I guess moving Oracle Tuxedo based applications on to an IBM based platform is never going to be easier than using the newly released IMAT (IBM Migration Assistant for Oracle Tuxedo) offering from IBM.

But Why Move ?...

I always heard that the support cost from BEA was high, and it became worse after Oracle acquired almost spiraling the costs....maintenance. And this at a time when businesses are cutting short their spending due to economic conditions prevailing. To be honest, in my opinion this (cost) isn't the obvious or primary reason as to why you should move to TXSeries... (probably re-negotiating with Oracle might help reduce the costs ;-)). It is because of the technical value that TXSeries brings on the table, and its complete eco system surrounding it which makes it a good value for money as compared to that of a Oracle stack.

What values does TXSeries bring to me...?
IBM TXSeries has been in the market for over than a decade and is a matured product; having a wide spread deployment world-wide running across various industries like Banking, Healthcare, Insurance, Retail, Manufacturing, Transportation, and so on.

Well, TXSeries adopts a robust framework of CICS (Customer Information Control System) - a much famous OLTP platform in the industry. The simplicity of the CICS architecture provides various benefits to that of a Oracle Tuxedo. Firstly, it is proven that with TXSeries that it consumes less CPU power and memory usage to that of Oracle Tuxedo for the same throughput (or a TPS factor). This means you can do more with less - Every business that runs would expect itself to grow year-a-year and so equally the demand in their IT infrastructure. In terms of large deployments is concerned, nothing gets better than TXSeries here - It's seamless to scale across different hardware platforms, provides an intuitive work load management, flexibility in deploying applications and refreshing them later with an updated version without requiring to stop your business. Multiple instances of TXSeries systems running on desperate hardware can talk 2PC (global transaction), provides monitoring through Web based administration tool, Tivoli agents, Web Services SupportPac, WebSphere Business Events SupportPac, IMAT SupportPac.... and all this at no additional cost!

How does IMAT help me... ?
IMAT SupportPac provides you the necessary tools that let's you to migrate your existing Tuxedo based application on a TXSeries environment seamlessly, without requiring considerable effort...During the migration process, your application remains as-is - this is a key benefit in the migration projects which are quite sensitive to any changes done in the application / business logics. Also you might think that being new to a TXSeries environment, it would require a larger learning curve - but this is not the case with IMAT... it is equipped will all the tools required with which you continue to develop and deploy your application as you were doing in the Tuxedo environment without needing to learn how you do all these newly in TXSeries! Isn't this a great boon for such migration? less learning and quick deployments of your existing applications! This is why we call IMAT a S.M.A.R.T migration offering. You can continue to maintain your existing applications and new application can be written to take advantage of the CICS Application Programming sets.
Does IMAT change my application code... ?
Nope. it doesn't. Your application is just link-edited with a library that is supplied with IMAT and enables it to run on the TXSeries environment.

Bullet proof investment for the future...
At the end of the day, one can always look up to CICS TS if they wish to scale over the roof... with the z Enterprise launched one can consolidate all the heterogeneous hardware in to one single blade... Imagine the benefits of doing so... less data center space, less cooling p.m., easier to manage and maintain in a centralized system, no hurlings of cables here and there... above all the reliability that you get for which mainframes are always known for! And what more, TXSeries applications are compatible to run on a CICS TS environment.

Where can I get this tool...?
Here is a link that can give you more information on how to download: www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=9&...

Do I need anything else to try this tool...?
You will need TXSeries obviously, if you don't have a license yet... why don't try a trial download?... here is the link: www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ws/...

Where can I ask a question on TXSeries... ?
There is a technical developerWorks forum for TXSeries, and here is the link: www.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/forum....