A leading life insurance company in North America was facing significant challenges with its legacy mainframe applications. The existing systems were complex, lacked agility, and incurred high maintenance costs. To address these issues, the company partnered with Infosys and embarked on a transformation journey.
Infosys conducted an in-depth study of their existing mainframe systems and accelerated application migration using Infosys Live Enterprise Application Development Platform. We were able to address key challenges and transform the monolithic architecture into a flexible, decentralized system. By collaborating with Microsoft for Azure services and Raincode for the rehosting platform, Infosys transformed the company’s mainframe applications on the cloud.
Key Challenges
The challenges faced by client included:
- High cost of running mainframe applications due to licensing fees and rising storage costs
- Difficulty in maintaining legacy technologies such as Assembler code, REXX, Telon, FOCUS, QMF, and IMS database
- Challenges in finding the right skills to maintain and support legacy technologies
- Impact on time-to-market as enhancements and fixes would take months to implement due to a shared environment for all mainframe applications
- Cumbersome systems management due to multiple applications coexisting in a complex monolithic environment
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The Solution
A leap into the future – Unlocking US $1.2 million annual TCO savings with accelerated mainframe migration
Infosys conducted an exhaustive blueprinting exercise and meticulously studied the existing mainframe architecture which included mapping the inventory and identifying pain points. As a part of the solution:
- The mainframe was transitioned to a Raincode emulation system on Microsoft Azure Cloud
- Applications were decentralized with each application running in separate Azure AKS containers
- Most components, including assembler code, were migrated as-is, minimizing risks
- The IMS database was moved to a SQL database enabling better scalability, flexibility, and future modernization
Infosys adopted DevOps practices to align with enterprise technology choices. A comprehensive testing plan was developed to cover end-to-end scenarios, including online screens and batch processes.
The accelerated migration was successfully completed in 10 months, resulting in a modernized, cloud-native system poised for growth and innovation.
Accelerated mainframe migration using Infosys Live Enterprise Application Development Platform with demonstrated end-to-end program ownership
As part of mainframe modernization services, Infosys:
- Transformed the legacy systems by leveraging Azure’s robust services such as Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure SQL MI, Azure VM, Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), Azure Key Vault, and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Azure
- Segregated development, testing, user acceptance testing (UAT), and production environments
- Utilized its strong partnership ecosystem to migrate peripheral systems such as scheduler and output management software
- Implemented a top-down approach for security migration, simplifying the setup by utilizing Active Directory ACLs instead of directly migrating the complex RACF setup
- Utilized Infosys tools for fully automated migration of mainframe files to the target system
- Performed thorough end-to-end and production parallel testing, and ensured successful deployment into production
Benefits
The Infosys solution delivered several benefits to the client. These include:
60% annual savings in total cost of ownership (TCO) owing to mainframe decommissioning
Improved availability – 15 applications migrated from a monolithic setup to individual containers on the cloud
Improved data accessibility – Over 500 IMS DB segments migrated from legacy hierarchical structure to Azure SQL MI tables
25% improvement in agility – DevSecOps implementation and segregation of development, testing, user acceptance testing (UAT), and production environments
Enhanced developer productivity – Modern integrated development environment (IDE) and ability to develop new functionalities in modern languages in a cloud-native environment
