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Mainframe/Migration/Legacy
Technical PerspectiveIBM and Business Partners Realize Significant Growth on the Mainframe and Linux IBM today announced a mainframe milestone as more than 390 IBM business partners now offer nearly 1 000 applications for System z customers running Linux a 100 percent increase over the last year. IBM recently reported a 30 percent year-to-year growth of mainframe customers running Linux and this surge is giving IBM's channel partners the opportunity to capitalize on the mainframe's continued growth. This increase in Linux application development for the mainframe is being driven by a number of factors including the overwhelming acceptance of partitioned Linux virtual servers -- and the associated great price and performance -- which is driving new workloads on System z. more > HP Intel and Oracle to Modernize Applications for Legacy Mainframe Customers HP Intel Corp. and Oracle today announced a joint initiative to help customers increase business agility and performance mitigate risk when moving applications from mainframe systems to open standards-based server environments. Introduced at Oracle OpenWorld the Application Modernization Initiative provides customers a comprehensive solution to help modernize their legacy application portfolios running on legacy mainframes. The initiative uses service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles and enterprise grid computing platforms that provide increased reliability and efficiency without the dependency on legacy mainframe skills. After a detailed assessment and analysis of the customers mainframe applications portfolio an appropriate standards-based solution is recommended as a more agile and cost-effective alternative. As part of this process a pre-defined and pre-tested reference architecture based on HP Intel and Oracle technologies is used to reduce risk and implementation time. more > Serena Software Enhances Integration Between Mainframe and Distributed Change Governance Solutions Now Mainframe Application Developers Can Achieve Process and Issue Management Via Web Browsers to Control Change Across the Enterprise Serena Software Inc. the Change Governance leader today announced a newly upgraded integration between its best-of-breed solutions for mainframe application development and Web-based process control and enforcement. This new integration between Serena ChangeMan ZMF 5.6 and Serena TeamTrack 6.6 allows users to improve the quality predictability and control of the software development process reduce risks and costs through more efficient process management and create an audit trail for easier regulatory compliance. Companies are increasingly working in heterogeneous environments and until now lacked visibility between their mainframe and distributed application development environments. By integrating mainframe and distributed application lifecycle management Serena customers can visualize the impact of changes before they take place orchestrate the optimal implementation of those changes and enforce best practice lifecycle processes across all development activities regardless of platform or location. more > Mainframe Clone Maker to Continue Sales Program Despite IBM Patent Suit Platform Solutions is in the midst of an early ship program with trial customers and plans full commercial availability of its Intel-based IBM mainframe clones in early 2007. Executives at mainframe clone maker Platform Solutions said they will continue to sell systems based on IBM technology despite a patent infringement lawsuit Big Blue filed against the company last week. We're continuing as we always have to bring a product to market said Christian Reilly Platform Solutions' VP for product development. Reilly in an interview Wednesday said the company believes IBM's suit has no legal merit. We absolutely respect intellectual property and feel this lawsuit is unjustified said Reilly. Platform Solutions is in the midst of an early ship program with trial customers and plans full commercial availability of its Intel-based IBM mainframe clones in early 2007 said Reilly. The systems are configured to run IBM's z/OS and OS/390 operating systems atop Intel Itanium 2 processors instead of IBM's dedicated mainframe processors. more > Legacy systems - a new approach Dr Toby Sucharov considers some of the problems posed by legacy systems and suggests a possible solution that produces a 'mental model' as an aid to system development. A legacy system can be defined as a bespoke application that processes large or complex data which has become cumbersome and hard to maintain. Legacy systems are by definition hard to modify or update. It is worth noting that a legacy system is not necessarily an application that has been written ten years ago in COBOL - it may be an application that has only just been delivered. The bleak view is that due to the size and complexity of modern IT projects all resulting systems will become legacy systems. more > Wachovia insources mainframe code maintenance Four years ago Charlotte N.C.-based Wachovia Bank realized all of its eggs were in one very small proverbial basket. Like many other companies in the financial industry the bank was running a very large custom-built mainframe application. The problem was that the technicians maintaining the legacy code worked for a small outside firm. Tim Truelove vice president of treasury finance balance sheet management technology at Wachovia said after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks management realized the inherent risk in that structure. more > Analyst: Mainframe has 20 year advantage over competing Platforms Lauding the IBM System z mainframes superiority in partitioning and virtualization IT analyst Robert Frances Group declared in a recent report [1] that IT executives should consider the value of the 20-year advantage that mainframes have over other platforms. The report notes that IBMs continued investment in the mainframe will ensure technology superiority for the foreseeable future. The analyst considers the new wave of server and storage consolidation partitioning and virtualization as an affirmation of the mainframe model. more > Software AG Announces crossvision Legacy Modernization Software AG today announced the availability of crossvision Legacy Modernization the most extensive portfolio of products and methodologies available to help organizations retain and extend the value of their investments in core enterprise systems. Founded on Software AGs 37 years of experience in mission-critical data management crossvision Legacy Modernization enables customers to transform their legacy systems into modern and flexible business applications and processes. Using crossvision Legacy Modernization companies are better able to align valuable enterprise systems with IT strategies and business requirements. The announcement was made at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. more > Businesses merge old with new in their information systems according to new Aberdeen Report As businesses wade into a world of service-oriented architectures (SOA) to serve as the foundations of their information infrastructures they are utilizing different technology strategies to modernize the software applications that have been carrying the business data load for them over the past two decades according to a new Aberdeen Group benchmark report. The Legacy Application Modernization Benchmark Report details the strategies drivers and successes behind companies' efforts to move those older applications -- often called legacy systems -- into today's newer architectures especially SOA. Businesses are adopting SOA to give them greater visibility into their processes and allow them to react more quickly to changes in order to maintain competitive positions and reduce life-cycle software maintenance costs. more > ATERAS Partners With AberdeenGroup to Sponsor 'The Legacy Application Modernization Benchmark Report ATERAS a leading provider of 100% automated solutions for legacy migration today announced that it has partnered with Aberdeen Group to sponsor The Legacy Application Modernization Benchmark Report. The report was published on September 30 and details the strategies drivers and successes behind companies' efforts to move older software applications - often called legacy systems - into today's newer architectures and technologies especially Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Businesses are adopting SOA to give them greater visibility into their processes and allow them to react more quickly to changes in order to maintain competitive positions and reduce life-cycle software maintenance costs. more > Mainframe SOA Best Practice To ensure the success of your mainframe SOA initiatives it's important to be able to support both bottom-up and contract-first design approaches. With the former businesses may see an opportunity to jumpstart the SOA quickly packaging bite-sized chunks of mainframe code as Web Services and pushing them out to the rest of the organization to do with them what they will. But experience shows that the contract-first approach - basically Web Service design informed by business processes - is a best practice that will yield optimal results. The Myth and Pitfalls of Instant SOA Let's look at the difference between the two methodologies. With the bottom-up tactic generally adopted for instant SOA the mainframe developer wraps pieces of mainframe functionality as isolated Web Services and basically throws them over the wall to be accessed by various end-user applications and systems. This sort of point-to-point delivery of unassembled building blocks puts far too much of a burden on the rest of the organization to try to understand what a company's mainframe developers already know about the mainframe's proven applications and data. As a result the service consumer has to interact with the mainframe developers to understand the underlying mainframe functionality. This eliminates the timeconserving benefit that probably drove the initial adoption of the bottom-up approach - and puts the lie to instant SOA. more > IBM Promos SAP on the Mainframe IBM further cemented its relationship to long-time partner SAP with today's announcement of a $40 million investment by Big Blue. Specifically IBM said it plans to spend the money over the next five year to test enable and support SAP applications on IBM's System z mainframe series. Part of the investment will also be applied to SAP technical centers in Germany and the U.S. where proof of concept and other customer support activities take place. Neither IBM or SAP made any product or technology announcements in a teleconference with media. The news today is we are offering an integrated set of solutions that work together are proven and tested said Jim Stallings general manager for IBM System z. more > Strategies For IT Integration With rapid technology innovation IT infrastructures often end up becoming a ''melting pot'' of different technologies platforms and architectures. CIOs and CTOs are faced with a new challenge of developing a strategy for IT integration within the organization. The fact that IT has become essential to many organizations is nothing new. Indeed over the years many large organizations have built up a diverse portfolio of IT systems that include packaged applications (such as SAP R/3 Siebel and Peoplesoft) legacy systems (often based on older mainframe technology) custom bespoke systems and database management systems (such as Oracle and MS SQL Server). With rapid technology innovation such IT portfolios often end up becoming a 'melting pot' of different technologies platforms and architectures. more > IBM Gets High Security Marks for Mainframe Unix Virtualization IBM Gets High Security Marks for Mainframe Unix Virtualization IBM will today announce that the server virtualization technologies behind its System z mainframes and pSeries Unix servers have received high security ratings based on the Common Criteria specifications that are becoming a standard in the IT industry. The Common Criteria certification process is an important hurdle to get over for certain IT acquisitions in the financial services industry and among governments particularly for defense contracts. The specifications involve getting an Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) numerical rating. Most server/operating system combinations get an EAL4 or EAL4+ level now which means operating systems are not only certified as being secure but that auditors and security experts have examined the source code of the software to really be sure that it is rock-solid. more > Transformation at Defense A cursory glance at any government-focused publication particularly those covering information technology and management clearly demonstrates that the Defense Department is transforming the way it manages its finances. A flood of articles and reports detail both new initiatives and progress on improvements to existing programs. During the past half century the military services and Defense agencies developed a wide variety of financial management programs each unique to its specific needs. With the advent of IT the array of systems has exploded and today there are literally thousands of programs and processes. Most are a combination of old and new ranging from paper-and-pencil legacy processes to near state-of-the-art computer-based management systems. Few can interact with others none meets congressionally mandated requirements and all fail to provide the level of reliability accuracy and timeliness needed for todays rapid-fire environment. more > Transformation at Defense A cursory glance at any government-focused publication particularly those covering information technology and management clearly demonstrates that the Defense Department is transforming the way it manages its finances. A flood of articles and reports detail both new initiatives and progress on improvements to existing programs. During the past half century the military services and Defense agencies developed a wide variety of financial management programs each unique to its specific needs. With the advent of IT the array of systems has exploded and today there are literally thousands of programs and processes. Most are a combination of old and new ranging from paper-and-pencil legacy processes to near state-of-the-art computer-based management systems. Few can interact with others none meets congressionally mandated requirements and all fail to provide the level of reliability accuracy and timeliness needed for todays rapid-fire environment. more > Strategies For IT Integration With rapid technology innovation IT infrastructures often end up becoming a 'melting pot' of different technologies platforms and architectures. CIOs and CTOs are therefore faced with a new challenge of developing a strategy for IT integration within the organization. Importantly this strategy must be long-term and be able to tide over the inevitable changes in the technology landscape. The fact that IT has become essential to many organi-zations is nothing new. Indeed over the years many large organizations have built up a diverse portfolio of IT systems that include packaged applications (such as SAP R/3 Siebel and Peoplesoft) legacy systems (often based on older mainframe technology) custom bespoke systems and database management systems (such as Oracle and MS SQL Server). With rapid technology innovation such IT portfolios often end up becoming a 'melting pot' of different technologies platforms and architectures. more > CA launches new mainframe database solns Computer Associates has announced new releases of its CA-IDMS and CA-Datacom mainframe database management systems. It enables customers to support high-volume processing requirements including online transactions batch job activity and transactions from diverse distributed-platform applications. Mark Combs senior vice president at CA said CA is strongly committed to extending and enhancing CA-IDMS and CA-Datacom so that our customers can successfully address today's complex multi-platform application challenges. more > Top Mainframe Stories and Vendor Announcements (IBM) If you believe that attention to details is what makes the big things happen then you will recognize the importance of integrating security between WebSphere Application Server on z/OS and the outside world. This report focuses on the security registries including RACF LDAP Active Directory and others. more > Mainframe at your service When officials in Tarrant County Texas decided to implement a service- oriented architecture two years ago their goal was to link a multitude of information technology systems that didnt communicate with each other. But they didnt think their mainframe computer would remain a part of that equation. It turns out that they like many others misjudged the mainframes prospects. The mainframe now is the predominant first-class citizen in the environment to a point where were buying another one next year said Steve Smith chief information officer for the county which has a population of 1.8 million people. Fort Worth is the county seat. Why the change of heart? The mainframe turned out to be the most cost-effective solution for moving and processing data and it has a high level of security and reliability Smith said. more > Mainframe data integration made easy with SOA For more than 50 years the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association has provided benefit plans to more than 900 electric utility companies nationwide. When NRECA began transactions were sent through the mail and manually logged into a benefits administration system using a database on its IBM zSeries mainframe. But times have changed. In 1997 NRECAwith 39 million customers in 47 stateslaunched its first Web site but change didnft end there. The antiquated site had worn out its welcome and developers were challenged with finding a way to integrate their mainframe data with Web-based apps. gWith the majority of our business and customer transactions taking place via the Web we needed to update our back-end system to speed transaction processing h said Linda Scotto manager of application development and support NRECA. more > Microsoft Acquires Apptimum Microsoft aims to use Apptimum's technology to ease the process of moving applications and settings from older Windows desktops to the Vista upgrade.Microsoft has application migration features built into Windows Vista but is buying an ISV's tool to ensure a smooth upgrade cycle for customers. Microsoft said Tuesday it plans to acquire Apptimum the Sunrise Fla.-based maker of Alohobob PC relocation software and the Migrate DT user state management engine. Terms of the deal werent disclosed. Microsoft has improved the computer setup process in Vista and aims to use Apptimum's technology to ease the process of moving applications and settings from older Windows desktops to the Vista upgrade which is due for release late this year. A Microsoft-branded product based on the Apptimum technology is slated to be available as an optional download for Vista the Redmond Wash.-based software giant said. Future plans for the Apptimum product werent revealed. Microsoft also didnt specify the release date for the download or other products. more > Technology gets SOA much better for Ontario government Transforming a puzzling patchwork of disjointed legacy applications to an integrated yet flexible suite may seem a daunting task.But it's a goal the Ontario government is well on its way to achieving thanks to its new Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) initiative. SOA is a software architectural concept that defines the use of services to support the requirements of software users. Stressing virtues of interoperability and reusability SOA promises greater flexibility and responsiveness in data systems and the business processes they support.In Ontario the new SOA framework will reuse systems for common business processes and make the government's IT infrastructure more flexible to adapt to changes in government programs and even changes in governments.Ron Huxter chief technology officer in Ontario's Ministry of Government Services used an IBM Canada breakfast on SOA best practices in Toronto last month to outline the government's blueprint. He said one key driver for moving to SOA was the need to be more agile. We have 200 to 300 different lines of business of which one-third to one-half get whipped-out every four years. more > Is technology getting too complicated? After attending many IT seminars and conferences in my line of work the question whether technology is becoming too complicated keeps popping into my mind. You often hear of new infrastructure to simplify systems and the consolidation of IT to make the management of systems simpler and more efficient - just some examples of how complex the current state of technology is......Consumer electronics aside enterprise users are also facing the same problem. Situations where you have to learn multiple systems to do your job are becoming a norm. Organisations live with many disjoint legacy systems and the inconvenience of having to log in to many systems. Users will have to remember many passwords for the different systems and also learn to use the different systems.The good thing is that the IT industry is now heading towards the direction of making IT simpler. I believe this will be the focus of the IT industry for the next few years. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) aims to join all systems together and make the life of users and developers much easier than before. Some benefits of the vision will be a single login for users to all the systems that they are authorised to use and common re-usable modules (like authorisation and e-payment) made available to developers to cut down on development time. more > GT Software Makes SOA Available for the Mainframe: Ivory Service Architect Enables The Mainframe To GT Software announced the availability of its service-oriented architecture (SOA) development tools for the mainframe called Ivory Service Architect. The software development tools enable organizations to use their existing mainframe hardware applications data and skills to rapidly proliferate mainframe-based business services through their service-oriented architectures. The Gtsoftware tools enable Mainframe developers to graphically orchestrate mainframe transactions applications data and web services into multi-step multi-operation business services with no formal training and no consulting required. Ivory Service Architect includes two key components - Ivory Studio and Ivory Server. These components work in tandem to enable mainframe developers to create right-sized business services. more > The Need for Power Sparks Itanium Solutions Alliance: Intel licensees pool resources to simplify mig March 1 2006 Category: Nine companies last month agreed to pony up cash and resources through 2010 to promote Intels Itanium 2 platform as a superior alternative to IBMs Power and Suns SPARC chips both of which are RISC-based. The companies have formed the Itanium Solutions AllianceIntel plus eight of its licenseesand met in January to discuss ways of bringing more organizations to Itanium. According to IDC about US$140 billion will be spent on computer systems between now and 2010 as corporations continue to update computing capabilities and advance to 64-bit platforms. About half of that is earmarked for mission-critical systems IDC data showed. And for those systems companies dont want to get locked into a vendor asserted Mike Mitsch director of alliances for NEC referring to system and application migration. They want to be able to move amongst other vendors. The Japanese computer giant manufactures RISC- and non-RISC-based systems. more > Big iron's battle of the boxes Despite predictions to the contrary the mainframe is still motoring on. Danny Bradbury examines where using the big machines pays off and where applications are best migrated to clusters of smaller systems. Predictions in the IT business are two a penny but good predictions are rarer than hen's teeth. For example in 1991 a marketing manager at Informix predicted that the mainframe would be dead in 2000. In 2004 revenues for IBM's zServer mainframe business grew by 15%. Not bad for a dead product category. Then in 2005 IBM (which incidentally bought Informix's ailing business in 2001) launched the 38-processor Z9 its biggest mainframe yet. So much for predictions.Still the mainframe market has its fair share of challenges. One of the problems with mainframes and the applications that run on them is that they are often relatively old. So are the people that make them work says Patrick Pochard who runs Computer Associates' mainframe centre of excellence in the Czech Republic. Most of the mainframe experts today are in their 50s. The percentage of people younger than that is very small he says. This is not good because even if you provide great hardware systems and products if you do not have the right people to maintain it and keep it up and running you are in trouble. more > Change - a constant challenge Change is inevitable especially in IT. A company cant continue to rely on the same technology that was successful yesterday and expect to be competitive today. Its vital that CIOs and management staff search the horizon for the latest technology. They must also have an intelligent strategy for implementing change. For example moving from an object-oriented architecture to a service-oriented architecture isnt too much of a jump. But attempting to implement a service-based architecture when the current state is Cobol on the mainframe involves a high degree of risk. In situations that require a major move to radically new technology take extra time in the planning phase. Spending the time and money upfront will significantly reduce risks later as the project moves ahead. more > IBM: Taking the Risk out of Migration One issue that any organization will eventually face is the need for refresh of aging technology. While a system may have represented the state of the art when it was installed over time any solution begins to lose its cost-effectiveness. Although many believe refreshing technology is as simple as calling the vendor who provided the solution a company should consider whether the original supplier necessarily has the best solution today. Whether the purchase is for a refresh of an out-of-date system with high maintenance costs or for an upgrade to address operational limitations customers should carefully weigh the risk in staying with a given vendor or migrating to another. In many cases a refresh is an opportune time at which to consider the value proposition of a platform migration and to evaluate which vendor could best meet the customers current needs. more > Merrill Lynch & Co.: Living Legacy Jim Crew could be considered an All-Star in the fledgling field of service oriented architecture. Over the past four years Crew as the former head of database infrastructure at Wall Street brokerage Merrill Lynch & Co. had spearheaded an effort to modernize the firm's multibillion-dollar investment in mainframe technology by building a platform to easily integrate many of the company's decades-old legacy applications with new software. Since 2001 his team has helped generate as many as 420 Web servicesessentially using a collection of Internet technologies like eXtenstible Markup Language (XML) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to make operations currently performed on the mainframe available to programmers creating new applications in modern environments such as Sun Microsystems' Java or Microsoft's .NET. In the process he has helped Merrill Lynch save as much as $42 million in application development by being able to leverage business-hardened code on the mainframe and by making new hardware purchases unnecessary. In getting information directly from the mainframe and reusing existing legacy applications Merrill has avoided having to copy information to more modern database platforms like Oracle and Sybase or rewriting software to run on application servers. more > Preserving our digital heritage The British Library is on a mission to digitise its immense collection of books and manuscripts. It is a challenge of mind-boggling proportions. The British Library whose reading rooms have been frequented by the likes of Karl Marx Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf is on a very modern mission. Its aim is to preserve the UK's digital heritage as well as continue its stewardship of physical tomes. But the rapid obsolescence of software publishing formats could make this task more challenging than preserving the Domesday Book. One of the world's great treasure troves the library houses 13 million books seven million manuscripts and 4.5 million maps as well as 3.5 million sound recordings eight million stamps and 58 million newspapers in various formats. Although most of its content is ink on paper Roger Butcher programme manager for the Integrated Library System says The future is without doubt digital. Reducing cost was a big driver for the upgrade. Legacy applications were in a gamut of languages from Assembler to Cobol and were very expensive to maintain as some were over 30 years old. more > Morphing the Mainframe As distributed systems take on more mainframelike qualities the future of big iron hinges on its ability to adapt to the distributed computing revolution without being consumed by it. At Bank of New York the mainframe is still king. Nearly three quarters of all transactions are processed on big iron and 20% to 25% of the remaining transactions rely on the mainframe for at least some business processes. The mainframe today is still the platform that we are able to drive to the highest level of utilization says Edward Mulligan managing director of the technology services division at Bank of New York Co. That's slowly changing. Like many companies the bank conducts most software development projects on Windows or Unix servers. These distributed systems are more open offer more-agile software architectures and are less costly to run and maintain than mainframes Mulligan says. . To be realistic we still have a ways to go before [distributed systems] can achieve the complete richness that the mainframe environment offers says Barnett. But the gradual maturation of nonmainframe virtualization technology could eventually make it possible to migrate larger workloads of 1 000 MIPS and higher off the mainframe he says. more > Metastorm EPO Ease SAP Integration Metastorm a provider of business-process management (BPM) software and its partner EPO Consulting have developed a new way to connect Metastorm's BPM system to SAP's enterprise software. The increased scale and complexity of our customers' business challenges require that they look for ways to simplify the system-integration requirements of process-management initiatives said Greg Carter chief technology officer and vice president of product development for Metastorm. This announcement represents a new software package in a long line of new tools and technologies that clearly illustrate companies continue to experience pain with interfacing legacy applications to new systems. According to Phil Gilbert CTO at Lombardi Software a provider of BPM software and services BPM vendors are trying to make integration as easy as possible with flexible process technologies that are driving the agility of enterprises even more so than the underlying applications themselves such as SAP. more > IBM beats expectations in fourth quarter A new line of mainframe computers and positive trends in the chip business boosted fourth-quarter results at International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) whose profit rose 13 per cent and beat Wall Street expectations today. The report served as an update on the health of IBM's services business which accounts for half Big Blue's revenue. Some analysts had feared a shortfall in long-term services contracts signed in the fourth quarter but the problem did not appear severe. In the last three months of 2005 IBM earned $US3.19 billion ($A4.23 billion) or $1.99 per share on revenue of $US24.4 billion ($A32.37 billion).The results were pulled down 10 cents a share by a $US267 million ($A354 million) charge from IBM's recent decision to freeze its pension plan for US workers in 2008 and by 2 cents a share because of an accounting change. more > IBM Inks $1.1 Billion Outsourcing Deal With Gap The 10-year pact calls for IBM to support and manage mainframes servers networks and data centers as well as provide help-desk and disaster-recovery services. Gap Inc. is turning over the management of its IT infrastructure to IBM under an outsourcing deal worth about $1.1 billion according to a regulatory filing by the casual clothier. Under a 10-year deal disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission document dated Jan. 13 IBM will provide a broad range of technology services to Gap including support and management of mainframes servers networks and data centers. IBM will also provide Gap with help-desk and disaster-recovery services. As part of the deal about 400 Gap workers will transfer to IBM. They may have reason to be nervous. Increasingly at least some amount of corporate IT work that's outsourced to a services vendor ends up offshore after a transition period of several months. The process is seldom acknowledged publicly by either party. Officials at IBM and Gap weren't immediately available for comment. To receive the full value of the contract IBM needs to meet a number of service levels and other conditions according to the SEC filing. Failure to meet the conditions would entitle Gap to receive credit against charges otherwise due withhold certain payments or terminate the agreement. more > iWay Software Announces Comprehensive SOA Integration Suite iWay Software an Information Builders company and an innovator of enterprise integration solutions today announced iWay SOA Middleware(TM) a comprehensive enterprise integration product suite that enables customers to make their entire IT infrastructure more open more flexible and more easily aligned with business requirements. Leveraging its heritage as the world's leading adapter provider iWay Software is in a unique position to address the fundamental problem of integration -- creating and maintaining service interfaces to disparate systems in technical environments. iWay SOA Middleware will help organizations eliminate the complexity associated with service-oriented architecture deployments and leverage existing IT investments to create powerful reusable business services through the market's most economical integration offering. Forward-thinking organizations including Coty Inc. Novelis and S. Abraham & Sons Inc. are unlocking the potential of SOA for business intelligence supply-chain management procurement compliance and more while fulfilling integration's promise to drive corporate performance to the next level. more > Nortel to dump Oracle solve fiscal woes using SAP Telecom equipment maker Nortel Networks Ltd. is working with SAP to solve its stymied data problems that has plagued the company with fiscal irregularities in recent years. The company plans on eliminating Oracle Corp. for its financial transactions and is installing SAP Master Data Management and streamlining other multiple legacy systems in the process. SAP developed and launched its own set of master data management (MDM) tools in 2002. It abandoned that development when it purchased Los Angeles-based A2i in 2004 and then repackaged A2i's product as its own. MDM provides a framework to define the reference master data within a company. Reference data is a category of data that describes and defines transactions such as a sale of Nortel network equipment or optical system to a particular customer. SAP MDM integrates product data and identifies and cleanses similar data objects across various systems. Companies that use the new application should be able to receive product data from third-party systems and unify it in a common data format. more > Bringing IT Challenges Down to Earth With a growing number of users of an exploding collection of dataoriginating and residing in heterogeneous systemsNASA's Earth Science Data and Information System Project presents challenges that are recognizable to many enterprise IT builders. Applying the principles of an SOA (service-oriented architecture) and taking advantage of the service discovery capabilities of this year's Version 3 update of the UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) protocol National Aeronautics and Space Administration and its contractors have streamlined data access while also enabling a richer ecosystem of customized applications for analysis and interpretation. As changes in climate polar ice coverage and other environmental parameters become urgent global concerns NASA's SOA modernization is improving earth science understanding and enabling better policy decisions. In the beginning: Chartered in 1990 earth science Data and Information System Project or ESDIS has a broad portfolio whose key tasks include project management systems engineering and technical direction of systems that archive and distribute earth science data along with the definition of high-level standard data products. The roots of the system go back four decades to the United States' first Earth-observing satellites. more > Is it time to scrap your big iron? (Part 2 of 2) Mainframes have a storied history in the enterprise but today's distributed server environments could herald the final chapter small shops the clearest winners. The DCCA and Sabre Holdings examples show the longer-term promise of mainframe migration for large IT infrastructures. But according to Forresters Phil Murphy smaller shops -- especially those that use their mainframes primarily as application servers -- can make the best case for migration today. These small-scale mainframe environments are typically less complex than one like Sabres for example yet they still cost significantly more than equivalent distributed systems. Vestcom a company that prints and distributes financial statements on behalf of banks and brokerages is a prime example. A quarter of its IT budget went to pay for hosted services on an IBM System/370 mainframe running VMS which provided about 150 MIPS of computing power. more > DISA Ready to Issue RFP for Multibillion-Dollar Net-Centric Project The Defense Department will release as early as Monday the request for proposals for converting its legacy systems to the Network Centric Enterprise Services program. Encore II which reportedly could be worth about $10 billion over 10 years for hardware software and services will provide lifecycle support to NCES capabilities and tweak the program's architecture officials have said. In a notice posted today on FedBizOpps.gov the Defense Information Systems Agency said it would post the final solicitation on or about Monday with the expected due date for proposals. DISA said it expects to award the indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contracts to vendors by May. DISA issued the draft RFP last December. The Encore II contracts would expand the capabilities of DISA's Defense Enterprise Information Services I and II contracts and earlier Encore contracts. more > Legacy data poses risks Computing reports on events at software firm CAs annual user conference in Las Vegas. Poor data integration projects could be putting companies at risk of prosecution from regulators says CAs chief compliance officer Patrick Gnazzo. Speaking during a compliance roundtable at CA World last week Gnazzo said organisations must improve how they manage IT integration projects and ensure that legacy systems are not feeding inaccurate information into reporting tools or exposing customer data. Most big firms have between 200 and 400 legacy systems that have data said Gnazzo. But now this information is being poured into SAP and other systems. Companies should audit systems before integration and make sure key data is accurate. If you have a bunch of legacy systems that dont have the right information in them and it is poured into an enterprise resource planning system then there is a risk that you could be in danger of regulatory prosecution both from a financial and data privacy point of view. more > Rockwell Software: The Integration Advantage Rockwell software builds FactoryTalk strategy.What if data integration had originated and succeeded starting from the factory floor? In that dream world the leading problem in manufacturing would not be the presence of thousands of point solutions from hundreds of vendors says Kevin Roach vice president Rockwell Software. And factory managements would not be confronted with interfaces everywhere -- without an upgrade path. Best of all assuming integration success managements could easily access a single version of the truth. Instead back in the real world Roach is showing the way -- presenting a path to real-time integration of information between manufacturing and business systems. His solution is FactoryTalk an integrated suite of software that embraces both services and applications. With increased demand on manufacturers to improve quality reduce costs increase productivity and meet regulatory compliance the integration of the factory floor with information systems is no longer a luxury -- it's a strategic imperative Roach says. His response the FactoryTalk suite of software also illustrates Rockwell's substantial transition from product maker to solution provider for manufacturing. more > First Responder Market Sees a Potential for Growth in All Technologies The First Responder market is in the midst of a sea change in terms of adoption rates of new technologies that link legacy systems as well as implement next generation solutions. With public and private initiatives the growth opportunity is enormous for new technologies in the First Responder market. Throughout the last decade the First Responder market has witnessed occasional implementation of new technologies. Post 9/11 a renewed focus has been given to interoperable communications and other technologies that sync agencies and hospitals as well as increase the efficiency productivity and communications capabilities of the First Responders. Though accessibility can prove difficult at times a thrust of federal state and local funding as well as organizational mandates are driving new growth in all types of technologies from communications and monitoring devices to various other software and hardware systems. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan U.S. Markets for First Responders reveals the niche market for Field Data Collection software to be approximately $52.5 million in 2004 and is expected to reach $105.0 million in 2009. more > Exposing Legacy Apps to Today's SOAs: HP today began offering Application Modernization Services to The Palo Alto Calif. company's new services which fit into its SOA plan to help customers craft distributed computing networks include porting and migrating applications to newer less expensive platforms said Paul Evans worldwide director of Application Modernization Services at HP. For example this could include moving applications from older computer systems like mainframes to more newer Windows-based systems. Legacy doesn't necessarily mean mainframes Evans said. It could be people on Unix systems or people on Windows NT4 systems that are looking to move to a new environment. The executive also said customers who attend conferences on SOAs and Web services are coming to HP for help because their legacy applications cannot be exposed because they were built 20 years ago and the architecture won't expose Web services or lend themselves to service-orientation. This is for customers who want to decompose their large monolithic apps into more manageable parts Evans added. Evans said HP is offering a portfolio rationalization service that helps businesses figure out how to spend their resources and time to update legacy systems. Application analysis services gauge legacy applications to see how their functionality can be improved. more > Banks face legacy IT skills gap crisis Who will keep banks' ageing systems running as the experts retire? Lorries still cart magnetic tape around the city after a hard day's banking. Even in this age of high speed networks some institutions still insist on getting their data in this way.Chris Dunn business development manager at payments company Voca said: It sounds amazing but the settlement we give to the Bank of England is on physical media. The banks are keen to retire [tape] because it's not produced any more. We would much rather not heft these things around on tape. And it's not just the tape that's old - banks continue to rely on technologies installed 30 years ago - but the number of IT workers with the skills to keep them running are declining.Dunn said: The biggest barrier is 'if it's working why should we get rid of it'. You've got to look at the cost and the reliability in the long term. Voca is currently trying to move away from legacy systems with its Bacstel-IP programme. Dunn said the pressures of European markets pushed Voca to adopting a new model. The project is costing around 100m.He added: You have to have a really good reason to move. It's only when you get to the other side and you've managed the risk you can breathe a sigh of relief. These things are rarely cheap. more > IT staff welcome Voca's switch to Java Payment clearing house Voca is preparing its IT systems to handle up to a 100 million transactions a day from 2007. Voca's existing Fujitsu mainframe handled a peak load of 75 million transactions in one day during September but from next month the system will have to cope with a spike in processing caused by the transfer of winter fuel payments direct to pensioners' bank accounts.Although Voca is confident its mainframes can cope with initial demand the clearing house is pushing ahead with a 100m programme to replace its mainframe with a Unix-powered payment system which uses Sun F15000 servers.The system has been developed in Java using the BEA Weblogic 8.0 application server running on an Oracle 9i database. It will run on two Sun E15000 servers configured as a cluster. Chris Dunne commercial business manager at Voca said although the mainframe will be used initially to handle winter fuel payments the company recognised the longer-term need to upgrade its systems. We knew we had to make a real change. We needed a scalable model to handle new services he said. Dunne said convincing his team of 400 employees who were accustomed to working with the mainframe/Cobol environment to adopt Unix/Java skills had been crucial. Communications were key. We had to be upfront with staff he said. more > Bound to fail A critical legacy system crash at Comair cost the airline $20 million and badly damaged its reputation. When Eric Bardes joined the Comair IT department in 1997 one of the very first meetings he attended was called to address the replacement of an aging legacy system the regional airline utilised to manage flight crews. The application from SBS International was one of the oldest in the company (11 years old at the time) was written in Fortran (which no one at Comair was fluent in) and was the only system left that ran on the airline's old IBM AIX platform (all other applications ran on HP Unix).SBS came in to make a pitch for its new Maestro crew management software. One of the flight crew supervisors at the meeting had used Maestro a first-generation Windows application at a previous job. He found it clumsy to put it kindly. He said he wouldn't wish the application on his worst enemy Bardes recalls. The existing crew management system wasn't exactly elegant but all the business users had grown adept at operating it and a great number of Comair's existing business processes had sprung from it. The consensus at the meeting was that if Comair was going to shoulder the expense of replacing the old crew management system it should wait for a more satisfactory substitute to come along. more > IBM Ships Rational Performance Tester for z/OS IBM has always been known for its refrigerator-sized computers. Now the company is offering a new tool to help test the load on the big-iron Web servers it offers to enterprise clients. Rational Performance Tester (RPT) for the z/OS operating system is a tool that hammers on mainframe-style Web servers to check for stability and the ability to handle excess load. Jeff Schuster a senior manager in software quality product management at IBM said that Rational Performance Tester is built specifically for z/OS but any machine that runs this operating system can point the test at an external server regardless of that external servers operating system. He went on to say that Rational Performance Tester is built upon the Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform framework. You want to make sure you have your production environment tuned said Schuster. You want to make sure your application will perform under load. One of the key things hackers look for is a slow performance system or a system that crashes. By performing the right amount of testing in the test lab you can eliminate those vulnerabilities beforehand. more > Microsoft Tries To Lure Oracle Database Users Microsoft has begun public beta testing of its SQL Server Migration Assistant for Oracle 2.0 a suite of tools designed to automate the process of migrating an Oracle database to Microsofts SQL Server. The suite covers a range of migration functions including assessment schema and data migration and business logic conversion and validation. According to Microsoft this new version has a much higher accuracy rate in converting Oracle data than the previous release. The 2.0 release features three significant changes from the 1.0 release: support for SQL Server 2005 a testing wizard and international support. SSMA contains the following tools: Migration Analyzer Schema & Data Migrator and SQL Converter and Migration Tester. The migration process also covers integration and performance analysis. SSMA is available now as a free download from www.microsoft.com/sql/migration/default.mspx. However it requires a license key for activation which can be obtained by registering with Microsoft either by phone or e-mail. Microsoft expects the final version to be available in November. more > Big big toys for big big boys High-end iSeries models have become the mainframes for the masses.Power. Theyre beasts. They are more powerful than mainframes. Theyre high-end iSeries. Were talking model 890 and i5 595 and even the 570. Processing capacity has occasionally proved a key issue for Big Blues midrange server line-up. However issues of scaling up vaporised with the release of the 64-way i5 model 595 last year. The 595 beast has a maximum 64 cores running at 1.65GHz and is able to offer 128 virtual processors to the operating system due to simultaneous multithreading. It further possesses a top-end commercial processing workload rating of 165 000 some 4.4 times the aggregate OLTP processing capacity of the 32-way iSeries model 890 which was rated at 37 400 commercial processing workload (CPW) using 1.3GHz Power4 cores. more > Grid held back by legacy systems and budget worries Ancient computing systems and worries about yet another new technology are holding back the UK's adoption of grid computing according to IECNet - the government-funded initiative pushing for more grids in business.Ian Osborne project manager of IECNet told silicon.com that the need to make legacy systems work with the new grid set-ups is one of the key barriers to UK businesses using grid computing along with techies being too used to hearing about the 'next big thing'. There are always barriers; businesses always have legacy environments running he said. There's a healthy amount of concern - IT directors are always hearing about yet another new technology another silver bullet he said.He added that the image of grid can also conflict with the day-to-day world of IT. The ultimate goal for grid is to link up all the computers in the world - it's a very glorious academic goal but most IT directors have enough challenges getting hold of the resources now. more > Avaya CEO Likes 'Legacy' Burden Avaya's networking legacy may feel like a burden at times but the CEO of the software communications giant wouldn't have it any other way. With origins that trace back to AT&T's Bell Labs research division Avaya is sometimes viewed solely as a networking and infrastructure company that knows how to plumb some VoIP connectivity for business customers. That's fine with Don Peterson. The chief executive told internetnews.com that history only informs its ability to help customers build smarter applications that run on top of an IP-enabled telephony network. Once customers start upgrading to next-generation messaging platforms they see how one foot in the old world and one in the new is a burden any competitor would envy. more > Big iron IBM is fighting the growth of clustered servers with the release of the zSeries z9 mainframe. Sales of the million dollar machines have waned in the three years since the z990 appeared but IBM says it expects a turnaround as companies realise the advantage of the mainframe's reliability. The z9 can hold up to 56 processors and uses the latest version of IBM's Virtualization Engine to allow it to be sub-divided into 60 smaller virtual servers. IBM is targeting the emerging markets in China Russia. more > Peel interfaces from services Kudos to the headline writer for InfoWorld's story about IBM's mainframe training program at colleges - Dear IT graduate just one word - mainframes. Now more legacy-to-SOA news: in a new press release IBM announced that its WebSphere Portal is now supported on its zSeries mainframes and iSeries midrange servers. While sketchy on exact details of how the portal environment will mesh with the zOS or OS400 operating systems Big Blue interjects the fact that the new WebSphere Portal includes new features to further support customers' efforts to build service-oriented architectures (SOA). Gee everything supports SOA these days doesn't it? In all fairness IBM has been doing a pretty good job bringing its Big Iron machines into the Web services/SOA era and we've been saying all along in this blog that Web services and SOA will extend the life of mainframes/midranges well into the 2020s. more > Mainframes are once again gaining traction in some quarters but finding young mainframe talent can Imagine today's computer science students experiencing the kind of cocktail party thrown for Benjamin Braddock by his parents in the 1967 movie The Graduate. As the students wonder about what the future may hold various older figures sidle up with one-word suggestions about possible careers. Java Linux (Overview Articles Company) and Internet you'd expect to hear whispered but mainframes? Not so much. The mainframe has had one of the worst PR campaigns of the last 15 years said mainframe analyst Mike Kahn managing director of research firm The Clipper Group Inc. based in Wellesley Massachusetts. In the mid-'90s the mainframe was declared dead by the industry and that wasn't so far from the truth. more > Borough Council slashes data access costs by moving from mainframe to Windows Cost pressures and system performance are just as important to the IT heads of local government councils as they are to senior IT executives of private enterprises. Just as in business local government is under increased pressure to reduce costs without loss of performance or reliability. The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead was faced with such a dilemma; how to cost effectively store and access its archived data whilst at the same time ensuring the integrity of data was not compromised.For over two decades the IBM OS390 mainframe was the only computer with the processing power the Royal Borough could rely on to deal with the amount of data the council needed to process. more > IBM Launches Z9 Latest Big-Iron Platform: New mainframe offers a wealth of security and encryption IBM on Tuesday rolled out its latest mainframe offering the System z9 with new virtualization and security features. The z9 designed for high-performance computing environments is available in five models ranging from one to 54 processors. IBM says the system can process 1 billion transactions per day more than twice the performance of its predecessor the zSeries 990. The z9 comes loaded with security features. To thwart the kinds of snafus involving lost backup tapes that have plagued companies such as Bank of America Citigroup and Time-Warner the mainframe provides the ability to encrypt tapes bound for shipment thereby protecting consumer identities and personal information. It provides centralized management of encryption keys and supports the open Advanced Encryption Standard. more > How to Improve Data Quality Everybody wants better quality of data. Some organizations hope to improve data quality by moving data from legacy systems to enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) packages. Other organizations use data profiling or data cleansing tools to unearth dirty data and then cleanse it with an extract/transform/load (ETL) tool for data warehouse (DW) applications. All of these technology-oriented data quality improvement efforts are commendable-and definitely a step in the right direction. However technology solutions alone cannot eradicate the root causes of poor quality data because poor quality data is not as much an IT problem as it is a business problem. Other enterprise-wide disciplines must be developed taught implemented and enforced to improve data quality in a holistic cross-organizational way. Because data quality improvement is a process and not an event the following enterprise-wide disciplines should be phased in and improved upon over time. more > Starwood Hotels Continues Its Migration From Mainframe To Services-Oriented Architecture Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. the 750-unit chain that includes Sheratons Westins and the trendy W hotel lines used to depend on Cobol-based room reservations and Preferred Guest loyalty applications running on an IBM mainframe. Now Starwoods room-reservation system is the most visible component of the companys effort to replace those legacy systems with a services-oriented architecture. By this time next year Tom Conophy executive VP and chief technology officer plans to pull the plug on his mainframe and Cobol applications entirely and rely instead on 150 applications or services built around Web-services standards. more > Time to bridge the great legacy skills gap With many experts in legacy systems approaching retirement age users must retain IT know-how and identify which skills need to be handed on. It has often been suggested that there is an impending skills crisis as the staff needed...to maintain ageing legacy systems are themselves approaching retirement. The first thing to consider is precisely which skills are at risk. Only after they have been identified can we provide a coherent statement about whether there is indeed a crisis looming. This may seem obvious but to say there will be a legacy or mainframe skills shortage is of limited usefulness until we are more specific about which particular applications and languages or systems software and operating environments we are referring to. There is a world of difference between the skills required to manage a legacy platform and those required to maintain the applications that run on it. more > Cybermation and Micro Focus Seal Agreement with Lombard Canada; Customer Win; Partnership Supports E Cybermation a leading developer of enterprise job scheduling and software change management solutions and Micro Focus(R) a provider of legacy application development and deployment software for enterprise platforms have signed a joint technology and co-marketing agreement. This will enable both companies to co-ordinate their activities and work in partnership to offer increased return on investment for enterprises migrating from legacy mainframe environments to distributed platforms. This alliance initiative has already helped to secure its first customer win with Lombard Canada Ltd based in Toronto. The insurance company experienced a decline in the return on investment of its mainframe systems and decided to seek a more cost-effective replacement. Following an extensive analysis and evaluation process Lombard chose to move all of its core applications off the mainframe and on to Windows Server(TM) 2003 operating system and SQL Server(TM) in a project expected to save the company up to $1 million a year. more > Forrester weighs in on future of IT workforce in U.S. and abroad; how the opportunity simultaneously IT isn't dead -- just suffering a 'midlife crisis' notes a recent piece of trend analysis from Forrester Research. The focus and nature of IT employment will change dramatically from blue-collar technical-based skills to more white-collar management and design-centric positions. Indeed the shift has been happening for some time with the first rumblings being in the growth of offshore outsourcing. Forrester's prediction is that while this kind of outsourcing will eventually corner the blue-collar technical-based side of IT the spread of the information economy in the United States will generate new jobs and transform existing ones. more > Union Bank of the Philippines Successfully Replaces Mainframe Legacy System With New Core Banking So Sun Microsystems Inc. Infosys Technologies Limited and TIM Corporation (TIM) today announced that Union Bank of the Philippines has gone live with the Finacle core banking solution making it the first bank to successfully replace its mainframe legacy with a next generation open systems-based solution. Among the top 10 banks in The Philippines Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) entered into a strategic partnership with Infosys in July 2004 through its local partner TIM to achieve greater business agility and lower total cost of ownership more > I love legacy My father is fond of saying If I had known I would live this long I would have taken better care of myself. Likewise many of the IT people who designed our large inventories of legacy systems could have never imagined that these systems would still be chugging along in 2005 and likely well beyond that. Much of this realization hit us in the late 90s of course as we attempted to get systems ready for the year 2000. ComputerWorld pays a tribute to the endurance of legacy in this recent article. As Frank da Cruz an IT manager at Columbia University puts it: People say 'legacy' and it's like 'Oh my god how could you possibly use that old garbage?' But what it really means is that it was written by smart people a long time ago and it really works instead of being the latest bug-ridden bloated piece of garbage from some company that has only teenagers working for it. more > Bound to Fail How to get your legacy system replaced and avoid Comair's mistake. When Eric Bardes Joined the Comair IT department in 1997 one of the very first meetings he attended was called to address the replacement of an ageing legacy system the regional airline utilized to manage flight crews. The application from SBS International was one of the oldest in the company (11 years old at the time) was written in Fortran (which no one at Comair was fluent in) and was the only system left that ran on the airline's old IBM AIX platform (all other applications ran on HP Unix). more > Love That 'Legacy' Legacy is a word I despise says Frank da Cruz an IT manager at Columbia University in New York. People say 'legacy' and it's like 'Oh my god how could you possibly use that old garbage?' But what it really means is that it was written by smart people a long time ago and it really works instead of being the latest bug-ridden bloated piece of garbage from some company that has only teenagers working for it. However you define legacy software IT people say they know it when they see it and they know it didn't all go away during Y2k remediation. It's the stuff with poor documentation spaghetti code stirred by too many cooks and processing cycles more appropriate for 1970s ways of doing business. And it's definitely not the stuff you tell college recruits about when they come looking for Java Web services and grid computing. more > |
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