MigrationWare, the specialist applications migration and modernisation company, has completed the delivery of yet another large-scale IT modernisation project for a prominent Danish organisation, the trade union TIB.
TIB, which manages the interests of 62 000 construction workers, was faced with a major challenge posed by the increasing operational costs associated with the mainframe environment. It needed a more cost-effective and flexible platform that would allow it to provide a better quality of service to its members.
TIB's mission-critical unemployment fund system was functionally sound and met the requirements of its core business. Therefore, the right solution would need to be one that preserved the functionality while transforming the underlying restrictive IT platform.
“ARKE has been a good and reliable system for TIB for many years, but back in 2008, we decided that it was time for a change and started searching the market for alternatives to our mainframe platform,” says Jan Lehmann, Chief Information Officer at TIB.
TIB's investigation into possible alternatives for ARKE led it to Micro Focus, a company with a solid reputation for providing the best-of-breed technology that allows for the re-platforming of key mainframe technology to alternative low-cost environments. Given that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the code, it made sense to preserve as much of this investment as possible and to simply migrate the COBOL programs, IIMS and DB2 databases to a Windows-based platform.
MigrationWare, as a longstanding Micro Focus partner with specialist skills in the use of Micro Focus technology, and in the execution of large-scale migration projects, was selected by Micro Focus to be its delivery partner for the migration project.
“MigrationWare, as a partner for Micro Focus in the Nordics, has provided a unique blend of solution competence that addresses both the market and the comprehensive requirements of the projects in the region,” commented John Oxford, Micro Focus Nordic Channels Manager.
The project was executed using a classic “Lift & Shift” approach, where large portions of technology are moved without change to development language or database. This meant that the focus of the project was on technical integration between the various operational components of the solution, the conversion of data and the various forms of testing required to demonstrate that technical equivalence had been achieved.
“With any migration of this nature, great attention needs to be paid to the small detail, because even though large portions of the technology are directly supported, if the smaller unsupported components are not catered for, then the overall project will not succeed,” said Rodney Stevens, Technical Lead on the project.
The entire project was delivered on time and on budget within an eight-month timeframe, which included a one-month proof of concept project used to validate all aspects of the solution. A large proportion of the work was conducted from MigrationWare's Cape Town offices. Remote connections to the TIB development environment meant that the MigrationWare project team was able to provide direct support for the new environment as it was deployed.
The project resulted in cost savings for TIB of 70% of the overall IT operations budget, and in this way, paid for itself in only 18 months. In addition, it modernised TIB's business-critical applications and provided the foundation for the organisation to provide better service for its members.
Joao de Oliveira, Sales Director at MigrationWare, says: “This project once more served to underline the value of MigrationWare's partnership with Micro Focus, which allows for the delivery of complex migration solutions to customer requirements.”
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