At the heart of Union Pacific Corp.’s railroad operations is an IBM mainframe-based transportation control system that’s been chugging along like a hardworking locomotive for nearly 40 years. According to industry experts, it was a pioneering system when first introduced, and it made the Omaha-based transportation giant one of the first companies in the world to make extensive use of online transaction processing technologies.
Union Pacific Railroad ditches its mainframe for SOA.
Filed under: Amtrak
Trains For America 
We’ll see. I went thru a similar effort about 10 years ago with a corporation. The mainframe is still there.
Considering UP’s use of the aged mainframe technology for the last forty years, I applaud their decision to move on to a more current technology. I don’t think that the technology needs to be distributed necessarily but it needs to be supportable and adaptable to the ever-changing business and economic realties.
This effort will be a huge undertaking no doubt but it shows that even monolithic railroads companies are seeing the need to be responsive and nimble. Good job UP, better late than never.
Joe