Legacy Application Data Retirement
Most companies have to retain decommissioned data for 7-10 years, and in some cases even longer, for governance and regulatory data retention requirements.
Whether you are retiring your mainframe entirely or downsizing your System z by retiring a single application, IBM's Optim Archive for Application Retirement solution provides database archiving capabilities that enable IT organizations to archive and remove historical reference data safely from the application or system being consolidated or retired. IT organizations can move just the current data to the new or consolidated application, while managing historical data and keeping it accessible. Archived data can be transferred to a variety of lower-cost storage media, on premise or in the cloud, based on its business value and access requirements.
Data retention regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Basel II, the Dodd-Frank Act and the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) require organizations to keep
historical data in its original business context for specified periods of time. Using Optim, an organization can capture and remove subsets of related data that make up a logical
business object, such as “payments” or “policies.” Typically, these business objects are
associated with other reference details using database key relationships or by means of the
relationships defined in the application business logic.
Unlike ongoing archive projects that remove historical data from production systems,
application retirement requires some special capabilities to ensure compliance:
1. The data archived must be independently accessible from the original application.
2. An archived action will, in many cases, take place only once for the data set.
3. The data will never need to be restored, as the application will no longer exist.
4. All of the data is archived based on business objects. This ensures the data is archived in its
original business context prior to any transformations.
Optim also provides a consistent method for reporting on historical records, regardless of the application, version or platform where the data was originally managed. With the application-independent access of Optim, companies can rely on industry standard methods, such as ODBC/JDBC, XML or SQL, and reporting tools such as IBM Cognos Business Intelligence software and Microsoft's Power BI to access archived historical data (see Figure 1). Capabilities to query, browse and generate reports enable organizations to respond quickly and accurately to audit or discovery requests.
Optim supports a consistent application retirement solution for leading legacy data sources including VSAM, QSAM, DB2, IMS, IDMS, ADABASE and DATACOM DB. And it supports all major distributed databases and operating systems including DB2 LUW, Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server and Informix on Windows, UNIX and Linux, in addition, leading ERP and CRM applications are supported, including SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Siebel CRM and Amdocs CRM.
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Mainframe Retirement
Retire Big Iron - Migrate Apps to Java or C#, Convert Pre-Relational Databases to Relational
The Smith Group partners with Modern Systems when our customers decide that they no longer want to maintain their System z platform. Modern Systems empowers efficiency, agility and competitive advantage through core application modernization. Our solutions facilitate the transition from legacy systems to modern environments that leverage cloud, data warehousing,
business intelligence and agile development methodologies.
Automated Conversion delivers a modern application and data tier with 100% like-for-like functionality as compared to the legacy application, based on fully maintainable open systems. This reduces cost, allows for deeper integration, and enables customization to meet business requirements. This solution is great for moving legacy apps to Java or C#, and databases to SQL Server, DB2, or Oracle.
1) The resulting application should work exactly the same as the original application and
produce exactly the same results
2) The resulting application should be maintainable and follow the object oriented concepts
and paradigms: Encapsulation, abstraction, modularization, loose coupling, etc.
3) The resulting application should perform as well, or better than, the original application on
the open systems platform
Phase 1: Mainframe Assessment
The assessment is a complete research and analysis project that outlines all legacy application and database conversion candidates. This step is vital to the automated conversion process and to successful modernization in general. Most organizations are surprised to find at the conclusion of the assessment phase, their legacy environments present themselves quite differently and are more complex than originally assumed.
Phase 2: Database & Application Code Conversion
After the assessment is complete and a strategy for moving ahead is established, the automated conversion work is done; it spans both the application and data tier. First, the database is converted from the pre-relational to a relational format such as Oracle, SQL Server, or DB2. It includes the tasks required for unloading, transformation, and loading of data from the legacy database to the target environment. During the assessment, a data migration specification was created based on the structure of the existing data model and the database mapping rules.
Phase 3: Test, Refresh, & Deploy
Modern Systems tests a subset of the converted code using a test plan with documented test scenarios provided by the customer. The customer writes the tests and runs them on the existing system to capture and record the expected results. Modern Systems then runs the tests against the same data on the converted system, identifies, investigates, and fixes discrepancies in the expected behavior of the modernized application. Pre-delivery testing consists of test cases picked from all available functional test cases in order to be representative of different parts of the applications. The automated conversion process does not require code freezes, which is a major risk reducer for customers, however, it is necessary to bring the new codebase up-to-date, therefore once pre-delivery testing is complete and any discrepancies in application behavior are resolved, Modern Systems performs a code refresh to ensure that any changes that took place in the legacy application environment during the conversion process are accounted for, converted into the target language and environment, and tested.