While Toronto can occasionally be frustratingly cold, it continues to be a hotbed for technology firms serving the financial services industry, and CRATOS Technology Solutions Inc., the international financial solutions-oriented company that specializes in mainframe consulting, especially conversions, migrations, and application software upgrades, is no exception.

We recently talked to Andrew Wickett, their CEO and discussed developments at CRATOS, their close working relationship with Micro Focus as well as what's required to successfully re-locate data efficiently and accurately.

WFS: Andrew, how would you best characterize what kind of company CRATOS is?

AW: I like that kind of question, actually. CRATOS is a migration specialist that’s worked on projects ranging from thousands to billions of transactions, where our clients benefit from our extensive knowledge and proven track record of successfully migrating systems. We’ve developed a complete system migration process that includes templates, extracts, balancing tools and test plans.

Whether you’re looking to reduce IT costs, increase system agility, increase system functionality or continued system availability, a successful migration can give you these benefits plus an ROI delivered in months, not years.

WFS: Does migrating your system mean replacing it with a brand-new system?

AW: Not always. There are different approaches a company can take, which begins when we review your current system and help you determine a migration strategy that’s right for your business.

WFS: The obvious question: why migrate?

AW: The long and the short of it is, migrations are lower risk, there’s no need to change your business, it’s proven to work, it provides you with improved productivity within a Micro Focus/Windows environment, including system performance improvements and it gives you extendibility into .NET.

WFS: But there are other options.

AW: YES, but re-engineering is considered a high-risk strategy with nearly three quarters of these projects either failing or being significantly late and over budget. As for packaged applications, they’re a generic approach that can commit your firm only to those business processes defined by the package, which could require complex data remodeling and retraining. They too are considered high risk. Nearly half are never completed or late.

WFS: Just how extensive a client portfolio does CRATOS have?

AW: To date, we’ve completed over 105 projects worldwide.

WFS: How would you characterize a typical CRATOS client?

AW: In the insurance and banking space, any company looking to move from a mainframe environment to Windows. Typically, they either require 100% application availability or are processing thousands of transactions per second. They need the assistance of a third-party migration specialist to provide the technical expertise required to make the migration successful. And we’re a recognized migration specialist.

WFS: You earlier mentioned Micro Focus. They stress Lift and Shift as one of their approaches.

AW: It’s a very strong approach. Businesses running legacy apps on IBM mainframes should consider Lift and Shift. It can significantly lower the total cost of operation for both individual applications and complete systems because it allows them to use their existing CICS/code and run it within the Windows environment. Without changing current programming, they can take full advantage of the features and functionality offered by Windows. Equally important, with Lift and Shift, application knowledge is maintained, there’s reduced development cost, increased system agility, a lower migration risk and lower ongoing hardware and software costs.

WFS: You also deal with the Leverage and Extend approach too, don’t you?

AW: Yes and migrations that follow that approach can re-use people, processes and technology as they seek to enhance existing application portfolios with reduced cost, and extend them to support the needs of the future with lowered risk and enhanced flexibility. It’s been tapped by a number of organizations with a strategic commitment to existing delivery platforms, but choose to leverage and extend their legacy system.

WFS: So, once you’ve determined migration is the right decision, what’s necessary to end up with a successful migration?

AW: Simply stated, you need to keep it simple, have a good regression plan and methodology, change as little as possible to get to the new environment and once it’s running smoothly, begin any modifications. Know that there are different required migration steps covering processes, screen and presentation and database, followed by testing and, of course, documentation and training.

WFS: Sounds all too easy.

AW: In the telling, yes. For greater detail, we have a CRATOS Migration Toolkit, a 10-step guide that utilizes Micro Focus tools and several proprietary tools that we’ve developed to handle exceptions like PL/1, Assembler, WESTI and Unisys-specific components, including ECL and DPS.

WFS: Briefly….

AW: Move system inventory from mainframe into migration toolkit using Mainframe Express, the MFE. Two, perform a detailed migration assessment using what is called the Revolve Enterprise Edition. Three, build the EBCDIC application reference project on Windows within MFE. Four, build the MFE ANSI application migration project on Windows within MFE. Five, remove any proprietary language dependencies. Six, replace the JCL and scheduler.

WFS: Why?

AW: Because the Mainframe Transaction Option within Enterprise Server supports running IBM z/OS and VSE JCL batch script on Windows without the need to convert it to other formats. Seven, migrate the data resources to the target environment. Eight, publish from the migration toolkit to the end-user development environment. Nine, unit-test the migrated application on the target development environment. And last, run a system test on the target production server environment.

WFS: Sounds like a real headache.

AW: No, it’s all to alleviate headaches….

WFS: I know. Can you tell us about some of your migration projects?

AW: Many of our clients prefer anonymity but I can describe one without naming the firm. We have worked closely with Micro Focus on a large project for a North American-based insurance carrier. By migrating to the new platform and running Micro Focus and Microsoft technology solutions, they gained the same end-user functionality with anticipated reduced development and deployment costs, and achieved an expected return of investment within less than 18 months. Savings are estimated to be over $1 million annually and allow them to be more competitive for several years to come. It also helped them retain many of the brightest IT staff eager to work with the new Microsoft technology.

They needed a cost-effective solution to replacing their continually aging system and after a rather extensive analysis and evaluation process, decided to move their core apps off the mainframe and onto Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server. Micro Focus Studio and Micro Focus Server were chosen to facilitate a rapid and low-risk re-hosting of mainframe applications and being a Micro Focus migration partner – we’re also members of the Mainframe Migration Alliance, of course – we provided the technical expertise, bringing our platform migration experience and knowledge of the target system to the project.

WFS: Any others you can share?

AW: Another financial firm needed to maximize future customer growth. Technically, they wanted to maintain common business logic on their mainframe, UNIX and Windows and gain a scalable, robust, high-performance system. They went with a Micro Focus Net Express-enabled reuse of their mainframe COBOL code and a contemporary user interface in Microsoft ASP.NET that resulted in a successful migration completed with performance of 250 tps.

WFS: So, business is good?

AW: Working alongside our partners Micro Focus and Microsoft, yes, business is good….

For more information, visit www.cratos.ca/migration.htm