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Legacy Modernization

Most people associate Legacy Modernization to modernizing mainframe applications written in COBOL, but more and more applications written in DCE and Corba are now being targeted. Legacy Modernization is one of many proven techniques to extending the ROI on legacy software applications of all types. The issues that face businesses who want to modernize these legacy systems are:

  • The high costs of maintaining and upgrading legacy applications
  • The high risk in running potentially unsupported hardware and software
  • The high risks of re-writing mission critical applications from scratch
  • The lack of integration capability of existing legacy applications

Over the years many companies have developed valuable equity, intellectual property and business logic using legacy platforms such as IBM MVS, CICS, IMS, COBOL, DCE/RPC, OS400/RPG, OS390 and Cool:Gen/IEF. As new platforms evolve and older ones fade, companies are faced with having to abandon working applications and invest in new ones in order to remain current and operational manage risk.

At eCube Systems, we use Legacy Modernization to help companies leverage existing investments in legacy technology as they move to support contemporary service oriented architectures such as .NET, J2EE, LDAP and SOAP. Whether a company wants to transform, integrate or maintain a legacy platform we help them reach their goal without abandoning the ROI already in hand.

eCube’s key Legacy Modernization benefits:

  • Lower operational risk by supporting legacy platforms
  • Lower the cost of owning and using your own proprietary IP by moving it to open systems and removing the need to pay high maintenance costs
  • Deliver integration with contemporary architectures, such as .NET, J2EE, SOAP, LDAP and WS Management Suites
  • Provide legacy modernization methodologies for reusing existing business logic on new platforms

The Problem

Legacy Modernization addresses the consequences whenever a new technology becomes the generally accepted new paradigm. Vendors begin to discontinue support for products built on older technologies in favor of new ones. Companies start to recognize “technology gaps” (of varying degrees of severity) between their current implementations and the latest way of doing business. These gaps in maintenance, interoperability and expertise invariably have a negative impact on agility, viability, cost and operational risk.

  • There are a limited number of traditional responses for companies in this situation. They can:
  • Pay exorbitant maintenance fees to opportunistic vendors
  • Pre-maturely retire existing technical assets and the ROI they provide
  • Buy expensive commercial off the shelf (COTS) applications and attempt to customize them to meet their needs
  • Re-engineer working applications and pay for the same functionality and ROI a second time
  • Do nothing -- roll the dice, ride out their initial investment for as long as possible -- and watch the value of their technical assets decrease until it is impossible to extend and re-use them

All of these options are problematic, risky and expensive. However as the industry shifts to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and to utility computing based on Web Services and SOAP -- the 4th major paradigm shift in 10 years -- addressing these issues has never been as pressing. We believe Legacy Modernization is the best response to balancing the risk and expense of modernizing.

 

Legacy Modernization Solutions

eCube Systems provides legacy modernization products and services that bridge legacy technology gaps. It enables customers to extend technology ROI, manage risk and leverage existing business assets. eCube uses legacy transformation to help companies bring “transformed” legacy applications into synchronization with the latest technology. To maximize legacy ROI, eCube has developed three primary offering categories. Legacy Support and Maintenance (LSM), Legacy Transformation Services (LMS) and Legacy Modernization Products (LMP). This portfolio offers extraordinary ROI on legacy technology investments, allowing Fortune 1000 and Global 500 companies a phased approach to Legacy Modernization by lowering the incremental cost of Legacy Modernization and minimizing the risk.

Legacy Support and Maintenance (LSM)

Whether a company decides to employ Legacy Modernization Services or maintain existing solutions, Legacy Support and Maintenance is required to keep legacy application platforms performing at the required service level and to maintain the intellectual property that will be Modernized to new architectures.

Because unsupported application platforms leave companies more susceptible to operational failures - stemming from unforeseen business, technological or regulatory change - eCube allows companies to minimize risk, effectively respond to change, and guarantee continued performance.

Legacy Modernization Services (LMS)

Legacy Modernization Services (LMS) provide IT managers with the analysis, tools and procedures that enable them to address this complex issue head-on. With LMS, IT managers can determine what best serves the company's goals and whether they are best served by:

  • Immediate legacy modernization
  • Legacy maintenance and gradual transformation
  • Legacy maintenance and future modernization

Because every business situation is different, LMS provides a flexible solution based on eCube Systems' transformation methodology.

Legacy Modernization Products (LMP)

Integration Products – NXTware Data Access Engine

Since the 1990s, the demise of the mainframes has been predicted and a rapid migration of strategic mainframe data to Unix relational databases was anticipated in the wake of the Y2K problem. Instead, this migration was minimal, and the mainframes have not only survived, but are thriving with more data being stored on legacy databases like VSAM, QSAM, IMS, CICS and DB2. The recent explosion of .NET, J2EE and Web services in both business and technology sectors is causing organizations to look for ways to access the data of their legacy mainframe systems on the desktop and in machine-to-machine interactions.

FTP access has proven to be an ineffective solution because the data is not current or real time. Even in the best situations the data will be stale by 5 minutes which depending on the application, is a risky proposition.

To provide instant access to legacy mainframe data, companies now realize they need to develop and implement a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which supports loosely-coupled heterogeneous interoperable components. The eCube Data Access Engine allows n-tier applications to interrogate legacy mainframe databases from Unix RPC and Windows desktop components.

Development Products – NXTera

NXTera™ is the next evolution of the Entera™ middleware product, which is widely used in many Fortune 500 companies to quickly develop high performance distributed and services oriented applications. NXTera delivers ease of development and unprecedented performance, for a diversity of service architectures, including DCE, CORBA, and J2EE.

Over the past few years, changes have occurred in both business and technology that are causing organizations to look for ways to extend the capabilities of their legacy DCE/RPC systems. The primary motivations include the emergence of the Internet, e-business, technology integration along the value-chain and Web services.

Re-engineering has proven to be an ineffective solution, due to cost, time to market and complexity. It is nearly impossible to re-engineer and implement supplementary services - such as DCE's CDS registry and distributed file system, DFS. Even in the best situations re-engineering is a high-risk proposition.

To extend legacy DCE/RPC, companies now realize they need to develop and implement a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which supports loosely-coupled heterogeneous interoperable components. The eCube Transformation Engine allows legacy DCE/RPC applications to participate in SOA and support new component models and protocols such as LDAP, CORBA, J2EE and SOAP.