Project Description

Introduction

Organizations have made large investments in the development of legacy systems along with resources and infrastructure to ensure business continuity. Over time, this maintenance tends to get more complex as data evolves while technology and client demands exceed it.

  • In response custom applications were built, however, these remain short-term solutions. There is a need to move to more agile applications as the current technology slowly becomes obsolete.

  • This also involves keeping the larger picture in minds such as reusability and economic feasibility.

  • A decision to migrate applications to open growth platforms or hardy operating environments including Linux, UNIX and Windows is spurred by the goal to help clients and their customers meet the required market needs.

  • These developments have been largely possible with the rapid pace in technological growth. So it is only natural that with an evolving maturity of the marketplace, companies will also consider leveraging these benefits.

Organizations logically prefer to run their AS400 applications on these faster, dependable, open growth platforms rather than using the operating system of AS400. The migration of RPG applications to IBM’s i platform is also another solution. Migration requires the support of tools such as Infinite i, developed by Infinite Corporation, including many other organizations that employ modernization platforms such as ASNA, LANSA, MuleSoft, Unibol, Infinite, BCD and G&G, along with the expertise of IT professionals.

Migrating AS400 Applications to Open Growth Environments

A few obvious indicators that shout out that it is time for a migration is the higher lifecycle maintenance costs, slower performance of the application, declining health of the current platform along with technical aging.

Starting from 1993, G&G’s development, modernization, and data integration products, solutions have evolved with IBM as it transitioned from (originally) System-38 to AS400 to iSeries to System i, to IBM i.

Many of the AS400 / IBM i migration and modernization platforms are a bundle of compilers, operating system services, and utilities that enable the migration of AS400 environment along with the databases at the target source level code. This code block is recompiled and executed in the target operating environment such as Windows, UNIX or Linux. These compilers also comprise RPG/400, RPG ILE, COBOL, COBOL ILE, DDS and CL which recompile the AS400 COBOL and RPG source code in the native object code for 64-bit Red hat Linux, AIX, HP-UX for Itanium, Windows Enterprise Server, to name a few.

Some of these platforms are preferred because of their ease of use, cost effective migrating capabilities, and fast deployment that cashes on time. Further, if the business is looking to secure its investment by working with IBM-i’s midrange applications and associated resources, then similar platforms can be considered. So along with investment in the legacy code and infrastructure, the support also covers the newer business models in the business landscape.