Accelerate your mainframe exit with AWS Mainframe Modernization (MAM114)
Mainframe Modernization: Replatforming Approach
Key Takeaways
Replatforming: A fast-paced approach to Mainframe modernization, first used in 1991 to migrate Mainframe workloads off the Mainframe.
Challenges with Mainframes: Mainframes can be expensive, lack agility, constrain innovation, and pose risks due to technical debt and diminishing skills.
Benefits of Replatforming: Cost savings (60-70%), increased agility, resiliency, and scalability in the cloud, reduced technical debt, and improved development productivity.
AWS Mainframe Modernization Service: Provides a platform to migrate, modernize, execute, and manage applications on AWS, including integrations with various tools and services.
Importance of Testing: Testing is critical, accounting for 60-70% of the project, with various accelerators provided by AWS to simplify and speed up the process.
Customer Stories:
Keer: Faced a data center sunset deadline and successfully replatformed their Cobol-based applications to AWS, achieving cost savings and improved development productivity.
Empower: Acquired a Mainframe application and quickly repplatformed it to AWS, avoiding significant costs and maintaining the same user experience.
Future Innovation: Repplatforming is the first phase of innovation, enabling customers to take advantage of AWS services and integrate their applications with other systems for further modernization.
Generative AI: Generative AI can be used to accelerate and increase the efficiency of repplatforming projects, such as documenting the codebase, planning migrations, testing, and code optimization.
Detailed Summary
Mainframe Modernization and Repplatforming
Mainframe modernization is a journey, with no two journeys being the same. Customers have different starting points, destinations, and approaches based on their drivers and goals.
Repplatforming is a fast-paced approach to Mainframe modernization, first used in 1991 to migrate Mainframe workloads off the Mainframe.
Challenges with Mainframes include high costs, limited agility, constrained innovation, and risks associated with technical debt and diminishing skills.
Repplatforming aims to address these challenges by recompiling the code, adapting where necessary, and moving to a Mainframe-compatible runtime environment on the cloud, while retaining primary languages like Cobol and JCL.
Benefits of Repplatforming
Cost savings of 60-70% by transitioning from a CapEx model on the Mainframe to a more pay-as-you-go model in the cloud.
Increased agility, resiliency, and scalability provided by the cloud.
Reduced technical debt by consolidating languages and data types.
Improved development productivity by transitioning to a visual IDE-based environment and integrating with CI/CD and DevOps.
Minimal disruption to end-users, partners, and developers by retaining the same user experience.
AWS Mainframe Modernization Service
Provides a platform to migrate, modernize, execute, and manage applications on AWS, with integrations to various tools and services.
Supports two repplatforming tool chains: Rocket Software's (previously Micro Focus) Enterprise Service Solution and NTT Data's UniKicks solution.
Offers integrations with AWS services for operations, security, monitoring, scheduling, and print management.
Emphasizes the importance of testing, which accounts for 60-70% of the project, and provides various accelerators to simplify and speed up the process.
Customer Stories
Keer:
Faced a data center sunset deadline and decided to exit the Mainframe.
Repplatformed their Cobol-based applications to AWS, achieving cost savings and improved development productivity.
Followed best practices, including discovery, assessment, and a Big Bang rollout strategy with robust parallel testing.
Faced challenges with technical compatibility, data migration, and integration with the legacy ecosystem, but successfully completed the project on time and within budget.
Empower:
Acquired a Mainframe application and needed to quickly migrate it off the Mainframe, as Empower was an AWS-only shop.
Repplatformed the Cobol-based "Earth" application to AWS, using the AWS Mainframe Modernization Service and the Micro Focus Enterprise Service Solution.
Avoided significant costs and maintained the same user experience for the application.
Plans to rationalize and modernize the repplatformed application further, leveraging AWS services like Amazon Bedrock and AWS Lambda.
Future Innovation and Generative AI
Repplatforming is the first phase of innovation, enabling customers to take advantage of the 200+ AWS services and thousands of AWS Marketplace solutions.
Customers can integrate their repplatformed applications with other systems, leverage data consolidation and analytics, and transform applications to be event-driven.
Generative AI can be used to accelerate and increase the efficiency of repplatforming projects, such as documenting the codebase, planning migrations, testing, and code optimization.
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