Why don't people migrate the systems to vms, then you could run them on vastly cheaper hardware? You have all this data across the complex storage system, but a

Why don't people migrate the systems to vms, then you could run them on vastly cheaper hardware? You have all this data across the complex storage system, but all of that could be virtualized if they wanted. The vms I worked on in the 1980s had so many different os variants, cics etc but if I was working on this approach I'd try to run things in vms, eventually teeze out the pieces I could into new services. But the parts that are too hard could just keep running in vms. You have to virtualize your data sources and provide apis to read those old disk drives or virtualized tape drives etc. But if you are spending a billion dollars, how much code do you have? Also, on the lack of programmers, just pay them more and you'll get a lot more applicants.