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COBOL Technology
Return on Investment Perspective'Applistructure' important task for firms says AMR
The merger of enterprise applications with underlying infrastructure will be one of the most important tasks for companies to complete over the next two years according to analysts AMR Research. AMR has termed the requirement as applistructure . The analyst said demand for applistructure is being driven by Web services and SOAs. To deliver applistructure an integrated and complete set of applications and infrastructure are established. The components may come from different suppliers but are managed and guaranteed by a single one. Cognizant in pact with Microsoft
Cognizant Technology Solutions said it had joined Microsoft Corp's mainframe migration alliance to help customers seamlessly migrate critical data and systems to Microsoft.Net-based systems.
Integration and the far horizons of flexibility Virtually every financial services firm has invested in some form of middleware over the years with the hope and expectation that could extract a few more years of business life. The middleware investment was badly needed after the heavy investment in the late eighties and nineties on mainframe systems. These systems have now moved on into a legacy architecture that survives today.
Who will win the Web services war? Technology battles have long been a feature of the IT industry. Most IT managers will remember the LAN wars -- Ethernet .vs Token Ring -- and the bus wars -- Industry Standard Architecture .vs Micro-Channel Architecture. In both cases the eventual winner was the least proprietary solution.
Fast Integration for BPM
Business process management (BPM) is becoming a priority at more enterprises and with that comes the requirement of integrating BPM tools to the legacy applications that execute processes.
MicroFocus Unveils Legacy-to-Web Software
Micro Focus International Ltd. wants to make it easier for businesses to use their legacy mainframe systems in a Web-enabled world. The company with U.S. headquarters in Rockville Md. on Tuesday released its Mainframe Express Enterprise Edition a collection of software designed to enable businesses to take the applications residing on legacy systems and extend them to the world of service-oriented architecture and Web services as well as Microsoft Corp.'s .NET and Sun Microsystems Inc.'s J2EE environments.
SmartAdvice: Wrap Your Mainframe In Middleware To Modernize Legacy Apps
Use a portal and Enterprise Integration Architecture so legacy apps can be treated like objects The Advisory Council says. Also let the technology mature more before buying into VoIP over wireless LAN; and work out a strategic communications plan before an emergency.
Sabratec Announces the First Integration of Microsoft IBF with Legacy Systems through ApplinX Sabratec Ltd. the leading provider of rapid legacy integration solutions announced today general availability of ApplinX adapter for Microsoft Information Bridge Framework (IBF). The combined solution enables information workers to discover engage and act on enterprise legacy information from the context of their Office documents and email significantly improving productivity and reducing training costs.
Gartner: SOBAs will revolutionize application integration So you think service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a buzzword today? Brace yourselves for the next generation of application integration acronyms: SOBA. Coined by Gartner Inc. research director Charles Abrams SOBAs or service-oriented business applications are the fruit of service-oriented architectures. They will enable enterprises to dynamically compose and decompose applications according to business needs. Eventually they will link business apps such as ERP CRM and supply chain management in real time.
Integration of legacy systems is vital to effective customer service The survey of 100 IT directors in UK businesses commissioned by legacy IT integration specialist WRQ found that legacy IT systems are critical to providing customer service - 86% regarded legacy systems as essential to customer service delivery.
Micro Focus and Unilog Move Mainframe Applications to Windows
Micro Focus International Ltd. a provider of COBOL application development and deployment software has entered into a partnership with Unilog the IT systems integrator to port mainframe applications to the Microsoft Windows platform. Micro Focus will combine its knowledge of COBOL applications with Unilog's business sector and applications expertise to enable existing COBOL applications based on proprietary mainframe platforms to run at higher performance levels on low cost technology rich platforms such as Windows and Intel.
BAT to cut costs on EAI projects BAT which has a £9.2bn annual turnover and spends hundreds of millions of pounds on IT each year hopes to save up to 75% of the costs of integration projects which use middleware from major software suppliers.
IBM looks to modernize Cobol IBM is looking to modernize Cobol applications by bridging its mainframe-oriented Cobol and WebSphere products to Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) and service-oriented architectures.
Information central Council contact centers were integrating legacy technology to enable better customer relationship management for many years before the e-government agenda came along. Lindsay Clark talks to those councils with a head start.
Opening up the mainframe Predictions in the 90s that we'd soon see the last of the mainframes were quite clearly way off and far from their demise today's estimates indicate that - 40 years on - mainframes host most business transactions and enterprise data writes Eric Knorr.
Micro Focus: Getting CICS From Windows
Micro Focus International Ltd. has announced Linux and Unix editions of Mainframe Transaction Option an add-on to its Enterprise Server COBOL runtime environment that it claims provides a stable x86-based platform to which CICS/COBOL transactional applications can migrate. The company in April released an edition for Windows servers.
Micro Focus: Getting CICS From Windows “This is a low-risk route to lower hardware and software costs for mainframe users ” said Ian Archbell vice president of product management at Micro Focus. “For applications running at under 500 MIPS [million instructions per second] the solution is more than adequate ” he claimed asserting further that the solution should be an ample migration path for mainframes now running at less than 1 000 MIPS. “We get the same performance as a mainframe because our native code generators are optimized for the platform.” Archbell provided only anecdotal evidence to back up his claims adding that in-house benchmark performance tests are still under way.
Server clusters offer speed savings When retail services firm Datavantage acquired the code last year to roll out its gift-card offering that would provide retailers a transaction platform to store and manage retail credits it knew its back-end system couldn't stand any downtime. It also knew it didn't want to shell out loads of money to keep the system running on the expensive Unix infrastructure on which it was built.
Billions of pounds wasted every year on IT systems in the UK
Fewer than one in five of all IT projects in the UK can be considered truly successful leading to billions of pounds being wasted every year on IT systems according to research from the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society.
“The UK public sector alone has spent an estimated £12.4bn on software in the past year and the overall UK spend on IT is projected to be a monumental £22.6bn ” said Basil Butler chairman of the working group that produced the report.
Escaping the Mainframe; Tulane University to evade quarter million in annual maintenance fees by mig Tulane University like many other institutes of higher education across the country has had to more with less for some years now. That's why the $250 000 in maintenance fees that the university pays for its Ideal/Datacom mainframe from vendor Computer Associates (CA) troubled the university's new CIO Dr. John Lawson when he came aboard a few years ago.
Infringement Insurance For Open Source Open Source Risk Management's service is designed to help open-source users defend against copyright and patent-infringement claims. Even as SCO Group digests the news that one of its backers a venture-capital firm wants its investment back a risk-assessment firm has launched a service designed to help open-source users defend against copyright and patent-infringement claims involving open source.
Microsoft-Micro Focus Alliance Intended To Drive Mainframe-To-Windows Migrations
Microsoft and Micro Focus International have teamed up to enable mainframe customers to seamlessly migrate their data to Windows platforms. In a prepared statement the companies said the alliance provides the technology foundation for moving mainframe workloads to more modern Intel and Windows-based servers using .Net.
Microsoft Micro Focus target mainframes
Microsoft and mainframe software company Micro Focus have strengthened an alliance aimed at luring away IBM mainframe customers. At a customer event Thursday in New York the two companies are expected to announce an extension to their existing partnership and to tout the benefits of moving mainframe applications onto Intel servers running Windows. In particular the partnership is designed to provide an alternative to the customers running Customer Information Control System (CICS) a widely used mainframe transaction system.
Microsoft Micro Focus form alliance to target mainframes Microsoft Corp. and Micro Focus International Ltd. today announced an alliance to promote the migration of mainframe applications onto Intel Corp. servers running Windows using Microsoft's .Net technology. Although CIOs and architects recognize the inherent value of legacy applications they continue to grapple with how to migrate mainframe applications on Windows and .Net to extend use and support development in Web services or XML according to Micro Focus.
Microsoft and mainframe software company Micro Focus International have strengthened an alliance aim At a customer event Thursday in New York the two companies are expected to announce an extension to their existing partnership and to tout the benefits of moving mainframe applications onto Intel servers that run Windows. In particular the partnership is designed to provide an alternative to customers who run Customer Information Control System (CICS) a widely used mainframe transaction system.
Health System Uses BMC Tools to Cut Mainframe Upgrade Costs
After using performance management software to improve batch-processing times for accounting and other functions the WakeMed Health Network last week said it will be able to upgrade to a new mainframe this month for $850 000 less than it originally expected.
Doing it by the book delivers dividend
For Bertelsmann the media group sales through its book clubs are significant amounting to €2.7bn globally in 2002. With this level of sales the clubs need robust IT systems so in 1984 those in Austria Switzerland and Italy formed the ICS CompetenceCenter and based it in Vienna. Later clubs in Hungary the Czech Republic Poland and French Canada also joined.
Opening of the Mainframe
Back in 1991 InfoWorld's then Editor in Chief Stewart Alsop predicted the plug would be pulled on the last mainframe in five years. Oops. Eight years after their forecasted demise mainframes today host by most estimates the majority of business transactions and enterprise data. IBM which now enjoys a virtual monopoly on big iron sold $6.8 billion's worth in 2003 a year that saw sales of IBM zSeries mainframes (whose top-end models go by the nickname T-Rex ) jump 33 percent.
Is it time to retire big iron?
Charles Fitzgerald Microsoft’s general manager of platform strategies insists that he has no ax to grind about big iron. But over the past year he says “we’ve had a whole bunch of customers come to us and say ‘What can you do to help us get off the mainframe?’” Fitzgerald says that these pleas derive partly from the fact that the mainframe guys are retiring and partly from IT’s intense focus on lowering costs. “What people have figured out is they’re paying obscene quantities of money. A Wintel server today is about $2 a MIP. A mainframe MIP is about $2000. That’s three orders of magnitude.”
Back to the mainframe; Linux helps some companies get more out of big iron
How do you introduce a mainframe to the world of modern IT? According to IBM you run Linux on it. Big Blue says the open source OS first offered on zSeries mainframes in 2000 now accounts for approximately 17 percent of IBM's mainframe revenue and 22 percent of hardware capacity shipped to customers. At the end of 2003 IBM had close to 300 customers running Linux in production environments and more than 1 000 customers in some stage of deployment.
Opinion: How IT has outsourced itself
Americans have an unwavering faith that technology can solve all of their problems but they tend to forget that it also creates new ones in the process. The leading edge of technology innovation often cuts both ways. Perhaps the best example of this is the current election-year brouhaha over the accelerating trend of outsourcing U.S. jobs in general -- and IT jobs in particular.
Opinion: How IT has outsourced itself
Americans have an unwavering faith that technology can solve all of their problems but they tend to forget that it also creates new ones in the process. The leading edge of technology innovation often cuts both ways. Perhaps the best example of this is the current election-year brouhaha over the accelerating trend of outsourcing U.S. jobs in general -- and IT jobs in particular.
Mainframes
In recent years application integration has moved from an interesting technical challenge to become a mainstream discipline that most CIOs have at the very top of their project lists. Initially seen as a way of synchronizing important business data under the control of various applications it has evolved into a platform to streamline business processes and improve efficiency by eliminating the friction that occurs inside businesses as a consequence of data inconsistencies. Furthermore with the advent of ubiquitous Internet connectivity it has been used to ensure disintermediated applications have the accuracy necessary to encourage confident use by customers suppliers and partners alike.
The Myths of Open Source
At first glance the company Employease seems unremarkable. But look a little closer. Employease which provides employee benefits administration services to more than 1 000 organizations across America has an IT architecture chiefly built around open-source software which makes it a rare bird—not that it was planned that way when the company was founded in 1996.
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