Our COBOL Rehosting solution combines the industry’s best software platforms with proven application consolidation and data migration services to ensure your entire mainframe estate is deployed to the target environment in the languages and database models you need.
CHALLENGES
Mainframes running COBOL cost as much as 4,500 percent more to operate than equivalent Cloud counterparts. This figure is compounded by the rising licensing and maintenance fees for ancillary mainframe applications and databases.
Companies are rapidly moving to modern environments and practices such as DevOps and the Cloud. However, the mainframe and its ancillary systems were not designed for modern IT agility, resulting in difficult integrations and limited flexibility.
Legacy databases are difficult to integrate with systems on modern platforms. This is because of inherent inextensibility, incompatibility, and rigidity of the underlying hardware and software powering these legacy systems.
OUR SOLUTION
You can retain your COBOL as-is while taking advantage of the cost savings and infinite elasticity of the Cloud by rehosting your legacy estate with Advanced.
Rehosting, sometimes referred to as replatforming, is ideal for companies whose applications are still meeting their business needs, and who therefore wish to retain their COBOL development skills while moving away from non-relational databases and expensive mainframe infrastructure. With rehosting, COBOL is migrated onto modern, distributed platforms, either on-premises or in the Cloud, without change. Underlying legacy databases are migrated to relational models, configured to seamlessly interact with your applications via the rehosting platform.
Our COBOL Rehosting solution leverages three key service activities to account for the application source code, data and supporting operational infrastructure:
Application migration
During an assessment, our tools and modernization experts catalog the applications running in the mainframe estate, documenting dependencies and all application languages used. We also highlight dead and unused code that can be eliminated in the modernization process to reduce the complexity and footprint of your source code. Core languages such as COBOL, PL/I, and JCL are retained and rehosted into the target environment of your choice. Leveraging our Automated Refactoring solutions, we consolidate other application languages into a single optimized language. For example, languages such as CA Telon or Natural which can be intermingled with COBOL on the mainframe can be consolidated to COBOL. This eliminates licensing fees and simplifies maintenance of your application on the rehosting platform.
Data migration
Our Automated Data Migration solution is leveraged to ensure existing legacy data files and databases are deployed in the desired model and optimized for the rehosting environment. Many data types such as VSAM, sequential, GDGs, IMS-DB, and certain relational databases can be retained in the rehosted environment. However, in some cases, a non-relational database is migrated to a relational model. For example, if your mainframe environment contains Adabas or IDMS databases, we would migrate them to SQL Server, Db2, Oracle, or PostgreSQL, depending on the rehosting platform, your preferences, and the nature of your applications.
Platform deployment
Deployment specifics depend on the rehosting platform and migrated estate, but this activity includes target environment sizing and architecture, identification of ancillary components (such as supporting third party solutions and utilities) that require replacement, deployment of the rehosting platform software, consolidated source code, utilities, and migrated databases, as well as testing and post-delivery support.
OUR PROCESS
We begin every modernization initiative with a discovery, free of charge. Our modernization experts work with you to understand and document your business and technical goals and objectives. Together, we gather information about your mainframe estate. Everything from infrastructure to language and database types and quantities are accounted for. The discovery concludes with a workshop where we recommend optimal modernization approaches based on information gathered, as well as rough order of magnitude (ROM) pricing, and estimated project durations and resource requirements.
The assess and design phase is performed using our automated tools to fully catalog and develop a complete understanding of the application, infrastructure, and operational components of a mainframe environment. It exposes mainframe artifacts that organizations did not know they had, relationships they did not realize existed, and assets that are no longer in use. Assess and design activities provide stakeholders with valuable insight to inform application modernization decisions such as disposition strategies and target environment architectures. It also mitigates cost and risk by highlighting potential challenges and how to overcome them. At the conclusion of the assess and design phase, all in-scope artifacts are accounted for, a detailed project plan is established, and the transformation process begins.
The transform phase includes the bulk of the application consolidation activities, the database and data modernization, and build-out of the target operating environment. During transform, the rehosting software is deployed and we perform any necessary refactoring in pre-defined work packets. We also perform functional tests and deliver the work packets into the DevOps pipeline. While customer teams build, test, and deploy these work packets in the target environment, we refactor the next work packet, iterating until the entire mainframe estate has been transformed.
The test and deploy phase begins with the receipt of work packets through the DevOps toolchain as they are delivered from iterative refactoring activities in the transform phase. If issues arise, the work packet is passed back to us where we review the code, adjust our tooling, reprocess the work packet, and send it back into the DevOps pipeline to resume testing and deployment. This process repeats until the entire refactored estate has been deployed.
Prior to go-live, we refresh the target environment by transforming a final snapshot of the mainframe environment to account for changes that have taken place throughout modernization project as part of normal business operations. Fortunately, since all adjustments and optimizations have been made to the automated refactoring tools and not the refactored code, this final refresh can be delivered into production over a weekend, eliminating code freezes.
We work closely with you and your team to ensure a smooth transition into production. Part of this transition includes the cooperative construction and testing of a go-live production cutover plan to reduce the potential risks associated with application deployments. We also provide on-demand assistance during the warranty period following production deployment, as well as appropriate rehosting platform support, and post-transformation support of the modernized applications.
“COBOL resources are becoming increasingly hard to find. Advanced's automated refactoring solution put us in a position to be able to work with a global community of young talented developers.”
Thanos Kaponeridis, CEO,
Aerosoft Systems
This whitepaper looks at the challenges of maintaining legacy applications, and the various COBOL modernization options available.
This whitepaper details why a detailed assessment of legacy applications and databases is essential for risk mitigation prior to any modernization effort.
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Live discussion: 2022 Mainframe Modernization Report
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This blog outlines three essential techniques you can leverage to reduce the risk and complexity around the modernization effort.
by Tim Jones, Managing Director - Application Modernization
Over 35 years of COBOL and mainframe modernization experience
Read our application modernization blogs