SAVE YOUR ENVIRONMENT THE NATURAL WAYHOW TO MINIMIZE RISK AND REDUCE COSTS THROUGH A PHASED APPROACH TO NATURAL/ADABAS MODERNIZATION

WHITEPAPER

It is often said that the most difficult hurdlein modernizing mainframe environments is the inherent risk involved in making a change to a core business system that “works”. In most cases, the legacy environment is difficult to integrate with, it’s expensive to run, and time consuming to maintain. However, those inconveniences can be perceived as less risky than extricating the business from the legacy system altogether. Thus, many organizations are reluctant to consider modernizing options to prepare for the future. This mentality follows the idea that a code conversion could alienate the employees who spent decades putting blood, sweat, and tears into building the legacy system. There is also a great deal of perceived risk around tinkering with a business critical environment at all, unless absolutely necessary.

This whitepaper outlines how a phased approach to modernization, using Modern Systems’ tools toreach specific milestones, removes the common risks many executives and application developerscite as reasons to stay with the current technology. It also describes how these tools enable organizations to break the ties that bind them to expensive Software AG fees.

Introduction

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The Path to Freedom: Application Transparency Platform®

The key to minimizing risk and impact while modernizing Natural/ADABAS environments resides in Modern Systems’ unique toolset. The Application Transparency Platform (ATP®) is Modern Systems’ Natural replatforming solution which provides a relatively fast end-to-end strategic pathway for lower costs, preservation of legacy assets and business rules, and theoption of further modernization through automated conversion to C# or COBOL.

The ATP® solution also includes conversion of ADABAS databases and data using Modern systems DB-Shuttle® tool to standard relational technologies on any platform. By utilizing ATP®, our customers have lifted numerous applications and databases from legacy environments and shifted them to Windows environments in as little as five months, completely eliminating the need for mainframe infrastructure and Software AG fees.

Customers can go on to use the on-board conversion utility to move from Natural to C# at their own pace. In essence, ATP® embodies a phased approach to Natural/ADABAS modernization unlike any other offering in the industry, giving you complete control of the process.

Make a Molehill Out of a Mountain

Mainframes and the applications they house have been around a very long time. Any system that acts as a transaction engine for core business functions over a long period will be augmented, tweaked, and extended multiple times by a multitude of developers. The longer the system has been around, the less a company knows about its inner workings.

To make matters even more complicated, the way companies do business has fundamentally changed. For example, people don’t purchase airline tickets the same way they did in 1987. However, they’re probably using the same underlying systems to reserve seats from their smart phones that their travel agents and airline reps used to book non-stop smoking flights from Dallas to DC before the Berlin wall fell.

Excess code “bloat” is the result of extending legacy systems over time and it is a universal issue. In a survey of 21 Modern Systems customers, we see an average codebase reduction of 50% after a mainframe assessment. In addition to codebase size and cost reduction, trimming dead and unused programs can dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of maintenance and modernization efforts.

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Phase One: Assess, Understand, & Prepare

Understanding of existing systems can occur at different levels of granularity and specificity. The foundation, or first step of comprehensive application understanding is a legacy systems assessment. In the assessment process, organizations can discover programs they did not know they had, relationships they did not realize existed, and artifacts that are no longer in use.

Understanding the details of an application and its interrelationships with other systems is a necessary step for modernization. A challenge for many companies is that little documentation exists, or is current, for many applications. The tendency is to move forward without it.

Practice Informed Decision Making

Mainframe Assessments also bring complete visibility to the legacy system that benefits platform decision making. With a comprehensive picture of the contents and interrelationships between application components, CIOs, Enterprise Architects, and Developers can reduce the cost and risk of maintaining, extending, or modernizing the environment by anticipating potential roadblocks and proactively focusing on areas in need of particular concentration.

What to Expect When You’re Assessing

During the Assessment, mainframe components are classified and listed in detail with notes attached to components requiring special attention. All application components are inventoried, classified by language, and cross-referenced. Missing components are collected and added to the inventory, while duplicate components residing in multiple customer repositories are eliminated from the inventory with guidance from the customer. Modern Systems will also define a set of topics that could be troublesome during maintenance or augmentation, and which must be addressed prior to any modernization effort. Once these “Areas of Concentration” are identified, customer teams and Modern Systems will address the areas about which they are most knowledgeable and for which they are best suited to implement a solution. Any additional Areas of Concentration that are identified during the course of the Assessment will be addressed and assigned in the same manner, to the most appropriate team.

By reducing the application footprint and gaining complete visibility into the legacy system through a formal assessment, the organization is prepared for the next phase of modernization.

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Phase Two: Reduce Costs, Reuse Talent, Recycle SyntaxUsing Application Transparency Platform (ATP®), an organization can lift the Natural syntax out of the legacy environment and shift it into a Windows environment, while the ADABAS database is converted to a relational model. Natural runs as-is against the relational equivalent of the legacy database, while the mainframe and Software AG licensing fees are eliminated entirely.

Replatforming with ATP®

Replatforming (sometimes referred to as “rehosting”) provides an emulation environment that runs on distributed platforms and emulates the mainframe operating environment. This emulation capability dramatically minimizes the amount of change that occurs when migrating legacy systems to a distributed platform. Replatforming solutions provide a relatively low-cost and low-risk way to reduce mainframe operating costs and maintain the business value they provide. Organizations can continue to leverage their Natural skill sets, because the solution uses the syntax as-is.

ATP® includes a full-featured UI Development Workbench for Natural developers, which includes Natural code analysis, flow diagramming, impact analysis, pattern matching, version comparison, and interactive debugging. In other words, Natural development teams can continue to develop and maintain applications with the support of modern, efficient development tools.

For the execution of the Natural Online programs, ATP® interprets and executes each Natural command, allowing existing Natural applications to execute “as is” against the new relational database without any changes to the original code. The ATP® processing engine interprets the Natural “READ” and “WRITE” syntax (along with other Natural IO commands) and creates SQL syntax to perform the data access and updates against the new relational database.

ATP® also enables modern business intelligence tools to integrate with the relational database in ways the legacy system would never have allowed, giving the business the best of both worlds.

Batch Execution with eavJES

Natural Batch programs run in our eavJES batch execution environment, an ancillary tool set within the ATP® replatforming environment. It provides the ability to replatform JCL and PROCS with very little change. Developers maintain the JCL and PROCS according to existing JCL rules. Execution results in the same actions, cataloging, restart, and recovery as on the mainframe. The Catalog is constantly monitored and maintained during job execution and can even allow command line manipulation of datasets.

eavJES boasts a full-featured set of tools one might expect from a batch execution environment, ensuring maximum functionality with minimum effort.

The Future is in Your Hands

Put simply, ATP® can be used indefinitely as a Natural replatforming environment, takingadvantage of the Natural coding skills which already exist in-house, or as a stepping stone on the path to a COBOL or C# conversion, whenever the organization is ready to move to a new language or a new environment.

The beauty of ATP® is that if and when the business wants to move away from Natural altogether, the power is in its hands to move to the next frontier.

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Phase Three: Save the EnvironmentRetaining Natural syntax may be the final modernization goal for some organizations. For others, it might be a step in a phased approach to move away from procedural code and pre-relational databases altogether. ATP® is designed to support customers regardless of how far down the modernization path their migration effort takes them. Firms looking to move away from Natural can use ATP® to automatically convert syntax to COBOL or C# on demand.

Application Transparency Platform (ATP®) supports automated conversion to C# or COBOL through a simple right-click, SaveAs function. This is an industry first, bringing automated conversion to the end user. Using this feature, it is possible to maintain the Natural, but choose to have the actual syntax converted to C# or COBOL at the time the syntax is saved by the developer. Once saved, the newly converted code is functionally equivalent to the legacy Natural syntax. This feature enables the best of both worlds; re-use the developers’ existing skill sets in Natural, and their extensive knowledge of the applications, while deploying as C# (providing the benefit from the deployment of web apps running natively) or COBOL (where it is possible to execute the applications on any platform).

Pace Yourself

Organizations looking to move away from Natural are not limited to a big bang, all-at-once approach to conversion. Using ATP®, developers can trace and isolate business rules, functions, and activity. The traced code can then be extracted and converted as a standalone work package. For example, if a firm wanted to begin the next phase of modernization by moving HR functions to C#, developers could perform common HR functions against the system in real-time while simultaneously tracing the code that is traversed while performing those actions. They can then go into ATP®, isolate the traced code, and convert it to C#. By enabling a phased approach to migrating away from Natural, ATP® extends the risk reduction and cost reduction of retiring big iron to code conversion process.

Partnership Opportunities Bloom

In the legacy modernization world, systems integrators and consulting firms are often deeply involved in the project portfolio that includes moving away from the mainframe. These firms will often partner with modernization experts such as Modern Systems to deliver modernized code and databases. ATP® can enable these organizations to perform the automated conversions themselves, while engaging in value added services such as application functionality extension and integration with systems that are being developed as part of a broader program. With ATP®, systems integrators and consulting firms have the power to transform Natural syntax at their project’s pace and in their development style, while capitalizing on code conversion services themselves, effectively removing layers of the delivery chain.

Conclusion

Modernizing legacy systems can be difficult. Moving away from the mainframe or from procedural languages can be perceived as threatening to those who have built their careers on developing and caring for these systems. However, with Modern Systems’ Application Transparency Platform (ATP®), these resources can continue to work with the code they’re comfortable with, take advantage of new tools and features to simplify their lives, and save money. No other solutionoffers the power and flexibility to take a phased approach to modernization, while putting the power to transform in the customer’s hands.

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Customer Success Story: CalPERS

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) is an agency that manages pension and health benefits for more than 1.6 million California public employees and 3,000 employers. As of 2014, CalPERS managed the largest public pension fund in the United States. The organization has been touted as a global leader in the investment industry, and one of America’s most powerful shareholder bodies.

(California Public Employees Retirement System)

Project Background

CalPERS tapped Modern Systems because they needed a quick and cost effective solution to replace their mainframe-based Natural/ADABAS environment and reduce or eliminate their rising Software AG licensing fees.

It was imperative that the look, feel, and functionality of the applications used by their pension members remained unchanged, ensuring smooth operation and eliminating the need for user training or process changes.

Solution Details

Modern Systems used ATP® to replatform the mainframe Natural syntax to Windows and converted the ADABAS files to Oracle on Linux. The project was completed in 5 months, including planning, assessment, replatforming, and all levels of testing.

CalPERS has been functioning in the ATP® environment running Natural since July 2013. Performance has been excellent, production costs have been dramatically reduced, and the modernization initiative has been considered a total success by everyone involved in the project.

Running Water Never Grows StaleCalPERS recognized reducing risk around their ability to adapt to technical change was of the utmost importance. Shifting a massive, business-critical system was not a task to be taken lightly. CalPERS wanted to be confident the solution they chose could adapt as well.

ATP® assured future dexterity by not only removing the mainframe from the equation, but by allowing CalPERS to remain on the replatformed service indefinitely, or move further down the legacy lifecycle path with a complete modernization to C# at their convenience.