Comment: Proprietary to proprietary? There is another way

Twincentric's Chris Champion discusses application modernisation.

It is interesting that the so-called ‘modernisation wars’ puts IBM directly against the Microsoft-inspired Midrange Alliance Programme (MAP). Very interesting. Proprietary to proprietary? If you are looking for a level of independence from everything IBM, why would you suddenly leap into bed with Microsoft? Now, there is nothing wrong, quite obviously, with these two giants of the industry. But why jump out of the frying pan into the fire? Surely the reason for moving in the first place has to be to do with dependence on a single supplier, so it makes no sense to do it all over again.

Other options to the proprietary path exist and it is worth looking at some of the reasoning behind seeking alternatives.

Almost every company experiences the same problem; protecting past investment, yet moving forward. Trashing and starting again is very rarely an option. Whatever the industry, this problem raises its head time and again and it does not matter whether it is upgrading a four colour press, replacing outdated assembly lines or extending the life of software applications, it comes to the same thing: money. Not maybe hard cash but certainly time, delay in manufacture, time taken for training, adaptation of business rules and so on -- time is money.

When it comes to systems or applications that have been devised to run a specific business -- and the critical point is reached when everyone knows that it is time to change or upgrade -- protecting the investment that has been made in the past becomes very relevant indeed as that investment could well run into millions of pounds. This is not new but it is interesting to see how a niche market can expand.

Take my firm, Twincentric, the Oxfordshire-based solutions provider that started with a very specific product, Net.Visual. This was aimed at web enabling green screen applications, providing a mid-life facelift to extend the life of mainframes and the applications they ran. Customers who adopted this technology enjoyed not only a life enhancing face-lift but also found they were able to enhance the applications and provide extra functionality not offered in their original application -- all without changing one line of mainframe code. This allowed companies to extend and rejuvenate access to corporate data, securely, using many alternate interfaces such as .NET, web, WAP, VB, C++, Java and many more.

Net.Visual extended the life and usefulness of the legacy system by offering a fast and easy way to implement a new graphical user interface (GUI) by creating easily accessible web applications and access to web services that allowed companies to extend and integrate legacy data. This was, and still is, an economic way to preserve the investment in legacy systems and has now been enhanced to offer web services.

That screen-level integration was followed by data layer integration designed to enable and extend legacy systems by integrating independent applications within an enterprise. By displaying data sources and processes as a visual solution, Twincentric’s ActiveLink product enabled information exchange between legacy applications and commercial software. The addition of the HIPAA and HL7 healthcare-specific compliances suddenly widened the scope of ActiveLink’s appeal to the healthcare sector and another specialist integration product was available to a specific market.

This legacy protection process has progressed through an integration phase to the more modern thinking of migrating the code. Companies such as Twincentric have been demand-led and moved towards becoming solution providers for all forms of integration and migration. Suddenly, the ‘modernisation wars’ between the big boys highlights what they and others have been doing with migration tools for a little while: giving customers a real alternative by going to Java from either RPG or COBOL or, for that matter, doing a ‘lift and shift’ with Micro Focus , considered an attractive approach to migration by many companies because it allows them to use their existing CICS/code and run it within the Windows environment. In essence, without changing current programming, a company is able to take advantage of the features and functionality offered by Windows.

The point that seems to have been missed is that it is not a war at all or a question of getting away from IBM or having a penchant to move into the Microsoft camp. It is more to do with choice and that choice may include a move to Java or taking advantage of Windows, but not necessarily to IBM’s detriment.

Migration to Java provides a healthy portion of future-proofing. Siemens Health Service’s migration of 80 million lines of code gave them an independence and a choice. Although platform independence for their clients was a definite and needed client benefit, Siemens chose to stay on their AS/400 platform.

So what is being sought by migrating RPG or COBOL to Java? The main reasons for a migration must be to gain platform independence, server neutrality, flexible implementation, development productivity, e-commerce support, and the ability to be accessed from most desktops without the need for pre-installed application software. Java offers choice and, to make that move, just maybe the small independent solutions providers have something to offer against the likes of IBM and MAP. Solutions providers like Twincentric have blue chip clients who like the integration and migration expertise and value for money that is offered. And they offer a wide choice of tools to do the job.

Chris Champion is vice president of marketing for Twincentric Ltd, an ActiveCore Group company.