Application Modernization
Technology evolves ceaselessly, which constantly pits new technology against old. New solutions, like Web, mobile, and cloud, promise process improvements and new market opportunities yet legacy technologies still do the job they were designed to do and they typically represent many years and millions of dollars invested in business processes, development resources, and manpower.
This is especially the case for the most powerful enterprise applications – those that run on the mainframe. One of the most effective ways to resolve the battle of new vs. old is mainframe modernization.
Brandon Systems provides mainframe application modernization services and solutions, with a particular focus on CICS applications. IBM CICS remains one of the most powerful and most widely used transaction processing systems in the world, yet it is more than forty years old and a great many CICS applications are in their second or third decade, which poses a problem for the organization that has to serve the modern employee, partner, and customer.
An example will illustrate the challenge. A large bank with millions of customers manages its accounts using a CICS application built more than twenty years ago. The application delivered rock-solid reliability at the highest performance levels, and the bank’s business processes were tightly intertwined with the application’s logic and functionality. But only a very small set of human beings could use it. Its display, even when emulated on PCs or in Web browsers, was the text-based “green screen” from the days of dumb terminals. Employees outside the data-entry pool and customers everywhere had zero access– until the legacy application was modernized with new interfaces for Web, mobile, and ATM display.
Brandon Systems employs a variety integration methodologies – EAI, EDI, SOA/Web services, and Web integration – to deliver benefits to clients in all industries:
- Enable system interoperability within and between organizations
- Eliminate high-cost point-to-point programming for integration purposes
- Eliminate labor-intensive manual processes and associated inefficiencies and errors
- Maintain and improve returns on existing system investments
- Avoid re-engineering, migrating, or buying new information systems
- Reduce IT and operational costs – often substantially
Brandon Systems’ Mainframe Modernization Practice
Brandon Systems offers modernization services and solutions for organizations reliant on legacy mainframe applications. Our team of solution architects and developers has expertise in both mainframe applications, including CICS, and Microsoft .NET to develop enterprise Web sites. This combination of skill sets ensure that we can modernize the mainframe for all of today’s web-using employees, partners, and customers.
Given our expertise in .NET, our mainframe modernization practice employs WIRE, the Web Interface Rules Engine, for mainframe interface modernization. WIRE is a .NET development and runtime engine that enables rapid development and deployment of Web applications that leverage mainframe resources for all user types. Interfaces range from a classic “green screen” style for traditional power users and intermediate interfaces with Web tabs and clickable buttons for users with some training, to rich, full-featured interfaces incorporating Web 2.0 functionality in composite applications for the most savvy user.
WIRE supports the most popular client devices – PCs, tablets, iPads, iPhones, and Android phones – and all the most popular browsers—Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Android.
If your organization still relies on trusted legacy applications and broader access for employees, partners, and customers would “modernize” your business, we encourage you to contact us to discuss your mainframe modernization needs.
[1] Another type of modernization enables system interoperability through modern integration technologies such as EAI, EDI, and SOA. Find more on this subject on our Enterprise Integration page.
