European Bank

Overview

Astadia's COBOL transformation solutions provide the opportunity to liberate COBOL-based legacy systems from their dependency on compiler technology and convert them to Object-Oriented languages such as C# or Java, or to another COBOL compiler technology.

Astadia supported the modernization of a major European Bank’s COBOL-based host application by replatforming it on to a modern, cloud-enabled infrastructure and enabling the benefits of modern technologies, environments and architectures.

The Project

The project was led by GFT and consisted in the modernization of the COBOL-based host application by building a modern target environment, migrating, and commissioning relevant software. Astadia and GFT managed the end-to-end migration, including:

• Definition of a modern, container-based target architecture and support client during deployment.
• Migration of the selected application modules and transfer of host-specific elements, such as sequential files, into platform-compatible solutions. Part of the migration were the job nets of the migrated application itself, as well as their embedding into the existing job net for all further host applications.
• Documentation at all levels - from conception to operating manual - and coaching of employees.

Main Challenges

‍Transformation of the host-based application landscape while reducing operating costs

• Modernize a key part of the existing core banking application by connecting the sales partners to the depot system with only minimal code changes
• Replatform as an initial step in the transformation of business-critical applications with continuous cooperation with all existing peripheral systems and databases
• Reduction of running costs for infrastructure and software by reducing MIPS, especially at reporting date processing (month-end/year-end)

Additional requirements for the migrated application

• Operability without emulation in the target environment
• Ongoing maintenance by existing developers

Solution

The project benefited from Astadia's FastTrack platform, a collection of tools, processes and technologies that accelerate and standardize a successful mainframe migration project. FastTrack allows applications to undergo complex cross-platform migrations at the same time as normal perfective and adaptive maintenance progresses without business interruption.

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Main Benefits

Increased performance, boosted efficiency and reduced costs

• Despite the necessary additional data exchange between host and Unix system up to 90 minutes faster processing of the processes
• Reduction of previously occurring additional MIPS costs for key date processing at the end of the month and year

> Visit the GFT website for a detailed description of the project.

> Learn more about Astadia's COBOL modernization solutions.