Category: Mainframe & Legacy

Re-platforming is a popular mainframe modernization approach because it’s flexible and transparent to the user. Learn about the phased migration approach Infosys uses for re-platforming mainframe applications. We’ll provide an overview of each step and the corresponding Infosys tools and accelerators we use to ensure successful mainframe migrations, including Micro Focus Enterprise Server (MF-ES).

Mainframe workloads are often tightly-coupled legacy monoliths with millions of lines of code, and customers want to modernize them for business agility. Manually rewriting a legacy application for a cloud-native architecture requires lots of re-engineering. See how AWS Blu Age transformed a typical mainframe CICS application to AWS containers and AWS Lambda functions. You’ll also learn how to increase mainframe workload agility with refactoring to serverless and containers.

Large mainframes have challenging non-functional requirements in order to process large volumes of data and users for core-business workloads. Micro Focus Enterprise Server mainframe capabilities, combined with AWS global infrastructure, provide the quality of service required by large applications. With this solution, enterprises and public institutions deploy mainframe workloads on AWS with high security, high availability, elasticity, and robust system management.

Mainframe proprietary storage solutions such as VTLs hold valuable data locked in a platform with complex tools. This can lead to higher compute and storage costs, and make it harder to retain existing employees or train new ones. When mainframe data is stored in a cloud storage service, however, it can be accessed by a rich ecosystem of applications and analytics tools. BMC AMI Cloud Analytics enables mainframe customers to backup and archive directly to AWS.

Many companies or institutions still possess legacy non-x86 systems in their datacenters: mainframe, midrange, or UNIX proprietary systems. Migrating these workloads across hardware architectures to the AWS Cloud requires advanced software technology. Short-term migration approaches mainly use hardware emulation, middleware emulation, automated refactoring, or middleware replatforming. This post highlights short-term migration options, their key technical differences, as well as their differentiated benefits.

The New York Times had a critical business workload running on a mainframe as the core IT system supporting the daily Home Delivery Platform of its newspaper. They collaborated with APN Partner Modern Systems to successfully transform their legacy COBOL-based application into a modern Java-based application, which today runs on AWS. This post describes the project, including the automated refactoring process and AWS architecture, as well as key lessons learned, business outcomes, and future technology plans.

Customers that still have business-critical data locked in mainframes want to exploit this data with AWS agile services. Fortunately, Treehouse Software’s tcVISION replicates data in real-time and bi-directionally between mainframes and AWS to allow for these new use cases. Learn about the solution, customer use cases, and explore a practical example of how to replicate data in real-time from DB2 z/OS to Amazon Aurora.

Mainframe cold storage based on disks and tapes is typically expensive and rigid. BMC AMI Cloud Data improves the economics and flexibility by leveraging AWS storage for archival, backup, and recovery of mainframe data. BMC AMI Cloud Data enables mainframe customers to leverage modern cloud technologies and economics to reduce data recovery risks and improve application availability by providing a software-defined solution for archive, backup, and recovery directly from AWS.

Companies still rely on mission-critical applications running on Sun SPARC, Alpha, or other legacy systems like PDP, VAX, or HP 3000. Maintenance costs for these systems goes up as time goes on, and reliability declines due to their age. Fortunately, they can be re-hosted on AWS in a matter of days using cross-platform hypervisors from Stromasys. Here, we describe the challenges customers face with legacy systems, the Stromasys technical solution, and a successful customer migration to AWS.

Ippon Technologies has successfully re-written a large mainframe third-party software package to Java Angular Spring Boot microservices. The package supported 130 TPS and 1,800 MIPS, catered to over 5,000 users, and housed more than 5 TB of business-critical data. Ippon helped the customer define the approach and architecture, and then developed the microservices along with the CI/CD pipeline on AWS. Learn about the project’s technical aspects, methodologies, and lessons learned.