Modernizing the Mainframe

What is one of the main benefits of using mainframes?
Where do the majority of critical business data and processes remain on mainframes?
Who must leverage the experience and data invested in mainframes to build composite applications?

Transcription

1 Optimize Extend Manage Modernizing the Mainframe How to achieve immediate return on assets and business agility. Introduction 1 Mainframe Systems 2 Are Here to Stay Today s Challenges 2 Modernizing the Mainframe 2 Extending the Mainframe 4 Presentation 4 Data 4 Business Logic 4 Modernization Expertise 6 The Future 6 Summary 6 Sources 7 Introduction Most organizations today are challenged with providing more improved services to customers, strategic partners and internal users with fewer resources. For example, users continue to demand quick and easy access to mission-critical e-business applications and data from either a Web browser or a Windows desktop. Cost containment initiatives, however, restrict organizations from hiring new staff and/or purchasing new technology assets to respond to these demands. Today, organizations must improve their current resource and asset base with little to no additional investment. Since the majority of critical business data and processes continue to reside on mainframes and mainframe use is on the rise, organizations must begin to leverage decades of capital investment in these systems in order to cost-effectively respond to customer demands. Incredible reliability, high switching costs, and enormous value in amassed business transactions and enterprise data all contribute to the mainframe s strategic role in business. With more than 30 years of experience in building mission-critical applications and demonstrated leadership in XML integration, Software AG recognizes the importance of gaining access to valuable business information stored on mainframes and incorporating it into new, composite e-business applications. To build composite enterprise applications, organizations must leverage standards-based development and integration principles such as those contained within a Serviceoriented Architecture (SOA) to modernize and extend mainframe applications at the presentation, data and business logic levels. With Software AG s standards-based technologies and solutions, organizations leverage the experience and data invested in enterprise applications to improve competitiveness and receive immediate, additional value from existing assets.

2 Modernizing the Mainframe Mainframe Systems Are Here to Stay Approximately 470 of the Fortune 500 companies process more than $22 billion of transactions on mainframes daily. 1 With computing capacity of mainframes continuing to increase steadily and shipments of mainframe systems for OLTP (online transaction processing) workloads rising despite the economic downturn 2, mainframe systems are here to stay. Mission-critical enterprise systems continue to operate on mainframes because of the mainframe s well-known capacity to provide reliable, secure, high-volume transaction management that is unmatched by other systems. High switching costs and years of capital investment make it impractical for organizations to give up these mainframe workhorses. More importantly, the majority of critical corporate information and business logic continue to reside on enterprise systems. It is estimated that up to 60-70% of business data is still stored on mainframes 3. For many organizations, competitive advantage is contained in the strategic data on customers, operations, financial reporting and processes managed in these irreplaceable enterprise applications. Because of their throughput capabilities, monumental reliability, and amassed business knowledge, mainframe systems are proving that they are ideal back-end engines for new e-business applications mainframes provide the performance, scalability and data necessary to deliver manageable sets of Web services 4. The challenge lies in determining how best to leverage mainframe systems in today s heterogeneous technology environment. Today s Challenges For the majority of organizations today: The IT infrastructure is a tightly woven mesh of multiple mainframes, PCs, operating systems, database management systems, applications, component object models, network protocols, switches, routers, servers and so on. Many business critical applications require integration to the Internet and desktop. Global users must be able to access networks and applications in parallel at any time of day or night. Internal business users, as well as customers, require quick and easy access to data and applications in order to respond to information requests or make strategic business decisions. In this environment, figuring out how to provide immediate access to enterprise data and business systems through mechanisms such as enterprise information portals is important to make it easier for customers and partners to do business with an organization. Distributing mainframe applications and data via software solutions may be possible; however, constrained or declining budgets make it impractical for an organization to invest the capital in these solutions. To make the IT environment more flexible and responsive to business requirements means an organization must look at re-purposing core data and applications in order to put them to work in new business processes. Modernizing the Mainframe Modernizing the mainframe is simply the re-purposing and/or extension of mainframe data and applications to create new e-business solutions core business value stored on the mainframe is disseminated to a wider audience. To disseminate this key information, organizations need to develop a bridge strategy rather than a rip and replace strategy in order to cost-effectively and efficiently modernize their enterprise systems. A rip and replace strategy is completely re-writing mainframe applications for more modern platforms. To do this for all enterprise applications is time consuming, costly and risky. For example, an organization s mainframe programming staff may be dwindling so knowledge transfer regarding database setup or application processing is very rare or unavailable, or documentation has been lost, or support is limited or no longer available. In rebuilding these applications, any loss of data or process logic could have serious impact on customer service and the bottom line. 1 Mills, Doc, The Event-Driven Enterprise, Business Integration Journal, pages 34-37, November 2003, page Olofson, Carl W., Special Report The Gold Standard of Enterprise-Class Transaction Servers: Mainframes Drive High Volume Transactions, IDC, February 2003, page 2. 3 Melewski, Deborah, It s the mainframe s turn to get the services treatment, ADTmag.com, February Ibid. 2

3 Instead, organizations need to construct a bridge to extend the life, functionality and value of mainframe data and applications to more modern platforms. To do so successfully, organizations must take advantage of the Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) which supports a standard, cost-effective way of handling enterprise integration. Integration efforts provide the means to bridge and extend legacy applications to more modern platforms. By linking disparate systems together, organizations gain a cohesive view and access to information that empowers decision-making, improves customer interaction and speeds up the delivery of products and services. The standards-based approach of an SOA treats enterprise application functionality as reusable services providing the flexibility to meet the needs of customers for today and tomorrow. According to Gartner Research, enterprises should adopt SOA principles and development approaches and begin migrating strategic applications to these new models. 5 To gain immediate value from an SOA, organizations should base the integration and extension of mainframe applications upon certain business requirements such as, who needs to access the data or application, how do the users need to access the data or application, how does the mainframe data and functionality need to fit into a new business application, and so on. Once these business requirements are outlined, an organization can evaluate several modernization strategies. The following strategies can provide the bridge required to fully leverage enterprise systems within today s modern platforms. First, an organization interested in leveraging its mainframe assets should begin by optimizing these assets. All databases and applications currently deployed in production should be evaluated to ensure they are making the best use of resources and are running at their best in specific hardware environments. This helps to improve application response times, ensure high availability of applications, improve information retrieval time and create cost savings based on reduced CPU usage (delaying or eliminating expensive CPU upgrades). In addition, organizations should encourage developers to take advantage of modern, visual development and maintenance desktop tools to build, evaluate and maintain mainframe applications and databases. These tools will allow developers to increase their productivity Figure 1. Scope of Enterprise Modernization 5 Harris, K. and Nelson, S., Strategic Planning Research Note: Emerging Technologies Reshape Business Applications, Gartner Research, December 2, 2003, page 5. 3

4 Modernizing the Mainframe by working from the Windows desktop to maintain all applications regardless of the production environment. Once productivity and the performance of current systems are optimized, organizations should also evaluate which systems, applications or data should remain in-house on the mainframe platform, which would benefit from being managed via an outsourced solution or service, and which can be migrated to other platforms with little to no changes and impact on performance. In some cases, organizations can facilitate cost reductions by reusing existing mainframe data, application code and skills in new operating environments such as UNIX, Windows and Linux. Or, an organization can implement an outsourcing strategy which frees its resources to work on core services and strategic projects while the outsourcing partner takes full responsibility for managing applications reliably and securely, managing all maintenance, making costs predictable and optimizing investments. Extending the Mainframe The strategy of extending mainframe data and application logic is the most critical to an organization it fully leverages the benefits of a Service-oriented Architecture so that mainframe applications are integrated with new technology while the applications themselves, as well as the data and business logic, still reside on the ever-reliable mainframe. Extending enterprise data and applications takes advantage of market-leading technology to provide the end-user with a friendlier interface to mainframe data (Web browser, mobile device, Windows desktop, etc.). With this strategy, mainframe data and applications are extended at any level presentation, data and business logic: Presentation Extending application interfaces via green screen rejuvenation so that mainframe data and/or applications are delivered as is to the Windows desktop (mainframe 3270, UNIX VT, iseries 5250, Siemens 9750) or a Web browser or via terminal emulation in Windows and/or a Web browser. Sharing information from back-end systems to the Web or desktop quickly and efficiently is important to realizing a return on current assets while minimizing spending in new technologies and coding. Web-enabling tools deploy applications to users across diverse platforms in remote locations, eliminate the need to modify host application code, are ideal for cases where limited screens/transaction processing is required, and allow quick and easy transformation of existing data sources into a set of reusable services. This integration option is quick and easy to implement an organization is able to non-intrusively tap into a 3270 stream for example and expose it via a Web browser for use for input and output. Data Standard interfaces (e.g., SQL, Java, Web services/xml) are created so that enterprise data from mainframe applications is easily accessed and leveraged in new applications and analysis tools. Data connectivity and integration provides SQL and XML access to data residing in market leading mainframe database management systems. Since most of an organization s critical information is stored in back-end databases, fast, efficient and secure access to this data is required for effective utilization. Enterprise connectivity technology helps organizations extend their enterprise data assets through standard interfaces such as SQL and XML, simplifying data exchange and ensuring fast, easy integration of the data with other applications and technologies. Organizations can: Quickly and easily access data stored in databases such as Adabas, DB2, VSAM, IMS DB and so on using standard SQL applications like Microsoft Office. Access and update stored mainframe data via XML through Web services. Access legacy data from within a Java application with little programming. Exchange information between XML and relational databases. Access VSAM data with the exchange of information from ANSI-standard SQL statements. Access a target database using IMS DL/I calls to retrieve data targeted in a request through ANSI-standard SQL requests and translation into DML statements. Business Logic Mainframe application functionality is service wrapped and leveraged in composite applications to build new business applications. This transactionlevel integration provides higher performance mainframe integration. Leveraging SOA principles provides a new way to think about how to produce and access application functionality and integrate resources. An SOA offers a loosely coupled, standards-based approach to integration and the ability to develop a collection of services that communicate 4

5 with one another through Web services and XML. Web services offer an important set of technology-neutral tools and techniques for integrating heterogeneous systems. Since Web services speak the common language of XML, they are easily integrated with the mainframe. For example, developers can open up existing enterprise mainframe (COBOL/3GL or Natural) and UNIX applications by encapsulating valuable programming logic and transactions into dynamic new business services ready-to-use.net, J2EE or Web services. This unique service wrapping of host code and functionality into XML, Web services,.net, COM, Java, J2EE or EJB objects or components starts with identifying and isolating a legacy function or transaction. During development, a legacy interface is extracted, mapped, and wrapped as a.net, Java, or XML object. The generated wrapper encapsulates the legacy functionality so that the application programmer does not need to know the source legacy technology. This approach builds interoperability between databases and applications, providing flexible access to mainframe functionality for increased usability and reusability of critical information in new applications. According to Gartner, application development organizations with significant mainframe applications should evaluate the emergence of Web services as a viable extension strategy for the mainframe platform. 6 This ability to integrate and reuse valuable business information allows organizations to build new or composite applications. Composite applications are the combination of new business processes and business transactions from partly new and partly old software and data. Gartner Research predicts that, through 2008, the number of the high-end mission-critical applications that adopt composite, service-oriented architecture will increase more than three times compared with Companies should expect composite applications to take an increasingly pivotal role in their strategy. 8 Composite applications are becoming mission-critical because they are built on the established foundation of enterprise systems and platforms and surrounded with more recent multi-channel technologies, including the current Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and.net architectures. Business applications are developed more quickly by the reuse of encapsulated mainframe functionality. Program execution still occurs on the enterprise server while the transaction logic is exposed through new application interfaces. With bi-directional communication solutions, Natural and COBOL/3GL legacy applications can also consume.net, J2EE or Web services transparently as if they were sub-programs. Figure 2. Extending Legacy Systems 6 Vecchio, Dale, You Still Have an IBM Mainframe Really!, Gartner Research Presentation, September 22-24, 2003, Los Angeles, CA, Slide Notes page Natis, Yefim V., Predicts 2004: Application Integration and Middleware, Gartner Research, December 19, 2003, page 2. 8 Pezzini, M., Strategic Planning Research Note: Predicts 2004: Composite Applications Graduate to Core Tasks, Gartner Research, December 8, 2003, page 3. 5

6 Modernizing the Mainframe Given the time and labor costs involved in replacing or completely rewriting mainframe applications, implementing a bridge strategy makes business sense it provides an immediate return on assets. Leveraging an SOA provides a standards-based approach to distributed computing and information sharing. Enterprise functionality and applications are accessed by other applications that support standards such as XML, reducing development costs through application reuse while making important data available at the desktop level. Modernization Expertise Software AG s expertise, skills, commitment and competency, all help organizations work to modernize mainframe systems to extend applications and data to get value out of existing investments. Software AG: Has built high performance missioncritical mainframe systems for more than 30 years. Has delivered its award-winning high performance database management software, Adabas, for more than 30 years. Is a technology vendor providing mainframe, integration and XML products and solutions. Is a multi-platform vendor, supporting Windows, Unix, AS/400, VMS, OS/390, z/os, VSE, and so on. Has deployed professionals experienced in designing and maintaining enterprise systems. Has invested in technology to integrate business processes across the enterprise, focusing on Java,.NET, and Web services applications. Has worldwide customer support service. Is a one-vendor solution. 6 Software AG s leadership in enterprise systems and XML business integration provides organizations with unique, rich expertise and solutions for how to modernize the mainframe. The Future Exposing mainframe applications and data as sets of services in an SOA is an important foundation for the future. The next-generation SOA, the Event-driven Architecture, focuses on processes and events. At the center of mainframe applications are transactions and a transaction is an event. An event is defined by its meaning to the business. For example, the successful completion of an order process is an event. Many business events occur within mainframe systems on a daily basis. These events must be captured and dynamically, noninvasively managed at the source of the business event. With an Event-driven Architecture, organizations take advantage of the mainframe s power as a high volume transaction engine to generate events that affect other systems in the enterprise, allowing organizations to do business in real-time. An Event-driven Architecture allows for this by extending beyond the existing messaging communication model. Currently, traditional communication methods, including those within an SOA, involve repeated request/reply or pull communication activity against databases or application software modules to detect changes. An Event-driven Architecture provides push communications to other application modules. Within this model, the business process logic of mainframes is captured, reconfigured and assembled into event components. These business event components are then reused to design and build new, composite applications in which events trigger messages to be sent or pushed to independent application software modules that are completely unaware of each other. Multiple, less predictable, asynchronous events happen in parallel and trigger a single action a transaction comes in or data comes out because an event has triggered this action. Software AG has the vision and solutions to help enterprises move toward such an event-driven model. Summary Strategies for modernizing the mainframe are crucial for leveraging existing investments to lower costs while delivering world-class customer service to achieve corporate goals and objectives. Organizations will not be able to process high volume business transactions over the Web without the power of back-end enterprise systems. The mainframe continues to provide value as the most stable, powerful transaction-oriented platform for meeting future business needs. With more than 30 years of experience building mission critical applications and delivering Adabas, Natural, EntireX, and Tamino and leading the market in XML integration, Software AG has the strategic expertise and solutions to help organizations modernize their mainframe environments. With Software AG, organizations leverage the power of an SOA to gain access to the experience and data invested in existing systems and enterprise applications. Modernize the mainframe leverage additional value from existing assets cost effectively by utilizing the advantages of high volume transaction throughput and reliability to build competitive e-business applications.

7 List of Sources Anderson, R., Attention MSBs: How to Get the Most From Legacy Applications, Gartner Research Note Commentary, July 14, Fulton III, Scott M., Tech Guide: Five Ways to Modernize Your Mainframes, Information Week, August 18, Harris, K. and Nelson, S., Emerging Technologies Reshape Business Applications, Gartner Strategic Planning Research Note, December 3, Knorr, Eric, Opening up the mainframe, InfoWorld, March 26, Melewski, Deborah, It s the mainframe s turn to get the services treatment, ADTmag.com, February Schmelzer, Ronald, Solving Today s Integration Challenges While Providing for Tomorrow s Flexibility and Agility Needs, ZapThink, November Sliwa, Carol, Event-driven architecture poised for wide adoption, ComputerWorld, May 5, Vecchio, Dale, The Future of the Changing IBM Mainframe Ecosystem, Gartner Research Note, March 12, Vecchio, Dale, A Service-Oriented Architecture Can Save the Mainframe, Gartner Research Note, March 5, Vecchio, Dale, You Still Have an IBM Mainframe Really! Gartner Research Presentation, September 22-24, 2003, Los Angeles, CA. Mill, Doc, The Event-Driven Enterprise, Business Integration Journal, November 2003, pages Natis, Yefim, V., Predicts 2004: Application Integration and Middleware, Gartner Research Predicts, December 19, Natis, Y. and Schulte, R., Event-Driven Architecture Complement SOA, Gartner Research Note, July 8, Olofson, Carl W., Special Report The Gold Standard of Enterprise-Class Transaction Servers: Mainframes Drive High Volume ebusiness, IDC, February Pezzini, M., Predicts 2004: Composite Applications Graduate to Core Tasks, Gartner Strategic Planning Research Note, December 8,

8 Modernizing the Mainframe Software AG Corporate Headquarters Uhlandstraße Darmstadt, Germany Tel: Fax: MMF/WP01E0504 Copyright Software AG and/or its suppliers, Uhlandstraße 12, Darmstadt, Germany. All rights reserved. Software AG and/or all Software AG products are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Software AG. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.