z/OS & z/VSE Migrations

For many years, the IBM Mainframe has represented one of the most powerful and stable platforms on which to run the large scale data processing applications used within the global banking, insurance, telecoms, aviation and logistics industries, as well as government services including health, tax, police records and so on.

However, the improved stability and scalability offered by today’s server and PC technology finally represents a viable and more cost effective alternative to the Mainframe for many organizations. Mainframe skills are becoming less common and increasingly expensive, whilst the organizations that currently rely upon mainframes require ever increasing flexibility, in order to modernize and keep pace with both technological and commercial change.

Astadia offers a true migration path away from IBM mainframe technology, not merely an emulated re-hosting solution. Our migration tools automate the entire z/OS & z/VSE conversion to mainstream, open systems technology, dramatically reducing both cost and risk along the way. We have a proven track record of successful z/OS & z/VSE migrations and all our customers have achieved both rapid ROI and significant reductions in the TCO of their IT operations following this transformation.

Get a glimpse into our clients' success stories.

Solution Highlights

Astadia's z/OS and z/VSE mainframe migration is a versatile solution providing possibilities to replace the entire mainframe platform, together with all the core applications that reside on it, hereby effectively eliminating any dependency on costly mainframe technologies.

This is just one of many possible mainframe migration and modernization paths. In another migration scenario, the mainframe platform is retained, but certain key mainframe technologies are replaced with more modern and flexible variants. Here, too, Astadia provides solutions for mainframe technology replacement.

Native Technologies / No Emulation

Astadia’s core mission is to allow organizations to release their valuable and reliable business applications from their dependency on non-strategic, legacy technologies. We ensure that the migrated applications use technologies that are widely recognized and accepted as native on the chosen target platform instead of choosing to emulate the source platform technologies on another platform.

Target Technologies

We are always looking to implement new alternatives, both on request by our clients or because we feel they make sense from an understanding of the general software industry. Here is an overview of the most prominent technology mappings of Astadia's mainframe migration solutions.

User Interface Modernization

When choosing this option, developers can enhance converted screens with graphical components such as drop-down fields, checkboxes, and data lists after the migration.

When the choice is made to keep using 3270 terminal emulator clients, Waxwing provides a modern, WYSISYG development environment based on either Eclipse or Visual Studio. In this more limited scenario, COBOL modules are generated to translate map data into proper 3270 streams at runtime.

Three Strong Promises

Functional Equivalence

The migrated application’s behavior is identical to that of the original one.

Performance Equivalence

The migrated application will perform at least as well as the original one.

Maintenance Equivalence

The maintenance of the migrated application will be comparable in effort to the original application.

Automated Testing

A key factor of successful migration projects is making sure that the migrated system is ready for production. At Astadia, this is done through extensive and repeated testing cycles.

DataMatch and TestMatch are the core of Astadia's automated testing offering for mainframe migration projects. They were built to reduce the time and effort needed to complete this crucial testing phase:

  • TestMatch eliminates the need to manually create test scenarios for the complete application
  • DataMatch enables quasi automatic testing of batch jobs
  • Both limit the end-user involvement in the project for acceptance testing
Learn more about the tools' capabilities

Let's Talk

Get in touch with our experts and find out how Astadia's range of tools and experience can support your team.

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