After the Mainframe Migration

You’ve just spent the last year moving your applications (now called Apps) off that old IBM mainframe. It was stressful, but it’s behind you and you really are saving IT spend! But, don’t get too comfortable on that couch after your migration, now is when all the fun begins. All kinds of opportunities are open to you. It’s like you’ve gone from a Baby Boomer to a Millennial. Your organization has been tied up by your old mainframe, but all the ropes have been removed. So, what is the most important thing that you can have your team focus on? Or maybe you have multiple teams and you can jump into the future in many directions at once.

‍

Resources  

It’s been widely acknowledged that true Millennials do not want to work on a system that is based upon a green screen. To them there is no future in it. Now you go can after that amazing young talent you’ve been eyeing and entice them to come to your company. Get them on board now so they can learn from your SMEs before they retire and help pull the rest of your team into the 21st century.

‍

DevOps

Seriously, it’s the only way to go. I’ve been working in the industry for over 30 years and am so tired of hearing programmers tell me that I can’t get any enhancement I want, no, any enhancement I need, before 6 to 12 months from now. You’re limiting your business with that kind of attitude. If you’ve used the right company to migrate, all your tests have been prepared for Continuous Integration and your environment was set up for Continuous Development. Don’t stop there! Make sure there is someone in charge of maintaining those test scripts to continue being continuous. It’s time to get someone that knows how to motivate the team into breaking every change down into sprints and reviewing what is most important on a bi-weekly basis. Agility - The whole idea is to get what you need and get it fast!

‍

AI

Yes, Arificial Intelligence is available for your data. What it gives you is analysis that will help you understand the information you have and can gather. Everything from your sales to your clients. It even allows you to see problems coming up before they become a problem. Many cloud providers have AI automatically available for any apps you have in the cloud. Examining, Inspecting and dissecting all the data your apps have is the way of the future. You’ve always had this data, but the mainframe was just not allowing you to get to it. It’s incredible the direction this will take in the future.

‍

Cloud

Did you migrate your application to the Cloud, or is that a step you want to take next? If you haven’t considered it then it’s time to. SaaS and PaaS are here to stay for a reason. They make less work for your team, which means more productivity for your organization.

‍

Apps

You’re on a new system and there are all kinds of tools and apps written for these systems that can be interfaced with your existing apps. Why reinvent the wheel when there are so many things already written for Open System environments? Are you open to Open Source? Think about that!

Take a Pie in the Sky look at what you’d really like your apps to do and see if it’s already out there, or part of it is. Your entire team needs to use their imagination to find out what the real path of your IT department should be. That’s right. You’re in a new environment, be comfortable but get to work!

‍