Modern Legacy

#EasiRun #ModernLegacy

Take Advantage
of Your Legacy

Every company has business critical mainframe applications that are the company’s DNA and part of their legacy. Mainframes represent performance, scalability, high levels of availability and security. But, mainframes have specific limitations with regards to resources, freedom of action and operating costs, and they come with some technological requirements. Taking action to consolidate technologies, or targeted, in-place application modernisation or transformation can minimise these limitations and help make the most of company legacy. Our clients are varied and unique and any course of action has to reflect the company’s strategic outlook. Therefore, the possible solutions and options are also unique and varied. Throughout any legacy transformation, we support and consult you competently and with your individual needs in mind.

Advantages:

Consolidation simplify technologies – data and languages.
Batch distribute jobs and networks across z/OS systems such as z/CX and z/LINUX
Security & flexibility IMS / VSAM / ISAM to RDBMS.
GUI modernisation introduction of a GUI and other solutions to modernise 3270 interfaces.
Integration network applications to profit from synergies.
Analysis the basis of all future strategy is assessment and analysis.

Modern Legacy: the Market Situation

While in the past the word mainframe described similar systems produced by a variety of providers, today it is mostly used as a synonym for the IBM Z® family. At their core, mainframes represent reliability, performance and security. Many companies have been using mainframes for decades to host their business critical applications, precisely because of the former’s reliability, performance and security; the mantra for this legacy is: “never change a running system”. Nonetheless, the IT marketplace is ever evolving and this evolution turns modernising legacy systems, or the applications that run on them, into a business necessity. New DevOps developments and requirements such as the Cloud, Container, CI/CD and (micro-) services are but a few examples of how the marketplace is constantly changing. On top of this, many mainframe technologies are associated with high operating costs stemming from hardware, software or computer peripherals as well as key skills gaps and mismatches. In such a complex environment, it is important to meet reliability, performance and security requirements while at the same time adopting new technologies and systems into your legacy, reducing costs and ensuring smooth operations.

Modern Legacy: the Challenges

Businesses face a host of challenges for their legacy. While all these applications and systems build on a standard set of rules, those rules allow for different routes to implementation. And on top of that, many different providers’ varied software products often work together and rely on each other. This all contributes to numerous modern legacy related challenges, some of which are:

    • identifying and representing application specific features visually
    • breaking up existing data structures
    • identifying and defining reliable test and trial procedures
    • technological challenges of product specific illustrations
    • knowledge and potential resistance to change of staff involved

Solution and Approach

Just as the challenges are varied and numerous, so are the potential solutions. Some possibilities to build on your legacy are screen scrapers, modern development environments, migration of programming languages and distributing applications across hybrid architectures. Any specific, sensible solution depends on assessing different factors: what is your current legacy situation? What are the your strategic and commercial goals and objectives? We take all of this into account to develop solutions, including but not limited to the following scenarios:

    • linking applications and data, or providing them, to external systems via REST services
    • transferring data storage from IMS / VSAM / ISAM to RBBMS, together with the extraction of a data access layer, for improved performance and for simplified maintainability and further development
    • operating mainframe applications within a hybrid architecture (e.g. with Cloud components)
    • Replacing PL/I with Java as part of a Java strategy
    • replacement of SAG products such as NATURAL and ADABAS
    • distribution of host jobs on z/OS systems such as z/CX or LINUX for z
    • transformation of COBOL applications into a Java based environment and of data storage from IMS to DB2
    • modernisation of 3270 interfaces with screen scraper solutions, e.g. through the implementation of a GUI
    • deployment of a modern and integrated COBOL development environment for z/OS and for decentralised development tasks

Why EasiRun

As an experienced IT services provider that offers consulting, development and solutions, we have over 40 years of legacy application project expertise to benefit you. Our solutions are as varied and individual as the challenges we approach every day. We draw on best practice approaches, a combination of migration tools and an international network of excellent partners to offer you the experience, professionalism, skills and attention you need to modernise mainframe based legacy applications.