A Rational approach to application migration and modernization

IBM Software July 2011
Thought Leadership White Paper

Enterprise modernization:
A Rational approach
Ashok Reddy, Director, Offering Strategy and Delivery, Enterprise
Modernization & Compilers, IBM Software Group, Rational

2 Enterprise modernization: A Rational approach

Introduction In this paper you will learn about a new, broad, and all-
Over the past half century, businesses of all types across the encompassing multiplatform view of modernization in the con-
globe have made significant investments in software and systems text of applications, people and teams. Our goal is to help you:
to automate business processes, deliver innovative capabilities,
and integrate operations. As technology has evolved, organiza- ● Find smarter ways to design, build, maintain and extend the
tions have carefully considered choices about platforms, pro- applications that run the business.
gramming languages, and methodologies in order to address ● Choose the best procurement model for your organization,
business needs in the most effective ways possible as each new including cloud and packaged applications.
approach or capability has become available. But multiple ● Provide individual practitioners with the best tools available to
decisions about computing infrastructure made over a number optimize their productivity.
of years have led to deeply embedded and often disjointed ● Enable your organizationally, geographically and genera-
archeological layers of technology and information assets. tionally diverse practitioners to team and collaborate as
effectively and efficiently as possible.
Organizations find themselves with an incredibly diverse and ● Understand the importance of process improvement linked to
evolving set of contributors distributed across geographies appropriate success measures.
and generations with different skills, needs, and expectations. ● Develop a strategic road map that begins with a clear under-
Furthermore, new technologies continue to emerge at an standing of your current portfolio of applications and leads
increasing pace. toward a mature application portfolio management approach
and strategy, delivering ROI gains incrementally.
Today, technology is what organizations rely on to differentiate ● And, most critically, learn how to accomplish all of the above
their core capabilities, control costs, and drive sustainable while continuing to deliver innovative capabilities, control
growth. Mapping the best technology strategy to desired busi- costs and mitigate risk.
ness process improvements has never been more mission-critical,
yet it has never been more complex. Realizing that the status Key challenges in enterprise
quo is no longer a viable choice, organizations must consider modernization
ways to modernize their technology infrastructure to deliver A typical view of IT modernization shifts immediately to phrases
differentiated products and services. like “legacy modernization” and assumes the discussion will be
about mainframe systems and software. This is only partly true;
Outsourcing is a common path today for at least a portion, if “legacy” means any existing system, whether it was created last
not all of, an organization’s IT operations. Leveraging packaged, week, or 30 years ago.
commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) applications is another
commonly considered choice. The scope of IT modernization encompasses all systems, includ-
ing distributed applications written in Java™, Microsoft Visual
A third option, and one that is the primary focus of this paper, is Basic, C, C++, C#, PHP, and more. It’s about open source,
modernizing existing applications, processes, and development Blackberries, iPhones, outsourcing, process improvement, and
infrastructure. These options are not mutually exclusive, and finding the right combination of assets to ensure that the tech-
there is no single, correct “one size fits all” solution. The key nology is delivering the necessary business results. Ultimately,
for your business is to strike the right balance among numerous it’s about ensuring that the IT organization can support the vast
strategic options in order to optimize your desired business sea of challenges that businesses are confronted with.
results.

IBM Software 3

Here are the primary challenges as IBM sees them. A good example of aging application technology: It is estimated
that there are approximately 200 billion lines of COBOL code
Poor alignment between the IT strategy and the business in production, with 5 billion lines of new code added to these
strategy is a near universal problem. For decades, corporate highly valued core production systems each year. As much as
executives and department managers have complained about 70 percent of business data worldwide is stored on mainframes
budget overruns and schedule delays of complex IT projects. and approximately 80 percent of daily business transactions are
Underlying causes include the intricacy and size of modern processed in COBOL. There are about 1.5 - 2 million develop-
applications, as well as poor communication between business, ers globally developing and maintaining COBOL code today.1
which features operational and IT experts who speak dissimilar
jargon. The accelerating pace of evolving technologies only In addition, the aging of the current IT work force creates
exacerbates the problem. The 2008 - 2009 economic downturn concern that they will walk away with much of the business and
emphasized the need for agility as many companies shifted their technical knowledge accumulated over decades of building and
business strategy, both to reduce cost and to seek competitive maintaining the applications that run the business. The difficulty
advantage. Those who can shift more quickly and efficiently can in attracting new talent to a green-screen environment can
set themselves apart from the competition. also stifle innovation and potentially put your organization at a
competitive disadvantage. Organizations must strike a balance
High application maintenance costs consume 70 - 80 percent between (a) training existing personnel with deep business
of most IT budgets, given the sheer mass of code and assets to knowledge and experience and (b) hiring fresh personnel with
be maintained. The lack of knowledge about the value, costs, modern technology skills but less business logic knowledge and
interdependencies, and potential change impact relative to those experience. Reaching the right balance in resources is essential to
assets is a key business challenge. Many companies seek modest minimizing risk on a modernization project.
improvements (2 - 5 percent) in annual maintenance productiv-
ity, based on more effective use of current tools, maintenance The lack of collaboration among different development
skills, and life cycle governance methods. Achieving more teams is a challenge across multiple dimensions. You may man-
significant maintenance productivity improvements will require age multiple development organizations across mainframes and
changes to one or more of these IT expense factors. distributed systems, perhaps in multiple physical locations, and
could be relying on outsourced personnel. This can potentially
Inflexible, aging and poorly integrated IT systems can also cause domain, cultural and coordination challenges, especially
hinder your ability to quickly innovate and deliver new products recognizing that a majority of your enterprise applications
and services to your customers. Today’s business users have are multiplatform in nature. Your company may have grown
grown accustomed to the ease of use of modern web-based through acquisition, requiring application and hardware consoli-
applications. However, many organizations still depend on dation and painful changes in the merged organization. The
traditional green-screen or character-based applications which use of different tools and processes among separate development
can be inefficient, difficult to use and hard to change. Finding teams creates a lack visibility into how, for example, changes in
cost-effective ways to modernize and extend these IT systems one part of an application on one platform will impact other
to deliver new differentiated service offerings can deliver greater parts of the application on another platform. This lack of inte-
return on technology investments and avoid costly rewrites. gration translates to significantly reduced efficiency, lower
quality and increased costs.


Improving application knowledge, In this section, I will consider each of these strategies in the
development skills, team collaboration, order shown in Figure 1.
and infrastructure efficiency
The IBM® Rational® approach to modernizing and leveraging Modernizing your application portfolio
existing core system applications is based on four types of project Lowering application maintenance costs and improving IT
strategies, as shown in Figure 1. When combined, these four agility requires a detailed understanding of your application
strategies can help organizations to: assets and the business processes they support. When the
business wants to change strategies and business process changes
● Better understand their core application assets and how best are required, understanding your application assets and interrela-
to extend them or reuse them in building new applications. tionships will allow the IT organization to respond more quickly.
By leveraging proven application functionality, customers may You can move your IT organization from requiring several
reduce project risk, reduce project timetables and execute with months to make small legacy application changes to making
fewer resources, thus saving cost. more significant changes in less time. Improved life cycle gover-
● Empower their development organization with new skills to nance will help your company maintain application asset knowl-
rapidly translate green screen interfaces to modern point-and- edge as you shift to a more agile development and maintenance
click GUIs while allowing both host and distributed develop- organization. The ultimate goal here is to increase flexibility
ers to use a common integrated development environment through revitalized applications
interface—boosting productivity and reducing project cost.
● Improve team collaboration for tiered applications across host Here are several ways to accomplish this:
and distributed environments and across multiple development
Reduce maintenance costs and improve productivity by
centers—perhaps in multiple geographies—to reduce project
recovering lost application knowledge
timelines and cost.
Many organizations invest millions of dollars in business intelli-
● Optimize the value received from customer’s host-based
gence software to collect and analyze operational data in order
hardware investments and significantly improve development
to gain better insight and help optimize their business opera-
productivity.
tions. Yet there is little or no investment made to understand the
systems that capture and process most of that operational data.
You cannot modernize what you do not understand. The fact is
that most organizations still rely on the knowledge in people’s
Unify Optimize
Revitalize Applications Empower
People Teams Infrastructure heads regarding the structure of mission critical IT systems that
run the business. And the problem is, as those people move to
other projects or retire, this information goes with them and this
critical knowledge is frequently lost.

Application analysis tools can help improve the productivity
of your IT staff by automating the manual processes used by
developers, analysts, and others to learn about existing legacy
Figure 1: The IBM Rational approach to modernizing and leveraging existing systems. Application discovery and analysis tools create an elec-
core system applications is based on four types of project strategies.
tronic inventory of all your IT assets by scanning millions of

IBM Software 5

lines of application source code and storing all the cross- integrated development environment (IDE). The IBM Rational
reference information in a centralized database. This database cross-platform IDE can help to reduce project timetables,
can be used later to generate analysis reports and metrics on size, improve business alignment for growth, cut costs and limit
complexity, quality, and reusability of existing code base. business risk.

Achieve quick ROI by leveraging proven application user Migrate applications to lower cost software development
interfaces platforms
A low-risk and low-cost modernization strategy is to web-enable IBM solutions can help automate migration from older
existing green screen applications. You can use existing staff third-generation language (3GL) and fourth-generation lan-
without requiring them to learn the variety of web technologies guage (4GL) applications to new architectures and technologies
that exist today. This approach delivers immediate business without incurring the substantial risk and high costs of manual
value, such as reduced training time for new employees, while rewrites. A highly automated transformation to IBM’s modern
also buying time for more extensive modernization efforts later. business language, Enterprise Generation Language (EGL),
can help reduce costs by avoiding recurring maintenance fees
Alternatively, you can expose these character-based interfaces commonly associated with legacy languages. EGL also enables
as web services without any modification to the underlying platform flexibility and choice because it deploys to virtually any
application code. This approach can result in immediate benefits environment such as COBOL, Java, or JavaScript. Studies have
to users by simplifying the overall workflow and navigation also shown that developers are considerably more productive
of your host applications. For example, you might choose with EGL, helping them to write more code in less time.4
to integrate several existing green screen systems via a new
Web 2.0 mashup-style UI, delivering a totally fresh and more Improving development skills
functional UI but doing so very quickly by reusing existing, Two significant challenges can be overcome with the adoption
unchanged applications. of a modern integrated development environment (IDE). First,
ISPF tools that ship with the mainframe have been the standard
Lower maintenance costs and improve business agility with for many organizations for many years; however, each year
SOA and Web 2.0
skilled developers reach retirement age. Second, developers
Architectural change requirements typically span multiple plat-
on the mainframe use a different IDE from what developers
forms. Fragmented business processes, workflows, data, and
working with distributed applications use, which causes commu-
tightly coupled application architectures reduce your flexibility
nication and coordination challenges and leads to slower, more
and ability to move to new technologies. They also hamper your
costly projects.
ability to reuse existing assets for new projects.
IBM offers a modern Eclipse-based IDE, spanning mainframe,
IBM offers solutions to help you rapidly design, construct,
midrange and distributed environments with a modern graphic
assemble, test and deploy high-quality web, Web 2.0, portal,
user interface that can help overcome both challenges. The IDE
and SOA applications for IBM middleware platforms using an
can be used by both Java and mainframe developers, providing a
common view of tiered applications that span both environ-
ments. This common interface improves project coordination,


reduces project timetables, and helps constrain development teams that operate in a complex environment requires a unified
expenses. This common IDE also provides two additional and collaborative software delivery system that consolidates
valuable benefits: multiple development approaches and tool sets. A single consoli-
dated team infrastructure can help reduce operational costs for
● While ISPF tools require development directly on the application source code and build management and improve
mainframe, consuming valuable MIP capacity, the new IDE quality across the delivery life cycle and across the multiplatform
operates on a work station, thus avoiding these MIP costs. environment.
● As Java developers become familiar with the IDE, the com-
mon interface greatly facilitates working with mainframe code. Reduce cost and improve operational efficiency by unifying
Organizations can create a pool of developers that work in disparate IT infrastructure across teams
both environments, thereby increasing development deploy- Most IT organizations depend on a variety of software change,
ment flexibility while helping to avoid potential challenges in configuration management and team infrastructure for applica-
sourcing. tion development. Over time, this approach often results in the
use of incompatible tools with different information repositories,
Improve flexibility by leveraging existing or new IT staff to from different vendors, on different platforms, using different
build new EGL solutions jargon, and based on different process assumptions. Integrating
EGL is a powerful, easy to learn and highly productive modern and maintaining such mix-and-match infrastructures has proved
language that provides developers of almost any background to be much more problematic than expected. An important
with a simplified, high-level development model to help quickly emphasis of a modern approach is to define a consolidated
deliver cross-platform transactional services and applications. collaborative application life cycle management environment as
EGL complements the breadth and depth of Java, JavaScript, a first-class enabler of the teams. The return on investment in
and COBOL technologies with a simplified and more abstract these consolidated environments is manifold: the environment
development paradigm that allows developers of any background scales up significantly with the size of the application develop-
to quickly deliver web applications and services, including ment organization, promotes useful levels of standardization,
Web2.0 user interfaces. reduces costs, and minimizes the additional organizational
burden of maintaining proprietary alternatives. In IBM’s experi-
EGL helps developers avoid most middleware complexity while ence, consolidated collaboration generally yields 15 - 35 percent
providing a way for IT organizations to embrace modern web improvement in team productivity.
and SOA technologies—without forcing the entire team of
developers to learn and master the low-level intricacies and com- Frequently, applications contain components that run on
plexities of Java and SOA programming. EGL is ideal for the different platforms. Because changes to one part of an applica-
business-oriented development teams who value ease of learning tion on one platform can impact other parts of the application
and high productivity and need to deliver modern applications on another platform, supporting these applications requires an
and services but cannot afford the time, cost, and risk to trans- enterprise-scale approach to synchronizing development activi-
form each developer into a Java and Object Oriented expert. ties across multiple teams in the software development organiza-
tion regardless of the target platform.
Unifying development teams
Nearly all large organizations have multiple hardware platforms,
multiple operating systems, multiple programming languages,
and multiple development centers. Integrating the development

IBM Software 7

IBM offers solutions to help coordinate and consolidate these Improve predictability of project success through
multiplatform development activities. Rational enterprise change governance and best practice guidance
and release management solutions help consolidate development Process improvement involves adopting best practices for
processes and can help enhance collaboration and productivity processes and measurements. These are used to help accelerate
across multiple platforms at practically every stage of the applica- overall software delivery, minimize rework and reduce the cost
tion life cycle. By providing a consistent development process of change. Examples of best practices may include iterative
paradigm across all platforms, previously isolated development development, continuous integration, evolutionary architecture,
teams can become integrated, thus enhancing team collabora- shared vision, and test management. Practices not only provide
tion, improving release coordination, and boosting operational guidance and techniques within a certain domain, they provide
efficiency. an underlying philosophy for how to accomplish various aspects
of development according to established methods. Process
Reduce risk and cost by focusing on quality across the improvements can provide visibility into—and control over—
entire software delivery life cycle for all platforms risks, statuses and trends. By improving software delivery
Software testing plays a critical role in the delivery of high- processes, teams can reduce development risk and cost, improve
quality applications in today’s complex and multiplatform quality, and speed delivery of applications.
enterprise IT systems. Statistics show that it is much more
cost-effective to fix software defects early in the development IBM Rational tools are delivered with various templates to
life cycle rather than later or post-deployment, when it can be help teams follow well-established processes. In addition, the
two to three orders of magnitude more expensive to fix defects. tools are highly customizable to allow teams to use the tools in
IBM offers solutions to help ensure end-to-end quality of the ways that work best for your organization. Teams can create
applications deployed on distributed, mainframe, and midrange dashboards and reports to give each stakeholder real-time insight
platforms. The software quality process begins by eliciting into the status of the project at all times, while making it easier
requirements that are well understood by all the key stakeholders for anyone, anywhere to share knowledge and collaborate more
from both the business and IT teams. Requirements drive effectively.
downstream design, implementation, and test phases of the
project and provide traceability throughout the software life Optimizing infrastructure
cycle to help ensure that development is actually building and We have observed that, when organizations acquire powerful
delivering solutions that will meet business needs. For example, new hardware platforms, they often don’t realize that up to half
you can link test cases to requirements to help testing teams the generational performance improvement is made possible
identify and focus their testing on the most critical capabilities through the compiler that’s been specifically designed for that
of the software system and stay current with changing require- hardware. A simple recompilation can help you to optimize the
ments. By integrating workflows and sharing data among ana- value you expect from your hardware investment. Additionally,
lysts, developers and testers, organizations can help establish an many customers want to take development off their relatively
early focus on quality and enable organizations to proactively expensive operations mainframe and create a more flexible,
address quality issues. You can also create dashboards to quickly low-cost mainframe development environment.
assess the quality of the target application, address gaps in
requirements, adjust delivery dates, and shift development
resources to help remediate any situations that will impact
the business.


Improve performance and scalability with the latest perform developer-based build and unit testing of z/OS-hosted
compilers applications on their development PC without using System z
A quick and low-risk way to improve performance and the hardware processing cycles. Rather, teams can perform their
scalability of your existing IT systems is to ensure that you mainframe application development and testing on their laptops.
are leveraging the latest compiler technology. By periodically Developers won’t miss the middle-of-the-night work on testing
upgrading your compilers, you not only take advantage of new applications on their production mainframe with their relatively
language features, extensions and usability improvements, you slow ISPF tools. This can help organizations manage their use
also get better application performance on new hardware with- of zEnterprise™ systems to control their development costs
out any source code changes. This allows you to stay ahead of while realizing greater line of business costs savings. Rational
your competition on the technology curve. Best of all, you do Developer for System z Unit Test feature helps lower the overall
not have to change your hardware to upgrade your compiler. cost of the mainframe development, making it more in line with
distributed development.
IBM continues to develop its industry-leading optimization
technology across multiple platforms, including IBM AIX®,
IBM Rational modernization solutions
IBM i/OS, and Linux on IBM Power Systems™, and
at work
IBM z/OS® and IBM z/VM® on IBM System z®. Designed
The following case studies help to describe how a variety of IBM cus-
specifically to complement IBM processor architectures,
tomers started their modernization journey by engaging one of the
IBM compilers can help optimize the performance of commer-
four strategies described earlier in this paper.
cial and high-performance computing workloads. This can
help reduce your CPU cycles to improve the returns on your
Success story 1: Application Portfolio Management
IBM hardware investment. Reduce risk by actively managing your application portfolio
A major global financial services company operating in over
Reduce the cost of your mainframe development
50 countries with 155,000 employees engaged in retail and
environment
commercial banking, credit cards, investment banking, wealth
The production mainframe infrastructure often runs at peak
management, and investment management. They saved over
capacity, leaving a very small time window for mainframe devel-
£2m in decommissioning redundant systems and infrastructure
opment and testing, which could further delay the application
by incorporating IBM Rational System Architect® software into
delivery time. Clearly this conflicts with more agile development
the governance model to stop the initiation of projects that are
approaches that presume continuous availability of development
not aligned to the target architecture. The business reprioritized
resources and the ability to rapidly develop and deploy new
the importance of investing in infrastructure renewal. The cus-
workload solutions. Organizations would like to free up their
tomer was able to facilitate a joint board level IT and business
development MIPS, staff time, and other resources to support
architecture committee to identify areas where spending was not
their production environment. The IBM Rational Developer for
aligned to their IT roadmap.
System z Unit Test feature allows mainframe software teams to

IBM Software 9

Success story 2: Web-enablement The new environment is helping the organization attract
Achieve faster ROI by enabling your green screen younger developers, while developers currently using Rational
applications as services
Developer for System z software are seeing an estimated
An ISV specializing in financial services realized 94 percent 15 percent increase in development productivity and 10 percent
savings in development costs by web-enabling existing green increase in test productivity.
screen applications. The challenge facing them was the anti-
quated interface of their primary customer-facing application.
“Our team now develops, debugs and tests with more confi-
The ISV was losing market share to competitors whose software
dence, and it is clear that more and more people here will be
had less functionality but better looking user interfaces. To
using Rational Developer for System z,” noted Almut Geiger,
reverse this trend the ISV needed to create an entirely new web
product specialist at HVB IS.
experience for the customer or face a continued loss of market
share. As an initial solution, the company built a .NET applica-
Trustmark National Bank found that its existing green-screen
tion that cost $38 million and took nine months to complete.
applications were often difficult to change for new business
In the end, the application could only provide 20 percent of
requirements. For example, many of the bank’s applications
the functionality of the original mainframe application, and the
required well-formed user data that had to be validated by the
new system also required additional employees for testing and
presentation layer. Trustmark National Bank did not want to
maintenance. In essence, if the ISV had adopted this new .NET
reuse the same presentation interface, but they could not access
application, the company would have faced losing even more
the back-end application without it. Trustmark carried out its
market share and spend more money to do so. Instead, they
modernization initiative using Rational Developer for System z
engaged an IBM partner who used IBM Rational Host Access
and IBM CICS® Transaction Server. Rational Developer for
Transformation Services (HATS) software to quickly create a
System z software provided a development environment that
fully functioning web application out of its existing green screen
helped Trustmark design and construct traditional mainframe
mainframe application. The project took 29 days and $2 million
applications, web applications, and integrated service oriented
to build, start to finish, and had zero defects.
architecture-based composites quickly and efficiently. Utilizing
the CICS Service Flow Feature of its CICS Transaction Server
Success story 3: Multiplatform application development
Improve developer productivity and reduce costs by software, along with the Service Flow Modeler tool of Rational
leveraging modern tooling Developer for System z software, Trustmark National Bank were
UniCredit Group’s HVB IS sought to reduce development costs able to reduce costs and risk, while speeding application and
and improve development and testing efficiency for new and service delivery through reuse of assets (rather than rebuilding
existing applications. They decided to consolidate their web and them). “The Service Flow modeling in Rational Developer
mainframe development efforts and leverage a similar develop- enabled us to convert our CICS screens to the web without
ment that would support both mainframe and distributed devel- any reprogramming. This reduced our risk, lowered cost,
opment environments. HBV IS deployed Rational Developer saved months of work, and allowed us to complete the project
for System z software to more than 200 developers who were on time.” said Paul Williams, Director of IT, Trustmark
developing multiplatform applications for System z servers. National Bank.


Success story 4: Team development business application systems with the intent to provide guidance
Decreasing development time by standardizing on regarding modernization best practices to meet the goals
IBM Rational for System z
determined in the EBVW.
For Sodifrance’s many complex mainframe modernization
projects, the company’s staff often required different tools for Consider taking first steps with Application Portfolio
each phase, including requirements, change management, agile Management
development process management, builds, and more. In order to Application Portfolio Management (APM) is the process of
accelerate the development and migration involved in modern- continually assessing and evaluating the IT portfolio based on
ization, Sodifrance sought an open and powerful integrated balanced business and technical ROI criteria. This information is
development environment (IDE) that could be integrated then used to manage the transformation and align the portfolio
with its own Mia-Software products. Seeking to leverage the with the strategic needs of the business.
open nature of the IBM Rational Jazz™ collaborative software
delivery platform to integrate its own Mia-Software products, While Application Analysis offers an IT-centric view of the port-
Sodifrance evaluated IBM Rational Team Concert™ for folio, APM provides a business-centric view of the application
System z (RTCz) and Rational Developer for System z software portfolio. APM can deliver the biggest return on investment in
on an IBM System z9® Enterprise Class server running terms of potential savings and increased business value. It helps
IBM z/OS 1.10 at IBM’s Montpelier zTech center. Sodifrance identify inefficiencies, reduce risk, increase agility, and ensure
decreased its development time by 15 - 20 percent, and they IT investments are aligned with your business goals. APM helps
increased visibility across teams through a unified dashboard teams concentrate their efforts on the elements of the portfolio
helps improve development quality, minimizes errors and that are of greatest business value to the organization.
rework, and reduces time necessary to recognize and address
issues. In the future, RTCz will ease development between APM can help rationalize and justify your application inventory
Sodifrance headquarters and remote customer sites through and infrastructure by considering each as an investment. It helps
improved communication and optimized code check-in and teams understand the financial benefits and ROI of each compo-
management features. nent in comparison to the costs of the application’s maintenance
and operations. It gives you the information and process to make
Getting started effective decisions on how to evolve the portfolio.
IBM Rational is helping customers embark on their enterprise
modernization journey with a customizable framework for meas- Enterprise modernization for developer’s prescriptive
solution for SCM coexistence
ured process improvement that is designed to help organizations
better manage their software delivery. This service offering is designed to jump start your moderniza-
tion efforts by quickly establishing an enterprise-wide System z
application development and deployment environment. The
The service begins with an Executive Business Value Workshop
solution consists of Rational Developer for System z software,
(EBVW) to identify specific business goals in the organization,
Rational Team Concert software, and Rational Developer for
which are then addressed through the development of a cus-
System z Unit Test environment. It is a low-cost and low-risk
tomized, targeted solution roadmap. Once the goals are clearly
solution designed to coexist with your CA Endevor Software
understood and agreed upon, teams can leverage detailed
Change Manager and Build capabilities.
services to assess current software delivery processes and/or

IBM Software 11

Application modernization services The IBM Enterprise Modernization Sandboxes let you experi-
The IBM Rational organization’s experienced staff can help ence and evaluate the latest modernization solutions for the
define and implement application modernization solutions. System z, IBM Power®, and IBM i platforms through hands-on
Our senior experienced solution and enterprise system architects participation and guided walk-through and usage of live, hosted
can help you determine modernization alternatives, assist with System z and IBM i development scenarios and solutions.3
defining modernization strategy, and help with implementation
planning. We also provide resources that can provide short-term Conclusion
tactical services to help your teams become trained and func- Technology plays a mission-critical role in business success
tional with the tools quickly. Services are customized to meet today. Over the years, organizations have accumulated
your specific requirements. deeply embedded layers of technology assets that are driving
significantly increased costs and inhibiting agility. Enterprise
Development skills and team collaboration modernization
modernization has become a critical business success factor.
services
But embarking on massive, long term, high cost, high risk mod-
We offer resources to assist with tool implementation so that
ernization initiatives without clear, measurable ROI goals is not
ROI and business objectives are achieved faster. Our resources
a viable option. Neither is maintaining the status quo.
have been helping clients implement IBM Rational tools for
many years and can help your implementation yield a quick
Successful enterprise modernization requires approaching these
time-to-value and improve return on your investment. We offer
known challenges in new, more cost-effective and practical ways.
formal training as well as “over the shoulder” assistance for users
For example, rather than just thinking about technology assets in
and administrators to work with your people doing their specific
terms of code and applications, consider the critical importance
tasks. This strengthens knowledge transfer and helps your team
of your development team’s skills, collaboration and infrastruc-
better absorb the learning.
ture efficiency in building and maintaining those assets. To
IBM Rational Cafe communities and enterprise improve productivity and realize significant positive results,
modernization sandbox organizations must address all four areas of applications, skills
IBM Rational Café communities for EGL, RPG, C/C++, and and collaboration and infrastructure efficiency. It means finding
COBOL offer online discussion forums where your teams can ways to leverage existing assets more effectively, rather than
ask questions or provide answers. These communities host blogs assuming wholesale rebuild and replace approaches are the only
by the IBM development teams that create the products and option. It means looking across the enterprise, across different
provide free downloads of code samples, white papers, training platforms, geographies, and technologies, and plotting a clear,
manuals, videos, and other documents related to enterprise mod- executable course towards reduced costs, improved productivity,
ernization solutions. There are also HotSpots like the HATS and agility, while concentrating efforts on applications that are
HotSpot, that provide the ability to connect to a community most important to the organization’s business objectives.
to learn what’s new, share hints and tips, reach out when you’re
challenged, and engage in dialogue with the HATS team on IBM recognizes that no two businesses will have the same
what you like, don’t like, and what you need.2 set of constraints or application portfolios. Some will want to
rapidly modernize in the shortest possible time, while others
may wish to slowly integrate modernization into current

projects, stretching their modernization roadmap over several
years. Whatever path you choose, IBM offers the tools, best
practices, and industry expertise you need to cost-effectively and
incrementally evolve your core applications, skills, and develop-
ment teams toward new architectures and technologies.
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2011
Making the right decisions about modernization can make the IBM Corporation
difference between business success and failure. IBM Rational Software Group
Route 100
can help find the best path for your organization, based on your
Somers, NY 10589
priorities and business needs. U.S.A.

Produced in the United States of America
For more information July 2011
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A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and
Additionally, financing solutions from IBM Global Financing trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml
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1
See for example the article from January 2011 at
http://www.nlets.org/press/cobol-doesnt-belong-in-a-museum
2
See Ben Margolis and Danny Allan, Enterprise Web 2.0 with EGL,
MC Press, 2009
4
See ibm.com/software/rational/cafe/index.jspa for more information.

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A Rational approach to application migration and modernization

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