As the push toward modernisation becomes a significant priority for businesses today, an experienced project manager at a leading healthcare provider (in the U.S with revenues of $5bn+) shares their insight and experience with modernising legacy systems in the space.
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Is your organisation planning to reduce its dependency on mainframe-based legacy systems?
Project Manager: “We are in the process of reducing dependency on mainframe-based legacy systems. They require hefty maintenance, which may exceed the cost of upgrading them. As technology advances, traditional systems become outdated, resulting in lower efficiency and poorer customer service.”
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What are the main drivers behind this strategic initiative?
Project Manager: “We’re driving this strategic initiative because it offers benefits such as cost reduction, efficient storage and review processes, and seamless document sharing and collaboration. With no need for additional network infrastructure, the security threats and disaster implications are eliminated, and on average, a company spends around 75% of its IT budgets maintaining legacy systems. Upgrading the system instead can eradicate these high maintenance costs.”
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Which mainframe modernisation approach is your organisation using?
Project Manager: “We are using a combination of rehosting and refactoring approaches. Our company is more drawn towards the ‘lift-tinker-shift’ approach as there are rising concerns regarding the unavailability of the right IT personnel interested in legacy systems. We are consulting different MSPs (Managed Services Providers) to enlighten us with their unique ideas. This approach is beneficial because of its long-term cost benefits, increased resilience, and adaptiveness to changing requirements.”
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What are the main challenges you have encountered so far with regards to mainframe modernisation?
Project Manager: “The significant challenge we’ve encountered in the process of mainframe modernisation is poor planning because we underestimated the complexity of the process. The availability of adequate talent is another contributing factor. Moreover, there is news in the industry regarding the inability to migrate successfully, resulting in stakeholders withdrawing or delaying the process.”
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How has mainframe modernisation helped your customer service?
Project Manager: “Mainframe modernisation will help us efficiently deal with a sudden influx of data in any situation. For example, during COVID-19, there was an unprecedented wave of patients and claims overstressing our servers and bringing operations to a halt. Migrating to a better technology could have avoided this because the mainframe lacked horizontal scalability to support rapid demand, so we are proactively working on our modernisation approach to effectively manage such situations and provide better value to our customers.”
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To what extent is your organisation's cloud strategy one of the most important things that will determine the overall success of your business?
Project Manager: “Our cloud strategy is an essential initiative that we must undertake to remain competitive in the market. As per a survey, more than 80% of organisations will establish a cloud-first principle during the next 5 years, and businesses are currently 17 times more likely to increase their cloud spending. So, whilst our success is not completely dependent on our cloud strategy, it plays a significant role in our survival.”
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How has the role of cloud providers shifted for your organisation over the past three years?
Project Manager: “Cloud providers have helped us migrate and consolidate our outdated legacy applications to a single integrated platform across finance, human resources, and supply chains. This has enabled us to reduce costs, capitalise on emerging business models, create new opportunities and sources of revenue, reduce the impact of excessive workloads, and meet the demands of tomorrow.”
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How integral have cloud providers become to your business?
Project Manager: “Cloud providers have helped us automate and standardise processes, improve efficiencies, and reduce operational costs. We expect to save more than 30% of our IT expenses over the next three years.”
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Considering cloud and digitalisation in general, how have global systems integrators had to apply their skill sets?
Project Manager: “Global system integrators have provided cloud-based solutions specific to our company's unique business needs/challenges. They have designed strategies for new market penetration, geographic expansion, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, real-time business insights, and greater business agility and innovation.”
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How would you describe the transformation that systems integrators have undertaken because of the cloud?
Project Manager: “In the healthcare sector, system integrators are transforming by creating a connected ecosystem by adopting data-intensive technologies. They are transforming from providing on-premises IT software and hardware solutions to digital ones. Additionally, they are adopting more machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide real-time solutions for better decision-making.”
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What will be the biggest challenges in the next year few years?
Project Manager: “The biggest challenge would be downtime and cost associated as cloud computing itself is affordable.”
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