existing legacy stock), but they are no longer required to supply a FAX compatible network.
/Rattus
Well, I don't, as i think it's a mammoth undertaking to get replacement infrastructure in place, but allegedly the PSTN network gets switched off in December 2025 so anything running over the old analog copper connections will stop working. Allegedly. My last couple of broadband suppliers have run the landline through the broadband modem, so I guess generally BB users are no longer reliant on PSTN, but what about older people, my parents never had the Internet, just a landline, so how do people just get a landline?
wouldn't moving to a more mainstream platform make more sense?
This is "moving to a more mainstream platform".
If you mean "wouldn't throwing all the code away and attempting to write the same thing from scratch", then no, that would not make more sense. That sort of rip-and-replace project nearly always fails, because the business logic embodied in these large application portfolios is very difficult to extract.
Also given these applications survived the late 90's fad of rehosting (production) mainframe applications to cheaper-to-operate Unix boxes; but which still needed a mainframe for dev and test. I suspect they will hit similar problems with a move to cloud - even if that cloud is IBM's mainframe cloud (or are they intending to effectively rehost on Unix and run this in the AWS cloud...).
"Still needed a mainframe for dev and test"? What are you talking about? A great number of mainframe production applications were moved entirely to UNIX and Windows systems starting in the late 90s, and prior to that, it was usually development and initial testing that was migrated, not production.
Imagine the water company that has just won your business, coming along and ripping the old water pipes out, to instal their own branded water pipes?
Many years ago, that's just how electricity used to be, and thank God the world has seen the sense of having one shared network.
It would certainly improve customer's experience, if they could switch ISP's, without the need for an engineer to turn up and rip out the old stuff to install their practically identical gear.
The flat I live in has the old boxes for BT, Virgin and the current Hyperoptic scattered about the place. What a waste. What a kerfuffle. If internet connectivity isn't of strategic national importance, worthy of unifying the network, then just what is the point of a national government, which refuses to act on the screaming in your face obvious?
This is your regular pointer to the strategy Peter Cochrane advocated when BT's CTO, which would have seen FTTP to every premise decades ago.
But instead, because Public bad, Private and Competition good, we had the cable companies, lots of little local franchises until the inevitable consolidation into one national operator came about.
>until the inevitable consolidation into one national operator came about.
Which in "let the markets decide" economy's - such as the one the Conservatives believe in, always happens after the point it is required and would have benefited everyone...
Obviously, there are times when good sense prevail, we saw this when the European telecoms industry standardised on GSM, 3G.. and also with the Internet (okay the TC/IP suite might be a QWERTY keyboard, but like the QWERTY keyboard it works and is a standard everyone understands.)
Problem is if you have a crap connection, my last place I rented could get 3mbps, no cable thanks to neighbours stopping the boxes. BT had monopoly so they werent going to upgrade anything. No mater who I was with no way of getting a better connection (This was 7 years ago so 3G/4G/5G wasn't viable).
Although annoying being able to go to Virgin could be seen as a bonus expecially if the BT exchange is no-where near you.
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