Fred Schwering, director, systems delivery

As the management- and technology-consulting arm of the US $45-billion Fujitsu group, Fujitsu Consulting integrates the core expertise of Fujitsu companies and its partners to deliver complete solutions to businesses and government in the solution areas of information management, legacy modernization and managed services.

We recently talked to Fred Schwering, a director in the legacy modernization practice in North America at Fujitsu Consulting.

Why make a change if your legacy system isn’t broken?

Every IT system is purchased to fulfill a need, and with legacy systems, the initial need often still exists. For that reason, many companies feel it is fiscally responsible to maximize their existing system until it no longer does its job. This doesn’t account for the fact that while the existing legacy system continues to operate, it is usually not without a cost. Even though a legacy system may no longer have a capital cost, it can have a significant cost in terms of maintenance and reduced business advantage.

Isn’t there still a tremendous amount of untapped value?

Actually, the first two points you’ve raised here often work together because the ‘untapped value’ and ‘it’s paid for’ go hand in hand as justifications to retain costly legacy systems that, in my opinion, are no longer delivering maximum value. Value can be perceived two ways, first as a finite amount to be used in its entirety and then discarded. Alternately, we recognize that value is more fluid, and what seemed to be a reasonable expectation for a system when first purchased, can quickly change.

Why do you believe modernization’s no longer costly and time consuming?

It has matured to the point where tools and technologies now exist that can fully automate the migration of data and business logic, thus migration teams are smaller, reducing cost. Plus, the methodology’s been refined to the point where projects can be completed in a fraction of the time of past migrations.

How do you preserve the business logic?

Actually, the most pressing concern is the need to maintain business logic in an existing application. Often, companies have invested significant time and money in arriving at algorithms and data-handling functions specific to their business. Referred to collectively as business logic, these information-handling mechanisms often arise from a very specific need. They’re not readily replaceable. More than anything else, companies considering legacy migration want to know they can seamlessly transfer business logic to the new system. This is where the tools for automated migration come into play. The business logic is captured from the legacy system and used to generate the company’s unique algorithms in a .NET language.

That leads us to the impact of change.

Historically, replacement application systems didn’t always take into account the need to maintain some of the look and feel of the applications being replaced. Instead, they set up an entirely new environment and moved the data into it, leaving the need for major re-training efforts. In the drive for more flexibility and functionality, many aspects of users’ interaction with the application were changed.

Today’s legacy modernization programs and tools take into account every aspect of the change project. If a company wants to maintain a similar user interaction as the old system, it now can be done in an automated fashion.

Tell us about the project for Quebec’s ministry of health and social services?

The Quebec government’s ministry of health and social services – La Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ) – that is instrumental in the province's healthcare sector, partnered with us to implement a Web services solution to bolster information exchange with various other governmental agencies and healthcare facilities (www.fujitsu.com/downloads/SVC/fc/cs/RAMQ.pdf). Our migration expertise allowed the RAMQ to achieve heightened efficiency in data transfer after it moved to a .NET architecture, equipped with BizTalk 2004 and a WebSphere MQ solution, from a mainframe-based telecommunications system.

For more information about Fujitsu Consulting, please visit http://www.fujitsu.com/.