Federal Mainframe Modernization with Bob Ellsworth

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Good afternoon, everyone,welcome to the latest edition of the walters world podcast series from stadiamy name is Walter sweat and I am the SDS cto.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: And today, I am extremely happyto be joined once again by my good friend Bob ellsworth.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: The recently retired and of themainframe migration practice for Microsoft and now the President of mainframetransformation consulting Bob, as always, it is so good to see you and thankyou again for for joining us on the podcast series.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Well,Walter Thank you so much for the warm welcome it's been a pleasure working withyou over all these years, and also doing some of the podcasts in the past.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: reallylooking forward to this one, and I must say in addition you've had severalgreat podcasts with some very esteemed colleagues One of those is Jim Duggan.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And Idid want to recognize Jim and he's a he's an expert at Microsoft in the federalspace part of the azure global engineering team, and he helped confirm a lot ofthe information that I had in preparation for this conversation.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: A jim's a great guy and heknows the federal space well and in case people don't know that is going to bethe topic that we're going to focus on today.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: We are seeing so much activity,right now, here in a stadia with.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Local state Federal Governmentand the roles that they're looking to fill as they consider alternatives fortheir mainframe and that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on Bob.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Just as Jim did you have agreat deal of experience and knowledge of the federal and local and stateFederal Government know, and I think it will be helpful for our audience tokind of learn from some of your experiences so if you're okay with that we'lljust go ahead and get started.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: soundsperfect look forward to it.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Thank you very much, I’d like to start out talkingabout the difference in governmentversus privatesector, do you feel that there any differences in options for public versusprivate sector organizations as they look at alternatives for their mainframe.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahthere definitely are some differences in what options the customers or theagencies can pursue and it really has to do with the requirements to have forsome agencies to have a US based company.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Do thiswork or provide this technology so within within public sector in the US thatrequirement for a US based technology and SI partners really does you limit.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thepartners that you may consider engaging with and i'll give a few examples ofthat.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Inparticular, if that partner, does the work offshore then it's, one that is aneligible to do work and, in some of the agencies.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: A goodexample is for re hosting raincoat is a great example you know, based in inEurope for refactoring blue age, you know, has a part of aws.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Asworkers and teams that are not in the US from Google cornerstone, which is nowG, for your has a similar situation and, most recently astronaut, whichacquired a Cisco.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: In Europeand Amsterdam it'll it also may be limited in their ability to engage withcustomers that's more on the technology side.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Inaddition, systems integrators if they're you know non us systems integrators orthey have teams doing factory work for mainframe migration outside of the US,then those would also be limited in their ability to engage and and supportfederal and state and local government customers.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: That certainly makes sense, andit is something that those organizations have to take into account.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: um you know Bob we're at aninteresting time right now the last couple of years with coven have certainlyimpacted everyone i'm interested in your thoughts about.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: How has co bid affected thegovernmental agencies do you feel that that has been different than any of theother organizations that are out there.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Well,in particular covert has affected companies and agencies, you know across theboard.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Withthe need for employees to be able to work remotely instead of come into theoffice into a central location.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And inthe commercial sector, they seem to adjust pretty well to remote workers andsupporting remote workers, and you know they had systems in place to be able todo that in a lot of cases.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Withinthe government section that's been a bit more of a challenge those requirementsfor example and Defense in the Defense department.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thatworkers need to be you know, on in the office cannot work remotely.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And soyou know, having remote workers has been a realchallenge for several agencies and particularly if your systems weren't setup to access those systems securely from a remote location.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: You canabsolutely be impacted and so that's causing agencies to invest in thesurrounding technologies to surround the mainframe or other agencies to investin migrating workloads so the more accessible to remote workers.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: That absolutely makes sense,what are some of the other factors that governmental agencies historically haveevaluated as they consider these alternatives from your perspective.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: One ofthe you know the areas that we typically see customers factors business reasonsthat customers and agencies will consider doing a migration.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting:historically been skill shortage has been a real big one agility the ability toupdate applications quickly for changes that are required.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Inaddition to the desire to move things to the cloud, but one of the biggestfactors historically has been cost savings.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andwhat I found in in historically in federal agencies cost savings is not a bigpriority.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Butwe're seeing more and more that even within federal government agencies costsavings, reducing cost has become a strategic initiative for some of thoseagencies.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And,especially when funding programs are available that you require to pay back thecosts from the savings that you have so then costsavings become an integral part of utilizing the funding programs.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: We at a state of you'recertainly seeing more and more of that as well, so it goes hand in hand withwith what you've been saying.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: And and talking about funding,do you have any knowledge or information, you can share, about any fundingcapabilities that may exist that some organizations may not be aware of thatyou've seen other organizations use.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahcertainly for federal agencies, and particularly the civilian side there's athere's an amazing set of funding that's available for doing.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting:improving security for modernizing applications and for migrating off themainframe and that's called the technology modernization fund.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: If youhaven't looked at it it's a tms cio.gov, and this has been funded by an annualbudget I think 175 million, it was established back in 2017.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andthen was rehydrated with a billion dollars from the American rescue plan sothose funds are readily available there is a requirement again to pay backthose funds in some cases.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Formainframe modernization mainframe migration and that's where being able to geta good return on investment, reducing your costs over time.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Buthaving the budget, not having to go through a budget cycle to get the fundssimply being able to submit a request and be approved for the funding is agreat way to accelerate these migration migration programs.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: We know how we all know howhard it can be to go through that funding cycle and get through it so havingthat as an avenue has just got had to have opened up so much flexibility forpeople.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting:Certainly, has yeah we've seen many, many more agenciesthat you know, want to take advantage, want to address their their challengesthrough mainframe monetization but didn't have the funds for it and are takingadvantage of these funding programs, to be able to accelerate those decisions.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Of course.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Bob I think we always end uptalking about security but i'm curious about your thoughts about.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Especially in the.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: In the public sector are there,special concerns that you feel organizations, need to be aware of that, perhapsin the private sector, they might not.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahwell there's there's definitely some commonalities between you know federalorganizations public sector and private sector.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: there'svery similar security requirements, no matter what industry customers in andthat security means securing data access to data.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting:Security and access to applications so very similar in the requirements formost agencies.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Butthen there's a higher level of security as the agency's very well know, higherlevel security required where there's very, very confidential informationconfidential data.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: One ofthe agencies, I worked at when I first joined am dog competing against IBM andDC and 77 was the CIA.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And itwas you know definitely drilled into you how important to security in thatinformation that this guy held was so high security environment, such as theCIA or NSA or FBI or God that is an additional level of requirements that youcould run into.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And so,yes, there is some cases where higher security is required, dependingconfidential confidentiality of information, but a lot of cases, the same sortof security that a commercial customer would need are needed in the federalspace.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: yeah It makes sense i'mcurious, would you agree that the cloud providers the major cloud providers.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: have done a good job and beingable to help by providing security levels that kind of address some of thosecomponents that you talked about that's what i'm seeing here, you see the same.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeah Icertainly do it's it's actually pretty amazing how security is built in thecloud solutions, and it was really designed from from the very beginning, andso you things like authenticating users using in the windows environment oragile environment active directory.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: is atypical way to ensure access to certain applications to only authorized users.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Theability to secure data and encrypted not only when it's at rest in the cloudbut also while it's in transit, those are standard services that are providedby the cloud the cloud solutions.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Yes, someone's having to inventthat on their own that's obviously a lot more difficult.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Absolutely um let's talk a persecond about the application side of.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: One of the things and you'vetalked before about how cost us to not be a factor but it's more of a factornow, but what about agility and applications are new find that.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: In government today, there is abigger need to be able to respond to changing regulations in a quicker fashion,is that something that is that is now commonplace in your opinion.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeah itcertainly is, and I think that going back to coven I think coven really broughtit to light even more the difficulty of changing the existing systems to implement new federalregulations.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Acouple of examples of that that i'm sure that you know, several agencies thatmight you know watch this webinar we're we're involved in themselves.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: are,for example, you know the sending out of checks as part of the coven to relieffunds, and you know it was magical and amazing that that was done as quickly asit was.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Truly,since these are you know pretty much legacy systems, but also the ability toupdate systems for all things like unemployment insurance.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And withthe Federal changes or additional funds that were provided each state thanhaving to implement those changes in their systems, as we also on the presscosts some real challenges and difficulty.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And itreally has to do with that the legacy systems application development done in awaterfall process development process.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Insteadof an agile devops kind of process, as you do with modern applications today,so I think it definitely has been a it's been a problem all along, but itreally came to light very visibly to the outsiders, because of the challengesthat several agencies faced.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: make sense.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: But I want to ask you to namethe actual federal departments, but i'm curious from your time at Microsoft.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Could you kind of share someinformation about the sizes of the mainframes that organizations were makinguse of that when you talk to them, they were starting to to consideralternatives and that size change over time.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahcertainly the you know when I when I started the mainframe practice atMicrosoft in 2008.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Justthe ability of the technology limited or the scalability of the technology usedin those days you really limited how large a mainframe workload could be rehosted or refactor.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Theadvances in technology and and addressing scalability issues as absolutelyexpanded.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Theopportunities of customers, even the largest customers to consider migratingworkloads off the mainframe.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And so,when you think of so there was limitations in the technology that would limit,you know your customers interest because they knew their systems were just toobig.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Buttoday, you know technologies, if you look at an l par on is easier, is theability to migrate me almost any size lpr because of the advancements intechnology is absolutely there.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andwith federal departments, that I engage with there were customers with aslittle as 100 MIPS so very, very small and customers as large as 150,000 MIPS.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thatwere considering, most recently, considering mainframe migrations The otherthing that's this fascinating and those that are listening in from from statelocal government.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Many,many States in fact most states have a shared organization shared service thatmanages a mainframe for multiple agencies.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andwhile each agency may have a small workload hundred hundred 50 minutes 200MIPS.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting:Typically they're aggregated together on those those mainframes that areprovided by shared service, so those environments to really get the benefit ofa migration all agencies need to be involved.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So youdon't have the last agency standing on the mainframe that has to absorb thecost of the entire mainframe as other agencies move off so that does cause, youknow certain behavior to ensure that everybody can participate in the planningof doing the mainframe migration.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: You know we've certainly seenthat before we didn't want to be the very last agency or department having toput that bill.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Withoutabsolutely.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: what'slife like being in college and your roommates moving out and then you're stuckwith the bill to say.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Rightyeah.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Too funny.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: We talked about azure and yourtime at at Microsoft as as your became more and more a part of what people werereally looking for.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: And not just azure but theother cloud environments as well, could you describe from your opinion, theoptions and limitations that people might need to think about as they looked atcloud as an alternative.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeah itdefinitely is is a requirement depending on on the Agency and the level ofsecurity required it's a requirement to have a higher level of certifiedenvironments.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thatapplied to that particular agencies needs.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: what'sNice is that the cloud providers, you know, whether it be, you know as your awsG CP even IBM cloud the cloud providers have stepped up to that challenge.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And soyou think of the need, within a federal space for a government cloud wellthat's fully available from from azure government government from aws govcloud.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: or evenhigher levels of security, for example, that's needed by the CIA, or the NSANSA those top secret clouds are fully available.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Withinwithin aws or azure today so yeah definitely the cloud environments beenaddressed even state and local government.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thoseagencies that have to share information with other agencies, they have a levelof requirements and certifications that are that are needed and thosecertifications are pretty similar from one cloud provider to another.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: That makes sense, and I knowi'm bouncing around all that here, but I want to go back for a second we talkedabout coven before.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: yeah i'm curious if if you feelalso that one of the changes after coven was that people didn't necessarilywant to go back into the.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Data Center and.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: More and more people areretiring now what kind of impact is that been where you can't just keep usingthis same technologies, because the people who know those technologies are nolonger there.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahWalter you absolutely referring to the great resignation, that I think we'veall experienced you know, not just in the commercial side, but also in thefederal state local government side.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Youknow people deciding well hey it's time it's time to go ahead and retire and,in particular, for you know employees.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thathave devoted their careers in the federal sector or state and local government,fortunately, they are typically part of a federal employee retirement system orhaving state pension and so because of that, you know level of you know,guaranteed.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: As towhat their income is going to be and they're not depending on.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting:Investments in the stock market necessarily but because of that level ofretirement funding that's going to be available to them.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thoseemployees are either deciding to retire now or will retire when they hitretirement age.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andthat's causing you know with within commercial sector, I hear more and moreemployees that are still working beyond the retirement age.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Becausethey love what they do, but also because their investments have taken a hit,but in the federal state local government again that that really isn't afactor.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So thatchallenge, then of people deciding to retire and then having the ability toretire and leaving the workforce.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: isreally causing a huge challenge, where the skill shortage, you know, not justfor developers, but for operators and architects and dbs.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andanother big challenge this has been addressed in the commercial side, and thatwas addressed in the late 90s during in preparation for Y2K where a lot oflarge commercial customers went to offshore size.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: tomanage the application portfolio.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: But inthe federal government you can't do that you got to keep it on shore, so youreally don't have that avenue to replace those retiring workers.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Theother thing i've seen is that some employees in federal and state local retire,but then with the plan to supplement the retirement income by consulting backto the organization's they're retiring from.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So thatwill that will delay the impact of full retirement, but only until those peoplefinally say it's time it's time to enjoy full time retirement.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Absolutely, and I don't knowabout you, our experience has been that the the tenure of these people andgovernmental agencies.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: They tend to have been there, along time.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Absolutely that's an awful lotof knowledge that ultimately will walk out the door and is so so difficult toreplace.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahyou're absolutely right it's not just the the losing the skill it's losing theknowledge of the applications and the workloads.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Becausethere's tenured employees are the ones that built it and support thoseapplications yeah and that's actually so important, when you think of.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Youknow, bringing new kids in from him from college to join those organizationsand support those applications it's so important for the tenured employees.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: totransfer the knowledge of those applications to the new employees coming in,but also it's a challenge you know who coming out college knows, COBOL will not too many.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So,moving into modern language allows you to entice those new kids on a collegethat know Java or C sharp you know, to take on workload for an agency, but inorder to entice them, you need to move from the mainframe to those more modernlanguages.

Absolutely.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Baba know we end up talking anawful lot about the IBM mainframe i'm curious your perspective there, while notas many unisys mainframes.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: That are out there today as IBMZ series.

mainframes.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: You feel that there'sopportunity in the federal space for people who are running both IBM andunisys.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahthere's certainly are, and you, you point out correctly, the number of unisysmainframes compared IBM Z series mainframes it's about 10% of the mainframesand the install base of customers.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So thethe install base of unisys mainframes is less, but still the target markets forunisys was Federal Government state and local government in financial services.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And so,for that reason, even though there's less, this is still a large part of you know,federal government state local government have a lot of unisys mainframes inthat space.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And soyeah there's there's a huge opportunity to migrate, you know both the the IBMstandards, the series mainframe workloads but also the unisys mainframeworkloads.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Absolutely um i'm going to putback to development again and applications, if you don't mind.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Sure um do you feel that whenpeople do look at moving from the mainframe that they have the ability to bemore agile.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: And more responsive, you knowchanging governmental regulations that can come up at the last moment what'sbeen your experience when you talk to these agencies after they have started tomove from the main brain in terms of were they more agile and more able torespond to those changes.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahcertainly and it actually this ties into several areas that we've talked aboutso not only moving to a modern devops environment have to manage and maintainthese applications support and enhance them.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting:Definitely accelerates that development process and agencies have embraced thatthat capability.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Youthink of you know, modern devops where you can roll out incremental changes onan ongoing basis versus a waterfall process where you have to.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Youknow, wait until a major release in order to get changes into the system.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: The bigchallenges that's that's difficult to do on the mainframe sure you can you knowmove the development of COBOLinto eclipse or visual studio.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andthat helps and there's there's capabilities to do that, but really embracingyou know modern devops is much more useful for those customers room, you knowwriting Java or C sharp.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andit's really integrated and supports that one of the biggest challenges isyou've got to have the support of the CIO of the senior executives in theorganization.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Becausei've seen in, especially in federal agencies that you know a lot of thedecisions are driven from the top down so as an agency, perhaps the as the CIOchanges.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: seniorexecutive moves from one agency to another comes in, with new ideas new ways ofdoing things, then that will allow the Agency to embrace you know this moderndevelopment, the devops processes and and take full advantage of moving theseworkloads off the mainframe.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: perfect.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Well, I know, there was aproject that Microsoft in a state you got to work on together early US AirForce that we're all very proud of obviously one a technology award within theairport's for being able to move.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Maintenance for their fighteraircraft, which was a really big deal and a mission critical application.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Do you feel that that's thenorm that other organizations can you know if the projects are run correctlyand and if they're working with people who have gone through this processbefore that people can be RC achievable results, just like that.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahthey certainly can and it's it's not just the resulted at the air force, andone that you know both of us were intimately involved in.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: At theair force it wasn't just about reducing costs by getting that you know workloadoff the unisys mainframe up into the cloud.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andhaving a more agile development, environment, as part of that process, but alsothe ability to take advantage of cloud services for analytics machine learningbi.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And soyou look at that that is the ultimate benefits of doing this migration goes farbeyond the initial the initial look at those benefits of cost reduction andmore agile development.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: otheragencies absolutely are looking at that that air force success.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Bothwithin the air force other projects are being looked at, as well as otheragencies that are interested in replicating that success, you know and andleveraging that those capabilities within their own their own workloads.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: that's interesting I just askedyou about replicable results, I want to kind of.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Go 180 degrees, the other wayright now, if you don't mind sure.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Do you think there are anyfederal government agencies environments or applications that really justaren't suited for running anywhere other than the mainframe.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahthere's certainly are and that's something that I know that you do such a greatjob at and something I always strive for.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: wasreally listening to a customer and understanding their environment and notbeing afraid.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: To tellthem that hey migration isn't what you want to do yeah this really doesn'tapply to you.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And soI think we always like to put the customers first and ensure that they make theright choices to be successful, whether they stay on the mainframe or move offthe mainframe.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And sothat the types of workloads that i've seen i've seen are are problematic and achallenge.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Is thatthere are some workloads that for security reasons they provide they require aprivate system, with no outside connections.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thoseworkloads you know running on the mainframe in a data Center being isolated,you know could be in a lot of cases some cases those workloads just need tostay on the mainframe.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: they'rebeing successfully handling the needs of the agency or the business, you knowwhy not let them run they're providing great value.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Letthem continue supporting the needs of that agency or the organization.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Othersreally depend on the workload itself and the one that jumps out at me, and onethat I worked on, when I was back at am doll doing mainframe support.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Wastps.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So thetransaction processing facility typically think of tps as reservation systemslike.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Airlinereservations.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Butit's also used for for high levels of transaction, you know where you've gothigh volumes of transactions that need to be processed very, very quickly.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So theirs uses tps Amtrak uses tps for the reservation system and tps there's reallyno alternative and there's not an easy way of migrating it.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahsure you can migrate the assembler C sharp code.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: But youhave to have the the system that you know receives service request and processof service request from that you know custom code.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So tpsis one that you know I I avoid really a rewrite is the only way a replacementis the only way to deal with tps so yeah there are some workloads like that oror yeah there are some workloads like that that it just doesn't make sensemigrating off of them.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: It makes sense and, like you, Irun screaming scared whenever I hear it being mentioned, I must admit.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Ohyeah.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Well, one of the things thati've seen when we look at the infamous gartner five or six hours, however manythere are now we're replaces an option looking to a contract package.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Certainly in the commercial space.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: You know, there are times,where it just makes sense to go to a cots package.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: at the federal level my thoughtis that there really aren't as many options there perhaps at the state levelwhere you have.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: agencies in every state whereone can use something that another State is develop.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Then that's almost like a cotspackage.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: But other than that do you feelthat in the federal space that you don't see cots packages as an option asoften.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeah Iabsolutely see that you know definitely the the cots providers in some cases,federal agencies will use cots applications for for small part of theirworkloads.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Butthinking about moving from a custom application set of custom applications to acots package.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Youknow, makes good sense if there is a package available that doesn't need verymuch customization.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: If youneed an exceeding amount of customization that it's better to have a custom APPyou know just it's not cost effective to do that.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So someworkloads yeah it's more cost effective if there's an application available toprovide the services, you need it's more effective to move.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: To thatcots package than it is to try to move or maintain that workload that you haveso replacing the functionality is sometimes better.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And aState local government, as you point out, there are some agencies, you know andeach State has a department of human services.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thathas caseworkers you know and social workers that go out and engage with withthe clientele.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andthere are some efforts that have taken place where cots packages were createdfor department of human services.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Evenfor unemployment there's been some cots package and and agencies have moved tothe unemployment cuts package, instead of using custom packages.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Soalways look at that criteria if a cots package provides this capability, youneed with little customization.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thenit's good to put the onus on the vendor of that cost path to get to maintainand enhance it rather than build your own custom application or even migrateyour own custom application.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: That certainly makes sense.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: But I pass through thattesting.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Obviously testing is importantin any mainframe migration or any project in general, do you feel that thereany differences and public versus private sector and the way that testingoccurs and.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahyeah as you point out, as we, as we all know, testing, can be 50% of amigration project.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting:Definitely less effort needs to be or less time needs to be spent if there'stest automation that's been implemented more time if you don't have testautomation and the biggest challenge in public sector is the level of contactconfidential information.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Yes, alot of times when when you test an application, you know if if a customer oragency has built an automated test process.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Theytypically will have a test database that has office gated actual data itdoesn't have real data in it.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Butstill reflects the type of data that needs to be done, but it needs to beprocessed by the application if that's the case.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thenthe testing can be provided and done by the vendor doing the migration if theproduction data has to be used to do the testing and it's confidentialinformation.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: In somecases than the internal staff will have to perform that testing.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So itreally depends on the level of automation and it depends on whether or notthere's test data available, you know to fully tested the sets of applicationsso yeah more more staff time internal staff time be required if you don't havethat test data fully available.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Absolutely well Bobunfortunately it looks like we have come to the end of our time.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: I would like to ask, do youhave any parting thoughts any last thoughts that you might like to share,especially from local state federal government organizations who may be joiningus today any words of wisdom to them.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: yeahfirst of all, Walter Thank you oh Thank you so much for the opportunity, asusual, this is always a pleasure, you know spending time with you and sharingthese kinds of thoughts.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Theparty thoughts, you know that what i've seen and I left Microsoft in January,as you mentioned earlier and i'm doing consulting now with a number ofcompanies.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andwhat i've seen is that there's been a dramatic increase of customer interest inmainframe modernization mainframe migration.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: And itcontinues to grow every day and part of it is you know the advancements in thetechnologies with increased levels of automation has made it easier and moresuccessful and lower cost to do these migrations.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Part ofit is the services provided are becoming more and more mature and less and lessrisk and so that interest continues to grow.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Andit's been such a privilege working with this data, because you've definitelyhave the technology, the people and demonstrated success.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: To bethe logical choices, as the service and migration partner for for many, manycompanies, both in the federal government, commercial and state and localgovernment.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: So myHats off to a stadia on on the ability to address these needs of thesecustomers and definitely customers should not be concerned about having theseconversations, to see what opportunities there are for modernizing their may frameworklook.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: Thank you very much, Bob and,as always, thank you for taking the time I know our audience always enjoys whenyou get to join us on these podcast series, because you you do such a great jobof sharing your experience and your wisdom.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: But, as always, thank you.

Bob Ellsworth - President Transformation Consulting: Thankyou.

Walter Sweat - CTO, Astadia: And to everyone in the audienceThank you once again for taking the time to join us today, please keep alookout at www dot stadia calm for our upcoming podcast and we will lookforward to seeing you then on the next one, thank you all so much.

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