- [Alex] Hey, Nikki, how's it going? - [Nikki] Not too bad, Alex. Just over here, walking through the migration readiness assessment process that we've been talking about. - [Alex] Oh, nice. I'm glad to hear it. Making any good progress? - [Nikki] Yeah, we actually just finished the MRA meeting. It was an interesting time. - [Alex] Oh, how so? - [Nikki] Well, at first it was going pretty smoothly. We found some things I expected, web servers, databases, and some containers, as well. - [Alex] Yeah, that sounds pretty normal. Did anything else come up? - [Nikki] Near the end is where it got weird. Someone I've never met before jumped out of a closet at the end of the meeting, screaming, "Don't forget about the mainframe," and then ran away. - [Alex] Huh. I mean, yeah, that does sound a bit strange. I can't say I've had people jumping out of closets in a meeting before. - [Nikki] Yeah, the closet thing isn't the weird part. What was weird was the mainframe part. - [Alex] Oh, got you. Yeah, you do sure have a strange office. - [Nikki] We keep things interesting. I could use some help, though. I have no idea what a mainframe is. - [Alex] Ah, well, I can help with that. So, a mainframe is basically a giant old computer. Think of a room full of old machines with tapes, flashy lights, and a black-and-white terminal. They usually run extremely old programs written in languages like COBOL. Traditionally, these have been found in companies that have been around for a very long time, like a bank. What does your company do again, Nikki? - [Nikki] We specialize in a product called nacho business. (sound effect) (audience cheering) - [Alex] Okay, well moving on. So, a mainframe used to be a huge stumbling block when moving to the cloud. There wasn't exactly a mainframe-as-a-service option that you could easily port your application into. That all changed when Amazon released the AWS Mainframe Modernization service. This tool helps folks like you move those mainframe workloads off of that giant old computer, and into the cloud. - [Nikki] So, we can use this service to get rid of the mainframe? - [Alex] Exactly. - [Nikki] Perfect. Who do I ship these reel-to-reel tapes to? - [Alex] Now hold on there a second, Nikki. It doesn't work just like that. Sadly, you can't box up the tape and simply throw them at us. The good news is, it's almost that easy. With the Mainframe Modernization service, you can go through the same sort-of process that you're going through for your entire architectural migration. The assess stage gives you the insight into proposed changes for your older application. It can highlight dependencies, and help you create a plan to get your code updated to a more modern standard. - [Nikki] I do love the assessing stage of the migration process, but what happens after that? - [Alex] Well, I'm glad you asked. One of the next steps is to refactor the code. Now, you have two options. The first is to take the suggestions that the service gives you, and go through the manual process of fixing it all up. - [Nikki] And the other? - [Alex] Well, the other option is to have it automagically transformed into agile Java services and web frameworks. - [Nikki] That sounds fantastic. Are those the only options? - [Alex] Well, we've actually got one more here for you. The last potential path is to re-platform. If you don't want to transform the application, you also have the option to port the source code directly without changes. - [Nikki] So, which one do I choose? - [Alex] Well, that's completely up to you, and it'll be based on your business requirements, but we've got support for you no matter which route you go. - [Nikki] Perfect. - [Alex] All right, well, I've got to be heading out to another meeting, so let's wrap this up. - [Nikki] Look over there. - [Random puppet] What about SAP workloads? - [Alex] Sure, SAP workloads. We've got a couple of options to run those in the cloud. We've actually got over 130 different instance types that are certified by SAP to work, if you'd like to run everything yourself. We even got a pre-canned AWS launch wizard environment that can get you up and running within a few hours. If you don't want to start from a clean slate, and you'd like to migrate your existing workloads, we've got automation tools that can give you a hand. It's a free to highly automated lift-and-shift solution. We also have the ability to use the AWS Backup Agent to back up your SAP HANA database to S3, and then restore it later on. Does that answer your SAP questions? - [Nikki] I don't think we have any SAP workloads. - [Alex] Then, why did you ask about SAP? - [Nikki] I didn't. - [Alex] Oh, then who was that that jumped out yelling about SAP? - [Nikki] I have no idea. - [Alex] Well, all righty, then. That's all we've got for this session. Thanks for joining me, Nikki. - [Nikki] Anytime.