Asysco: Solutions for Financial Institutions

3301 Thomasville Road / Tallahassee, FL 32308 / (850) 383-2522 / www.asyscousa.com

For more information: Toll free (866) 241-3301 [email protected] www.asyscousa.com

Solutions For Financial Institutions

3301 Thomasville Road, Suite 300 | Tallahassee, FL USA 32308 | (850) 383-2522 | www.asyscousa.com

Asysco Software, b.v. was founded in 1979 and is based in Coevorden, The Netherlands. We opened our U.S. office, Asysco, Inc., in 2002. Over the last 30+ years Asysco has leveraged its considerable expertise in the mainframe realm and invested a substantial amount of R&D resources to develop and perfect technology that can automatically migrate the applications and data running on an IBM or Unisys mainframe to a distributed, N-Tier, Wintel platform. Specifically our technology supports the conversion of any IBM zOS, Unisys A-Series MCP or Unisys OS1100/2200 based code, scripts and data to native .NET running on physical or virtual instances of MS Windows Server(s). Delivering turnkey, automated mainframe migrations is all that we do at Asysco. That is our specialty and we believe that we are the best in the world at doing it. We call our solutions Asysco Migration Technology (AMT).

ASYSCO MIGRATION TECHNOLOGY

AMT is offered in two “flavors”:

AMT-LION is our proprietary, 4GL IDE and Runtime that is designed specifically to be very recognizable to the customer’s legacy (COBOL, NATURAL, XGEN, LINC, ALGOL, and REPORTERIII) developers and mainframe operators. For customers who do not have a strong background or experience in developing and supporting enterprise scale, mission-critical .NET applications, AMT-LION offers the perfect bridge between the old and new worlds. The AMT-LION solution combines the familiarity of the original legacy style code and data structures with the ability to implement the full features of a robust IDE and object oriented code. This allows the customer’s development staff to quickly and easily begin modernizing their applications immediately after the migration is complete.

AMT-Visual Studio (or AMT-VS) is our non-proprietary .NET solution. With AMT-VS, the converted online screens are delivered as ASP.NET and the business logic source code (for both Online and Batch programs) is delivered in the customer’s choice of native C# or VB.NET. The target distributed architecture leverages Microsoft AJAX and Windows Communication Foundation to offer performance, security, scalability and maintainability equal to or better than the legacy mainframe. After the migration is complete, all development occurs in Microsoft Visual Studio and there are no “Asysco” proprietary plug-ins or add-ons required to run the converted applications.

Both options include a fully automated migration of the VSAM, ADABAS, or DMS data to the customer’s choice of Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle or DB2, and the conversion of JCL/WFL/ECL scripts to open source VB Scripts housed in Windows Script Files (.WSF).

Both options include the conversion of all Binary or Indexed Flat Files. Any other types of EDI are addressed as part of the full turnkey migration solution as well.

Both options also come with a System Administration/Operations Control Center, called the Application Management Center (AMC), for managing Job Scheduling, Report and Print Queues, Messaging, Performance Monitoring, Transaction Logging and Roles based security including seamless integration with Active Directory.

Addit ional Hi gh l ights • We deliver all of our migrations based on a unique and

comprehensive 24 step Mainframe Migration Project Framework. • Because our migrations are “like-for-like” there should be minimal

impact to the end-users unless a refactoring or modernization phase is required by the customer.

• Our migrations are conducted in parallel to the production mainframe so there is no impact the customers’ day-to-day operations.

• The migrated architecture is contractually guaranteed to perform as well or better than the mainframe.

• The code freeze period prior to go-live is typically less than a month. • Once our migrations are complete, it is expected that the customers

will be able to completely shut down their mainframe…forever. • Virtually all of our migrations take less than 12 months from startup

to go-live and are fixed-price/fixed-time based on the results of a preliminary Site Survey.

• We offer a warranty on all of our migrations.

For more information please visit our website at www.asyscousa.com, or to see a list of news and events including announcements for our most recent successful migrations and our newest customers visit www.asysco.com/about-us/news-events/

“Give us your environment, and we’ll give you a better one.” - Bernd Sakulski, Global Sales Director

To the Microsoft Application Platform with Asysco Migration Technology (AMT).

When your mainframe becomes a business risk Until recently, there were no reliable alternatives to big iron for running mission-critical, legacy applications. The Unisys brand of A-Series and OS2200 mainframes was as trusted and reliable as any on the market. However, as your costs have steadily increased, and the pool of available expertise has dwindled, you have come to see your continued dependence on the Unisys mainframe as a serious business risk. If you’ve been delaying the decision to leave your Unisys mainframe behind, there has never been a better time to make your move.

Find a solution that meets your needs Perhaps you’ve heard that confidence continues to grow in enterprise-class, Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft® Windows Server®, Microsoft SQL Server®, Microsoft Hyper-V™, Microsoft System Center, Microsoft SharePoint® Server, Microsoft BizTalk® Server and Microsoft Visual Studio® Team Foundation Server. Furthermore, you’d like to take advantage of a low-risk, automated migration solution. More importantly, you want to make the transition a non-event for your daily operations. Asysco offers the proven technology and methodology for breaking the big iron shackles that are keeping you from reaching your full potential.

Achieve your ideal targetOur automated Unisys migration solution aligns with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) strategy. Getting off the mainframe means your IT department will no longer be a house divided when it comes to achieving your objectives for application development, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software integration, system administration, data security and disaster recovery. If your ultimate goal is to free your applications and improve your competitive advantage with modern, versatile, industry-standard technologies, Asysco and Microsoft can help.

Team up with Asysco and MicrosoftAsysco and Microsoft have cultivated a strategic relationship to provide compelling Unisys mainframe alternatives. This relationship will broaden the options available to customers and allow them to achieve the transformation of their business with confidence. By taking advantage of this solution, you can:

Leverage the full power of AMT•Move directly to the Microsoft .NET Framework•Shut down your Unisys A-Series or OS2200•Move to a dynamic, agile platform•Lay the groundwork for modernization and innovation•

Look beyond migrationWith a like-for-like migration to the Microsoft Application Platform, you can preserve your organization’s business logic without a reengineering effort. After migration, your new platform will offer the additional benefits of screen refactoring, database normalization, replacement of flat file interfaces with Web services and full integration of single sign-on security with Active Directory®. Consequently, you’ll enjoy lower development costs, improved usability and increased agility.

Take your next stepContact your Microsoft account manager or the Microsoft Enterprise Platform Modernization organization. For NA, LATAM or EMEA, contact the PMA Leads alias ([email protected]).

“The migration to AMT-VS has brought significant performance and stability improvements, but it will also make it considerably easier to develop and maintain new products and eCommerce applications in the future.”

Patrick McNaught, IT Head of Strategy, Halifax Bank of Scotland

Microsoft® Solution Brief

Automatically migrate your Unisys mainframe environment.

Moving beyond the Unisys mainframe is easier than you think. Asysco and Microsoft will help you enhance the value of your applications and data while reducing your costs.

Microsoft® Solution Brief

Decision support

Business case preparation•TCO/ROI calculation worksheets•Customer references and site visits•Running proof of concept•Site survey and inventory•Replacement hardware specifications•Technical question-and-answer workshops •with demo conversions

Turnkey migration project

Project management•Runtime built to hardware specifications•Automated conversion of all source code •and dataGuidelines and support for testing•Developer training and workshops•Operations/system administration training•Dedicated onsite support through go live•

Post-migration technical services

Warranty of migrated sources•Online and batch tuning/optimization•Database normalization•Screen refactoring•Interface modernization•Integration with service-oriented architectures •(SOAs) such as cloud and Web services

Maximize your options with Asysco’s total process and solution stack

A unique, comprehensive •24-step mainframe migration project framework

Like-for-like migration, with •no impact on end users

Migrations conducted in •parallel to the production mainframe, so there is no disruption to your daily operations

A migrated architecture •guaranteed to perform as well as or better than your Unisys mainframe

A code freeze period before •go live that typically lasts less than a month

Less than a year from project •startup to go live

Complete shutdown of •your mainframe after migration―forever

A warranty on all migrations•

Consider the possibilitiesTake advantage of a complete, automated solution with AMT

As shown in Figure 1, Asysco Migration Technology (AMT) provides a full turnkey migration of every aspect of your Unisys-based legacy mainframe applications to an industry-leading .NET Framework running on a distributed, N-Tier Windows Server architecture. AMT automatically converts all layers of the legacy mainframe environment, including source code, data, scripts and interfaces, to the Microsoft Application Platform. AMT like-for-like conversions of Unisys mainframe applications include:

MCP and OS2200 to Windows Server (physical or virtual)•Online screens to ASP.NET pages•Online and batch programs to readable C# or Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET•DMS, DMSII, RDMS and DMS2200 to SQL Server•ECL and WFL to open-source VBScript (.WSF)•

©Copyright 2011 Microsoft Corporation. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for Microsoft products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Microsoft shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

Figure 1: Asysco migration technology

www.onwindows.com

n today’s business environment, bankscannot afford to get stuck with outdatedtechnology and processes. But as newchannels and technologies bring increased

competition and more sophisticated customerdemands, there is also intensifying pressure to controlcosts. As one of the UK’s largest mortgage, savings andinvestment product providers, HBOS I&I (now part ofLloyds Banking Group) knows well the value of anintelligent approach to IT – as illustrated by itsmigration from the mainframe to a Microsoftenvironment.

The project’s origins go back to 2004, when HBOSI&I migrated all of its Unisys mainframe applicationsand data onto a Windows-based platform. “Theoriginal decision came at a time when we were runninga major transformation project,” says Paul Penney ofHBOS I&I. “We had looked at the options of movingour books of business that sat on the Unisys A Seriesmainframe onto an IBM platform. However, that didn’tprove viable from a business case perspective, and wefound ourselves thinking about two main issues – themainframes were due for renewal, but at the same time,we had concerns about the longer-term support anddirection of Unisys Linc.”

Those concerns prompted HBOS I&I to migrate allof its books of business running on Unisys to aMicrosoft platform. The process, which entailedworking with Asysco and its Asysco MigrationTechnology (AMT) Lion product, was something of arevelation. “Asysco was the only company that couldmigrate the Linc and all of the Cobol onto Microsoft,”says Penney. “We did some early trials, and theyworked really well. I’d come across Asysco about 18months before we began discussions, and I just didn’tbelieve that this sort of software would work. It wasonly when we came under pressure to do somethingthat we looked at it more seriously and did some initialtrials that proved successful. It wasn’t a simple case of‘code goes in one end and a new solution comes outthe other’, but it did work, and once we’d resolved anyinitial performance problems, the applications ransmoothly.”

Since then, HBOS I&I has turned to Asysco again tocomplete the second stage of the migration project.

“When we first migrated, we went to the Asysco Lionenvironment,” explains Penney. “That has a number ofAsysco-developed operating routines that sit in it tomanage the servers, so while it was running onMicrosoft servers, it wasn’t strictly a Microsoftplatform. At the start of 2007, we began discussionswith Asysco about where it was taking the product inthe future. We’d been through some business thinkingthat initially said we would treat the products theplatform was supporting as legacy products. However,that thinking changed, and we decided to keep theproducts open. We were using a proprietary language,and we had increased our Microsoft skills base andwere moving strongly into C# and .NET as a strategy.So we were looking to rationalise more on that skill set,and we were doing a lot more work on presentationlayers and e-commerce, where we wanted a similarapproach for everything.”

In addition, projects were in the pipeline that wouldhave required substantial work on AMT-Lionapplications and procedures like batch processingwere frequently over-running, causing hours ofdowntime. Asysco proposed migrating from theexisting systems to Microsoft C# .NET, as well as amove from a 32-bit to a 64-bit architecture. Thesolution meant that the company would avoid the costof upgrading the existing system to AMT-Lion 5.3, amove that would have cost £780,000. But it wasn’t allabout cost.

“The original decision to move from Unisysmainframe to Microsoft was a cost decision,” saysPenney. “But the later decision was more strategic,based on where the product was going longer-term.We’d moved from Unisys because we had concernsover long-term support, but we were still in the same

I

MAINFRAME MIGRATION

35

position with Asysco. We’d been operating on thoseplatforms for about four years by then, and we werecoming around to upgrade the platform boxes as wellas facing quite a major software upgrade that wouldmean a lot of testing. So we looked at the incrementalcost of switching out of Asysco completely and into astandard Microsoft C# development. We worked withAsysco, and by September 2007 we’d proved that theAMT Visual Studio (VS) product was viable. Then weran a migration project from January 2008, whichimplemented in September.”

HBOS I&I replaced all of the LION infrastructure asit moved to C# .NET, giving itself considerable spacefor future growth. “We now have the latest boxes,” saysPenney. “They are very powerful, and we could doublethe business on them if we needed to.”

Considerable effort went into testing to ensure thatthe new system would deliver the benefits HBOS I&Iexpected. Here, working with Asysco provedinvaluable. “Asysco developed a number of features totake in code at one end and deliver C# .NET code atthe other,” comments Penney. “Our project was abouttaking that code as delivered and testing it in terms offunction, performance and stability. So we cycledround a number of times as faults and errors came tolight, and each time Asysco would fix the filters and re-filter everything. That’s the difference between Asyscoand other companies – they do attempt to filter 100per cent.”

The approach certainly paid off. The old LIONsystem continued to operate throughout the project,and once the new infrastructure and environmentwere built and tested, the system was switched over,and the old one decommissioned. “Because of ourprevious porting experience, we were prepared to deal

with a number of problems,” says Penney. “But we hadvirtually none! It was a very smooth implementation,and while a few problems came to light, they wereminor business ones or data problems that we quicklyfixed. Our testing approach, and our focus on stabilityand performance, were key. We are getting betterperformance now than we had on the Asysco Lionenvironment, which in turn was significantly betterthan we had on the Unisys mainframe.”

HBOS I&I has not experienced any problems withthe system since its implementation, and that looks setto continue. “The system is future-proofed, we’ve gotvery good stability and performance, and we’vemanaged to run one skill set across our legacy and newdistributed applications,” says Penney. “Clearly, thedevelopers have gone through a bit of a journey, in thatthey were mainframe Cobol and Linc developers onUnisys, then they migrated to being Lion developersand working in a different language again. Althoughthat’s creating Microsoft code, it’s not Visual Basic orC# because it’s a Lion language. Now, they’recompletely C# .NET developers. This will be a realbenefit to us when we need to develop new productsand e-commerce applications in the future.”

Batch processing times have also been reduced, andas a result, system unavailability in the morning is nowunheard of. The I&I division has even been able toextend system availability for its users to 6am to 10pmevery day.

“In terms of a strategy, it’s put us in a very goodposition with a modern skill set that we can recruit intoand train people in,” concludes Penney. “It’s given us avery stable platform with great performance and reallygood cost characteristics – and that’s about all youcould want.” F

WHEN ITS MAINFRAME SYSTEM REACHED THEEND OF ITS LIFE, THE HBOS INSURANCE AND

INVESTMENT DIVISION (HBOS I&I) LOOKED LONGAND HARD FOR THE BEST SYSTEM TO TAKE IT INTO

THE FUTURE. THE ANSWER CAME FROM ASYSCO,AS JACQUI GRIFFITHS FOUND OUT

KEEP ONMOVING

Asysco: a perfect solution for the financial world

At the moment, Asysco, the market leader in mainframe migrations, is attracting a lot of attention from the financial world. “Banks and insurance companies recognize better than most just how important it is to switch to open systems and they are quick to turn to us.”

Return on investment

Flexibility

Microsoft

‘It’s the fast return on investment that makes our migration solution so attractive’

100

101

www.asyscousa.com

Fiserv Chooses Asysco for Mainframe Migration

Norcross, Georgia - March 2011 Asysco announced today that Fiserv, Inc., the leading global provider of financial services

technology solutions, has chosen to migrate a mission critical item processing application

currently running on the Unisys A-Series mainframe to the Microsoft Windows Server

platform using Asysco’s AMT-VS open source, non-proprietary .NET solution. Item

Processing from Fiserv has a network of image enabled service bureaus that serve more

than 1,600 clients and processes more than 2.1 billion checks each year.

Asysco will be employing its signature mainframe migration project management framework

throughout the nine month project which will include the conversion, testing and production

delivery of approximately 1.5 million lines of legacy COBOL and WFLs to non-proprietary,

open source, ASP.NET/C# supported by an Oracle relational database management system.

“We are moving this application to a modern distributed systems architecture,” said Joe

Eggers, Chief Technology Officer, Item Processing, Fiserv. “At Fiserv, we are continually

looking at ways to modernize and strengthen our applications.”

A B O U T F I S E R V Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV) is the leading global provider of information management and

electronic commerce systems for the financial services industry, driving innovation that

transforms experiences for financial institutions and their customers. Fiserv is ranked No. 1

on the FinTech 100 survey of top technology partners to the financial services industry.

For more information, visit www.fiserv.com.

http://www.fiserv.com/�

Project Start Message

10-11-2010

AEGON UK makes decision to migrate with Asysco

Edinburgh - October 2010

AEGON UK has selected Asysco’s Migration Technology to automatically migrate one of their mission-critical applications, the UK Life & Pensions Policy Administration system. The current application was developed in Unisys EAE LINC and executed on a UNIX / Oracle platform, with a production database of roughly 1.5 TB.

Asysco will be working together with AEGON through the next 10 months, on the conversion, testing and production delivery of more than 3 million lines of code including MQ interfaces, Shell Scripts and WFLs. The new target environment is the proven Asysco Migration Technology (AMT) LION solution.

About AEGON Although AEGON UK was established in the 1990s, the history of AEGON’s businesses goes back over 175 years, starting with the foundation of Scottish Equitable in 1831. AEGON UK is part of the AEGON Group, one of the world's largest providers of pensions, investments, life insurance, and protection for both corporate and individual customers. The AEGON group is present in over 20 countries, with major markets in the US, the Netherlands, and the UK. AEGON’s UK headquarters are in Edinburgh, a major UK financial centre, with other main offices in London, Lytham St Anne’s, and Dublin. AEGON UK has over two million customers, and approximately 4,000 employees, and has been an accredited Investor in People since 1997. AEGON’s quarterly results from 30th June 2010 reported £51.7 billion assets under management, including all revenue generating investments, leading to a financial strength rating of AA, (one of the highest financial strength ratings available), from independent analysts Standards & Poor’s for AEGON’s life and pensions business. AEGON recently refocused their strategy to concentrate on two core markets, Workplace Savings and Retirement. AEGON passionately believe in the importance of being financially prepared for the future. It’s even reflected in their strap line, ‘Be ready for life’, which encourages people to take action to plan for their future. To learn more about AEGON please visit www.aegon.co.uk

http://www.aegon.co.uk/�


29-10-2010

ENMR Plateau Telecommunications Chooses Asysco

Clovis, New Mexico – October 2010

E.N.M.R. Telephone Cooperative, Inc. has selected Asysco to automatically migrate its legacy mainframe applications, currently running on a Unisys A-Series CS7201, to the Microsoft Windows Server platform using Asysco’s flagship AMT–LION software suite.

Asysco’s migration specialists will guide ENMR through the 2 month project that will include the conversion, testing and production delivery of its two remaining LINC (17 3R2.2080) applications, including all Ispecs, Reports and WFLs, to Asysco’s 4GL, object-oriented IDE and open systems runtime environment. Asysco’s technology will also be used convert all DMSll data to a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 relational database management system.

About ENMR

Mission Statement

Our mission is to provide our Members with universal access to high quality, reasonably priced, progressive telecommunications services that enhance the quality of life and economic development of our service areas.

We will work for attainment of this mission through investment in, and efficient management of, diverse telecommunication related ventures, which will provide financial and other value.

We will strive to achieve this mission by deployment of appropriate technologies, and empowering and equipping our employees to deliver customer satisfaction.

Our Vision We will be the premier full-service telecommunications provider in our region.

Our Values WE VALUE RELATIONSHIPS We Build Relationships Through: • Integrity • Teamwork • Innovation • Communication • Customer Service • Commitment to Excellence • Service to our Communities

To learn more about ENMR•Plateau Telecommunications please visit www.enmr.com

http://www.enmr.com/�


20-08-2010

Associated Food Stores Migrates with Asysco

Salt Lake City, Utah - July 2010

Associated Food Stores, Inc. has selected Asysco to automatically migrate its 25 mission-critical applications, currently running on A-Series Unisys mainframes, to the Microsoft Windows Server platform using Asysco’s Automated Migration Technology–Visual Studio (AMT-VS) software suite.

Asysco will be employing its signature, mainframe migration project management methodology to guide Associated Food Stores through the 8 month project that will include the conversion, testing and production delivery of more than one million lines of legacy COBOL, ALGOL and WFLs to non-proprietary, open source, ASP.NET/VB.Net and will transfer the DMSII databases to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (X64) relational database management system.

About Associated Food Stores

Associated Food Stores, Inc., headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, is a cooperatively owned wholesale distributor to almost 600 independently owned supermarkets in an eight state region.

Since its organization in 1940, Associated Food Stores has not only delivered groceries to independent grocers, but has also helped them battle national chains and razor-thin profits. With the assistance of Associated, most of these independent retailers have become exceptional supermarkets turning in respectable profits.

Today, Associated Food Stores champions the cause of independent supermarket owners and is the only independent wholesale distributor headquartered in the Intermountain West, employing over 1,400 people and shipping over 750 truckloads of groceries each week.

To learn more about Associated Food Stores, Inc. please visit www.afstores.com

http://www.afstores.com/�

About AmAlgAted FinAnciAl group Amalgamated Financial Group (AFG), headquartered in Old Bridge, NJ, was created in 1958 as America’s first business specific receivable management firm, special-izing in the Transportation Industry. Today, it provides the Nation’s leading transportation and commercial companies a multitude of financial solutions within the Bill to Bank receivable arena. AFG provides end-to-end services in Credit Risk, Billing, Customer Care, Dis-pute Resolution, Receivable Contact, Collections and Cash Application. Their Outsourcing and Third-party divisions and technologies give their clients enormous flexibility in process options and service levels.

Amalgamated is an organization built on leading edge technology, cleverly designed for adaptability and inte gration. Their mantra, to seek and deploy emerging technologies, has kept their client partner’s costs low while empowering them with tools that give them total control and visibility to the transactions entrusted to AFG.

Though they provide many different services, you will not find a single, pre-packaged program at Amalgamated. They have never found two clients that have the same philosophies, cultures or goals and they don’t expect to find any in the future. Every client’s business is handled individually and uniquely within the design specifications

to maximize effectiveness and value.Lastly, Amalgamated is about people. In the end, it is people that perform and manage the services. Their people are well trained and extremely professional. But they are also nice people, who make the process of doing business a serious but enjoyable task.

AFg’s situAtion And needAFG’s IT department had been running COBOL, LINC and Reporter III applications (approximately 750K lines of code) on a Unisys CS7201 (approximately 500 RPMs) for years. They also had approximately 1,500 Workflows and more than 200 end users. Applications including Billing, Customer Care, Dispute Resolution and Collections and Cash Application comprised AFG’s Revenue Recovery process. As with any collection service, they also had a number of external interfaces that needed to be preserved. Although this environment had served AFG well over the years, as business increased they needed a system that would allow them the ability to grow the company and save money. Enrique Rozo, AFG’s IT Director, says the single most valuable thing they needed was an integrated, cost effective migration process from the mainframe to client-server architecture with a relational database. The IT department also needed a way to consolidate their development environment into a single programming language.

AmAlgAmAted And Asysco – A FinAnciAl success!

KeN FulmORe, exeCuTIve vICe PResIDeNT FOR AmAlGATeD FINANCIAl GROuP

the solution For AFgAsysco’s Migration Technology (AMT) LION specializes in Unisys mainframe migrations to a Windows environment powered by a SQL database. AFG chose AMT-LION to meet all of their needs:• Asysco proved they could migrate LINC, COBOL,

Reporter III and Work Flow into a single programming environment;

• Asysco could migrate AFG’s DMS II hierarchical database into a relational SQL database;

• AFG needed a solution that would allow them to respond to development issues faster;

• AFG needed to save money on mainframe and maintenance costs; and,

• AFG needed to be able modernize their legacy applications.

the FinAl resultIn June 2005, Asysco completed a detailed discovery outlining the project. The project started in January 2006, and went live in July 2006. Seven months later, all of the LINC, COBOL and Reporter III code was migrated to AMT-LION.

With Amt-lion, AFg hAs improved in the FolloWing technicAl AreAs:• Batch Production processing time has improved by

50%, from 7 hours to 3 ½ hours processing time;• Delivery time for reports have been reduced drastically,

from 2-3 days to same day service;• Overall average response time has improved from 4-6

seconds on the mainframe to 2-3 seconds with AMT-LION;

• Migration development backlog estimated around 8-10 months was completed in less than 4 months; and,

• Application changes and database reorganizations have dramatically improved; hence affecting system uptime positively.

Ken Fulmore, AFG’s Executive Vice President, has this to say: “Our ability to obtain ad hoc and repetitive reports from IT has been greatly enhanced in the new environ-ment. While we have made some cosmetic improvements to the applications screens, most of the Asysco advan-

tages will come later, when our GUI interfaces have been completed. We expect the “Windows” environment to allow us to make our user desktops more capable, inter-active and effective. The system has been available in the early morning hours much more often after heavy over-night batch processing than in the mainframe environment. In this regard, the platform is as robust as advertised.”

customer Amalgamated Financial Group (AFG), a leading Bill to Bank management firm.

sector Finance

problemAs business increased they needed a system that would allow them the ability to grow the company and save money

solutionMigration to Asysco’s Migration Technology (AMT) LION of LINC, COBOL, Reporter III and Work Flow into a single programming environment. The solution allowed Amalgamated Financial Group to respond to development issues faster, saved money on mainframe and maintenance costs and modernized their legacy applications

lION® is a registered trademark of Asysco software. A-series®,2200®,LINC/EAE®, DMS®,RDMS® is a registered trademark of Unisys Corporation / MS Windows ®, MS SQL Server®, .NET® is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. / DB2® is a trademark of IBM Corporation / Oracle® is a trademark of Oracle Corporation

Asysco Inc.3301 Thomasville Road / Tallahassee FL 32308 USAPhone (850) 383-2522 / www.asyscousa.com

“our Ability to obtAin Ad hoc And repetitive reports From it hAs been greAtly enhAnced in the neW environment.”

American Public Life (APL) has migrated the core business application to Asysco’s Migration Technology (AMT) LION.

APL is a health insurance company located in Jackson, MS (USA). At the end of November 2002 they decided to migrate their LINC application to AMT-LION. In only six weeks time the successful implementation was done. Their system was live in the third week of January of 2003.

They migrated from a Unisys LINC on NT implementation on an ES7000 with MSSQL2000 towards the AMT-LION Runtime Environment on the same ES7000 with the same database engine MS-SQL2000.

“With AMt-LiON Our ES7000 hArdWArE iS giviNg uS thE pErfOrMANcE WE WOuLd hAvE ExpEctEd thAt it iS cApAbLE Of”

Mr. Brad Duncan, IT Manager: “We are more than pleased with this AMT-LION product suite. Now the ES7000 hardware is at last giving us the performance we would have expected that it is capable of. This was never delivered in LINC on NT. My end-users tell me “the system flies!” Productivity has gone up dramatically; some departments report that their people can now handle easily three times as many transactions per day than they could before...”

AMEricAN pubLic LifEBrAd duNcAN, IT MANAger fOr AMerIcAN PuBLIc LIfe

LION® is a registered trademark of Asysco Software. A-series®,2200®,LINC/EAE®, DMS®,RDMS® is a registered trademark of Unisys Corporation / MS Windows ®, MS SQL Server®, .NET® is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. / DB2® is a trademark of IBM Corporation / Oracle® is a trademark of Oracle Corporation


customer American Public Life (APL) offers a variety of insur-ance plans allowing a participant to choose the plan with benefits and premiums that suit the individual need and budget of the employee.

sector Insurance

problemIncrease productivity and transactions.

solutionMigration of their LINC application to AMT-LION.

Cooperativa de Seguros de Vida de Puerto Rico, COSVI, is a not-for-profit cooperative institution founded in 1959 in Puerto Rico. COSVI is a leader and innovator, with a track record of solid growth in the insurance industry. At present, they offer a complete line of Life, Accident, Health and Retirement Insurance products, and are the largest writer of Annuities and Group Life in Puerto Rico. COSVI covers more than 1.1 million lives, with a current insurance in-force in excess of $5.6 billion.

The SiTuaTionIn 2003, COSVI identified they had an IT problem; their mainframe supplier gave notice that their production mainframe was going unsupported within 9 months.

COSVI needed to replace their existing mainframe system as fast as possible.

Time was limited. Options were few. The mainframe ran significant corporate enterprise business systems. These systems were fundamental and critical to the business at COSVI. COSVI had large hand-coded COBOL applications that processed and supported their Group, Individual & Life Insurance and IRA Accounts. These applications consisted of approximately 1,000,000 lines of COBOL code origi-nally written some 15-30 years ago and much evolved since that time with many modifications and patches

provided by the usual variety of people over the years. This is a typical situation for so many COBOL users today.

COSVI had had a long and happy experience with their mainframe technology and the people that supported them. Their systems were extremely reliable. The Mainframe operating system and database had been “rock solid” for years for COSVI.

COSVI had, over the years, integrated their COBOL systems into a variety of tools and technologies, inclu ding Monarch, BARR, COLD and URSA typically for Report Viewing and analysis and creation Graphical Forms for specialized reports and documents. In 2003 COSVI had begun the migration to open systems platforms with the implementation of HIPAA compliant applications. This had been the real start of supporting multiple database and operations system platforms.

The needThe need was to replace the existing mainframe system that was going out of support of the mainframe supplier. The options COSVI had to choose from were mainly the usual ones to be expected.

1) Keep the existing applications and buy a replacement Mainframe

This option was reviewed, evaluated and costed out in

CoSVi MigraTeS MainfraMe CoBoL To WindoWS MR. JuLIO VILLAfAñe, IT VP fOR COSVI

full. This option created the least disturbance and least level of effort to implement.

2) Conversion of the existing systems to a new operating system platform, Windows/unix.

Conceptually, this was a very tempting option as it had been agreed internally that the system was as delivering excellent value to the user departments and that the IT department was in a good position to maintain and enhance the system using their in depth experience of the application.

The main attractions of this solution would be an in-dustry standard open database and the ability to easily “modernize” the converted application. These became criteria that would be used to benchmark any proposed solution, together with an easy transition to the new operational system and the new development language.

This approach would also satisfy the growing desire to centralize IS resources on fewer operating system platforms. It would also allow COSVI get away from the inherent restrictions that MCP & DMSII brought.

3) Rewrite the applications for a new operating system platform, Windows/unix

This option was not reviewed in any depth as it was clear very early on that the resources required to build and test and the inherent costs would be too significant to justify.

4) Replace with packages COSVI felt they did not have the time to find good

application package, modify it to their business requirements, install and train on it and do all the work involved in data conversion in the time available. They also felt the costs would outweigh the benefits.

COSVI identified an organization with a specialized Technology focused on COBOL translations that was potentially capable of delivering the COSVI conversion required.

COSVI saw a move to “open systems”, if it was tech-nically feasible at an appropriate cost level for them, as being highly desirable. COSVI wanted to get the benefits of openness, not just for the obvious budget savings. It was important to COSVI to provide systems that would be easy to maintain and support in the coming years, it was also important to provide these on a “standard” platform

that was easily maintained and easily supported and that offered the potential access to industry standard database applications, business & management support tools available in the SQL market place.

The SoLuTionCOSVI reviewed the main two options 1 & 2 in depth and decided the Conversion Option (Option 2) was potentially a preferred solution for them, offering many benefits in both the immediate and long term future:• SQL Database technology• The removal of the limitations of the Mainframe COBOL

language• The availability of competition for hardware and

software suppliers• Readily available resources to support the hardware and

software• Ability to implement .NET web resources• Significant cost saving into the future• Improved work environment for IT staff as a result of

working with new technologies.

The solution selected was Asysco’s Migration Tech nology (AMT) LION. The database implementation selected was Microsoft SQL Server 2000 because of its ease of implementation and low maintenance burden as well as its general value profile. The AMT-LION product performed well on this database too.Asysco were invited to present AMT-LION and the Asysco Methodology. After a day of presentations, demon-

strations with hard and detailed questioning COSVI felt the solution was viable. User reference calls were made with highly positive results. The decision was made that the AMT-LION architecture would support COSVI’s needs.Asysco then came in and conducted an on site Discovery process to define the full scope of the project. This encompassed the whole project of decommissioning the Mainframe. All integration issues were explored and defined. All COBOL & WFL code running on the mainframe was documented and a solution for the new platform defined. Complex end of day/week/month/year WFLs were to be converted by AMT-LION and implemented as VB Scripts. The COBOL programs were to be converted by Asysco into AMT-LION Developer language.

Responsibilities were defined and a project plan created. A configuration was designed that would support the needs of the application and the needs of COSVI for resilience etc.Solutions were found for all the mainframe platform “products” such as the well used and highly accepted URSA tools & the BARR Print Management tool. The interfaces to Monarch and BARR were reviewed and a simple conver-sion process defined. URSA was to be replaced with Crystal Reports. BARR and Monarch were to remain in use accepting AMT-LION print files rather than mainframe print files. Some small adjustment would be required, but nothing structural.

The Servers configuration suggested was:• 2 dual processor servers, clustered, for the Database

Server - With 2 GB of memory and RAID 10 disk• 3 dual server processor servers for Application Servers - With 1 GB of memory• 1 dual processor server of the Testing Database Server• 1 dual processor server of the Testing Application

Server.

The final project plan was then given close review and the final, revised cost justification was presented to top management for final approval.

The ProCeSSAsysco worked off site, at Asysco headquarters, to complete the initial conversion process. COSVI ordered

up the required hardware, Asysco then came on site, at COSVI, and delivered the converted code to COSVI. Training was provided for the Operations staff in the running of the AMT-LION environment and AMT-LION developer training was delivered to the IT staff. This training was completed in 7 business days. The implementation of the AMT-LION system was then conducted as scheduled. Asysco then worked hand- in-hand with COSVI to support the testing process and the implementation of the integration issues.

COSVI went live March 2005 with a newly converted system leaving the proprietary mainframe and COBOL environments behind.

The finaL reSuLTAll applications are off the mainframe. The mainframe is decommissioned. The savings are starting and the new development environment is already allowing moder nization to proceed apace. A new application went live in March 2005 also.

COSVI has made the change they initially thought was not possible. The systems run much faster now on AMT-LION than they did on the mainframe and are currently running at about 20% utilization.Mr. Julio Villafañe, IT VP, makes the following comments:

Did the conversion exercise deliver the results you were looking for?Yes. If you consider we had an enormous amount of systems and programs that had been developed using COBOL over the past 30 years and in less than a year were successfully converted to a totally new environment, you have to be very pleased, and we are.

Is the system easy to use?In all new processes there is a learning curve and that is normal. But during the conversion process we learned so much that when we went live we felt pretty comfortable with the system. AMT-LION offers a wide range of pos-sibilities and tools for developing systems. Every day we learn more and plan to take advantage of all the options we have available in AMT-LION to develop new systems for our users. We also know we can count on Asysco’s support to help us during this learning process. As far as running the systems we have had no problems or surprises, our users required no real training and our operators were confident after the 2 day training course.

“in addiTion To Be aBLe To ProCeSS inforMaTion faSTer and More effiCienTLy, WiTh The neW infraSTruCTure of SerVerS and The aMTLion SySTeM, The MainTenanCe CoSTS haVe LoWered ConSideraBLy.”

Does the system bring additional value over and above the original mainframe implementation?In addition to be able to process information faster and more efficiently, with the new infrastructure of servers and the AMT-LION system, the maintenance costs have lowered considerably. You feel that you are also contri-buting to the company’s economy. Another value is that tasks takes less time to process so we can assign new responsibilities to the Computer Room resources instead of recruiting new personnel. Our data is now much more accessible to us with the new SQL database, allowing us to use industry standard tools and products to get information quickly and easily.

What do you miss from the old system?You have to forgive me I have a short memory problem… There’s nothing there I see a need to go back to.

Do your developers feel comfortable with the new AMT-LION Developer after all those years of COBOL?If you consider that we are just starting with AMT-LION I feel amazed how fast our developers are “forgetting” the old platform and have acquired so much confidence and expertise with AMT-LION. They are quietly confident in its use.

What do your users like about AMT-LION?For the users the change has been somewhat transpa rent, and that was our expectation. We told them that first we have to move to the new platform before we provide them with new systems full of capabilities and functionalities. That been said, there is a positive feeling because the processes now are much faster and that is a plus for them. But there is a lot of expectation of the new things that we are going to create for them. Those users, typically our managers, who had to wait for ‘ad hoc’ reports to be run on the mainframe, are very happy to see that these reports can now be run immediately on the Windows Servers. They get their results so much more quickly. They are also able to view their results and work with the data as they need now. This was a valuable feature of AMT-LION for us.

What do your IS people like?They have more options, opportunities to learn new technology and tools that make their job easier and more professional. The debugging tool is something that is making them very happy and much more productive. We already created a new Claims Processing system and the comments from the users have been very positive because of the new functionalities. When the users are happy you,

as a developer, feel proud of what you have accomplished. They are very pleased with the AMT-LION Developer and would not trade it back in for COBOL – ever.

What do your managers like?They have been supportive and patient during the con-version process. Now they are looking for “new” functions and processes in addition of the advantages I already mentioned here. I feel comfortable predicting that we will now be able to deliver systems that will satisfy their demands and needs.

If you have the chance would even think of going back or not starting the project?No. This was the best decision I made in many years. This is the starting point for a new IT Department, full of challenges and excitement. Now that the developers are working with relational databases, a near object oriented language and new technology there is a sense of “freedom” in them because they are better prepared to compete in the job market with their new skills and knowledge. For me this is not a threat, my people are invigorated and the situation now allows me to recruit so much more easily being able to find talented professionals keen to work with a company with an state-of-the-art Information Technology Department.

customerCooperativa de Seguros de Vida de Puerto Rico (COSVI) a not-for-profit cooperative institution in Puerto Rico that offers a complete line of insurances.

sectorInsurance

problemCOSVI needed to replace the existing mainframe system that was going out of support of the mainframe supplier.

solutionMigration to Asysco’s Migration Technology (AMT) LION. This allows a conversion of the existing systems to a Windows-based system environment. This industry standard open database has the ability to easily modernize the converted application.



Ikaz is a crucial application for De Friesland Zorgverzekeraar. Developed with LINC, this business information system was built by the company’s own ICT department and ran for years on a Unisys mainframe. However, this platform was so expensive that the insurance company decided to look for alternatives. Asysco’s (AMT) LION Migration Technology came to their notice. The migration of Ikaz was not only almost entirely automatic but it was also possible to earn back the investment in only a few months.

It does not happen often that a Unisys user has been a customer of both Sperry and Burroughs. In this respect, De Friesland Zorgverzekeraar is the exception that proves the rule. The company bought a Sperry 1100 in the nineteen-eighties and then switched to a Burroughs A series in the nineteen-nineties. “The most important application that we ran on the mainframe was Ikaz,” says Rob Feenstra, Director of Finance, ICT and Facilities at De Friesland Zorgverzekeraar. “The entire administration for insurance customers is based on this system. Ikaz was built with LINC, a fourth-generation Unisys language.”

AdvAntAges of .netAt the beginning of 2001, the A11 that the insurance company was using as a production system came to the end of its technical and economic life. “So that was also the

time for us to investigate how we wanted to proceed with our ICT approach,” says Feenstra. “We looked at rein vesting in a mainframe and we also investigated Microsoft’s .NET platform. The latter appealed to us because it would enable us to bid farewell to the rigid mainframe world and become much more flexible.”

However, the benefits of the Microsoft technology did not weigh up against the cost and risks involved in rebuild-ing Ikaz on the Windows platform. “We didn’t dare to take the risk. We also looked at the possibilities of using LINC on Windows NT. Unisys had announced this development a couple of years before but no finished product had yet appeared on the market that would enable us to build LINC applications on Windows.”

AMt-LIon As ALternAtIveIt was during their search for various alternatives that Feenstra came across the name Asysco. We didn’t know Asysco’s (AMT) LION Migration Technology but, to be honest, we were immediately interested. At the same time, we had quite a few questions. Our technical people were particularly surprised that the migration of a large, complex LINC application could be done almost fully automatically.”

In spite of these doubts, Feenstra decided to have a ‘proof of concept’ carried out. “For that, we chose a financial

‘the InvestMent In MIgrAtIon wAs eArned bAck In sIx Months’

ROb FeeNsTRA, DIReCTOR OF FINANCe, ICT AND FACILITIes AT De FRIesLAND ZORgveRZekeRAAR:

system. That probably sounds like a large, complex environment but in this case it represented a fairly modest start. The concept seemed to be problem-free. Apart from a few minor points, almost the entire program was migrated at one go and the transfer process was fully automatic.”

escrow for contInuIty“Based on that experience, we made a strategic decision,” continues Feenstra. “The mainframe was phased out and we switched to the Windows/AMT-LION combination. However, it was then that we ran into a problem: Ikaz is crucially important to us and, with about seventy employ-ees, Asysco is a relatively small company, of course. What would this mean in terms of continuity? So we looked for a way of getting more security with regard to both Asysco and AMT-LION.”

“we eArned bAck the InvestMent In the entIre MIgrAtIon progrAM very quIckLy. It took Less thAn sIx Months In fAct.”

The solution was found in an escrow arrangement. This means that Asysco would give a copy of the most recent source code of AMT-LION to a notary firm specialized in this sort of operation. This notary can release the source code under certain circumstances. The entire escrow arrangement comes under the responsibility of the Stichting Softwareborg (Software Surety Foundation).

“Escrow is important but even more important to us is to build up a relationship of trust with a supplier – in this case, Asysco,” says Feenstra. “From that point of view, it’s very nice that Asysco’s culture is so close to that of De Friesland Zorgverzekeraar: sober and with a preference for a no-nonsense approach.”

the resuLtsIkaz has now been running on AMT-LION on the Windows platform for some time. “Of course, we have had to purchase new hardware, with redundancy, and a number of employees have taken a training course. We also had to make a few adjustments with a view to security, but, in spite of this sort of cost, we earned back the investment in the entire migration program very quickly. It took less than six months in fact.”

According to Feenstra, one of the big advantages of the new approach is the fact that application and data are now

LION® is a registered trademark of Asysco software. A-series®,2200®,LINC/EAE®, DMS®,RDMS® is a registered trademark of Unisys Corporation / MS Windows ®, MS SQL Server®, .NET® is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. / DB2® is a trademark of IBM Corporation / Oracle® is a trademark of Oracle Corporation

Asysco Gramsbergerstraat 79 / 7742 vg Coevordenphone +31 (0)524 51 53 86 / www.asysco.com

entirely separate. “In a mainframe environment, this all integrated. Now that data and application logic are separate, manageability has been drastically improved.” The migration went in a way that Feenstra calls ‘almost boring’. “The migration went entirely to plan. As far as reliability, speed and scalability are concerned, for example, the new environment completely satisfies our expectations and is in no way inferior to the old mainframe platform.”

clientDe Friesland Zorgverzekeraar

sectorInsurance/healthcare

problemBecause the old mainframe system of De Friesland Zorgverzekeraar had reached the end of its techni-cal and economic life-cycle, a new platform had to be found. But would this be another mainframe or perhaps Microsoft’s .Net platform? The insurance company also considered the mainframe platform to be extremely expensive.

solutionMigration to the AMT-LION platform made it possible to transfer the business-critical applications of De Friesland Zorgverzekeraar to the Windows platform without necessitating risky and expensive rebuilding.

The Insurance & Investment division of HBOS plc had migrated from Unisys to Asysco’s Migration Technolo-gy (AMT) LION in 2004, a move that had resulted in an-nual operational savings of £2.4 million. In 2007, there was a change of business strategy within the division, and Asysco proposed that the division should migrate from AMT-LION to AMT-VS (Visual Studio) and C# .NET. According to Patrick McNaught, IT Head of Strate-gy, “the migration to AMT-VS has brought significant performance and stability improvements, but it will also make it considerably easier to develop and maintain new products and eCommerce applications in the future.”

Part oneThe Insurance and Investment division of HBOS plc includes Halifax Financial Services, Halifax General Insurance, Bank of Scotland Investment Services, and Clerical Medical. The division generated over £1 billion profit before tax in 2007.

In 2004, Asysco had helped the division migrate from their Unisys system to AMT-LION. However, three years later, a change in business strategy within the division had resulted in a dramatic increase in business volumes across a number of key products, and an increased emphasis on eCommerce.

Additionally, projects were in the pipeline that would have required substantial work on AMT-LION applications.

Part twoThe division was coming to the point where the original AMT-LION infrastructure needed to be replaced. Asysco proposed migrating from the existing LINC based LION sys-tems to C# .NET, an upgrade from SQL2000 to SQL2005, and a move from 32 bit architecture to 64 bit architecture. This solution meant that the division would avoid the cost of upgrading the existing system to AMT-LION 5.3, a move which would have cost £780,000. Another advantage of the proposed solution was that by moving to C# .NET it would be easier to develop and maintain products in the future, and Patrick McNaught says, “this was particularly important in view of the increased emphasis on eCommerce applications.” There would also be a significant reduction in license fee and support costs.

Part threeThe project commenced in January 2007. The Insurance and Investment division was a test site for the new AMT-VS product, and so first phase of the project was devoted to product development and other early adopter activities. An

an asysco customer since 2004, and an early adoPter of amt-Vs

PATrICk MCNAUgHT, IT HEAd Of STrATEgy, HBOS PLC IN BrISTOL:


independent validation of the proposed solution was sought from Wintellect, who were extremely complimentary of both the solution and of the ability of Asysco’s staff. Every-one involved agreed that the product delivered by Asysco was a much better product as a result of the review.

In September 2007, after a period of Alpha Testing, a decision was taken to proceed with the proposed solution. A period of planning, acceptance testing and performance tuning followed. The final cut of AMT-LION code was taken on 18th June 2008 and was passed to Asysco. Develop-ment restarted in C# .NET on 2nd July 2008.

‘The AMT-VS implementation was a huge success, not only from a project perspective, but also from the perspective of their end users ‘

The planning and testing regime paid off. Patrick McNaught says that he “was delighted to find that despite having migrated 47 systems and over 1,000 programs, 9,000 objects and 500 VB scripts, there were only 18 minor post-implementation issues.” The division was also pleased with the stability of the AMT-VS system, despite it having to handle in excess of 5,000,000 transactions per day. Patrick McNaught claims that the new AMT-VS system “has been as stable as the mainframe system on Unisys and has provided significant performance benefits.”

Part fourAll of the division’s internal developers have now been sent on C# and ASP .NET training courses. More importantly, the division now has much greater flexibility because there is a large pool of external C# and ASP .NET developers that they can call on when needed. Patrick McNaught says “this will be a real benefit to us when we need to develop new products and eCommerce applications in the future.”

Part fiVeIn addition to the benefits the new system will bring in the future, the system has also brought immediate business benefits. Previously, batch processing had frequently over-run. When that happened, the system would not be available

to users for the first few hours in the morning. Performance improvements mean that batch processing times have been reduced significantly: daily batch times have been reduced from 4.5 hours to 3 hours, weekend batch times have been reduced from 8 hours to 6 hours, and month end batch times have been reduced from 10.5 hours to 8.5 hours. As a result, system unavailability in the morning is now un-heard of, and the division has even been available to extend system availability for its users to 6am to 10pm every day.

In summary, the Insurance and Investment division of HBOS plc believes that the AMT-VS implementation was a huge success, not only from a project perspective, but also from the perspective of their end users.

customerHBOS plc

sectorInsurance and Investment

problemA change in business strategy means that the exist-ing system infrastructure needed to be replaced

solutionBy migrating to Asysco’s AMT-VS (Visual Studio) and C# .NET, the Insurance and Investment division of HBOS plc were able gain significant performance and stability improvements, while at the same time achieving cost savings. More importantly, the move to C# .NET means that when new products and eCommerce applications are required, it will be faster and easier to develop them.


At the beginning of 2003, after having worked with Burroughs mainframes for fifteen years, IFN Finance migrated to Asysco’s Migration Technology (AMT) LION on the Windows platform. Marcel den Outer, project leader for IFN Finance, says that the migra-tion ran entirely to plan. “To our amazement, Asysco’s prediction proved to be correct: almost the entire migration could be carried out automatically.” This enables IFN Finance to achieve an interesting objective: maintaining an application that was crucial to its business operations while drastically reducing IT costs at the same time.

IFN Finance is a subsidiary of ABN Amro. The company, which is based in Rotterdam, is active in financial services and, within that segment, focuses primarily on financing working capital. This includes such aspects as debt financing and stocks financing.

“These activities rely heavily on information systems that we have developed ourselves,” says Marcel den Outer, project leader in IFN Finance’s IT department. “We wrote this so-called ‘Basis Factoring System’ (BFS) at the beginning of the nineteen-nineties with the aid of Unisys’s LINC. BFS has always run on Unisys’s A-series mainframes. When we finally migrated to Asysco and AMT-LION in 2003, we had an A11 for production and a smaller A6

for development work and as a back-up.” BFS is a crucial business application for IFN Finance. “It supports all major business processes in our organisation. We faced a number of problems at the same time. First of all, we thought that the mainframe and its associated infrastructure was too expensive. The licences and maintaining the mainframe are particularly expensive. Moreover, a mainframe is a closed system, which meant that we were too dependent on one supplier. We preferred to be able to work with a more open system environment, which would also make us more flexible.”

“We already knew Asysco and the AMT-LION platform, but not really well. Moreover, the IT department wanted to carefully examine how Asysco migrates applications like BFS to AMT-LION. In fact, Asysco claimed that this could be largely done automatically. At the IT department, we still had a few questions about this.”

Den Outer included the answers to these questions in the business case that IFN Finance decided to draw up. “We included all relevant factors in this, from the fact that Asysco is a pretty small company with approximately seventy employees to the question of what measures were needed with regard to the source code of the LION devel-opment environment. Actually, this latter point was solved satisfactorily by depositing this source code in escrow so

‘The migraTion of The Unisys mainframe To Lion was probLem-free’

MArceL deN OuTer, prOjecT LeAder FOr IFN FINANce IN rOTTerdAM:

that it would always be available to us and we could continue to maintain BFS with AMT-LION in the unlikely event of problems at Asysco.”

“What also acted to Asysco’s advantage was the fact that there seemed to be plenty of customers that had migrated from Unisys mainframes to AMT-LION. These included companies in the Netherlands and other countries. There also appeared to be a formal international users’ association where customers and the company can exchange information and experiences. We also made an inventory of the investments and expected savings.”

The business case turned out to be very positive so it was decided to organise a proof of concept. The test went off without a problem. “We migrated BFS in a lab environment. To our amazement, no less than 98 or 99 percent of this migration was entirely automatic. The issues that occurred were simple to resolve by small modifications to the software.

A mainframe infrastructure may well be expensive but it is also easier to manage than an open Windows environment. A mainframe has also been developed to provide high availability. To create the same availability on a Windows platform, various other measures have to be taken. For example, IFN built in extra redundancy by using a double network, double disk controllers, a Raid5 disk system and a cluster server.”

IFN Finance formally migrated to AMT-LION in 2003. For hardware, they opted for an HP Compaq cluster that immediately enabled internal fail-over. The cluster also make load balancing possible so that the demand for processing capacity can be optimally divided over all available hardware.

The financial savings that IFN Finance hoped to achieve with the migration have been achieved without problems. Strategic objectives have also been realised. “Of course, using AMT-LION is not an objective for us. It’s a means to an end. IFN Finance has invested millions in the BFS application and this functionality is of vital importance


To oUr amazemenT, asysco’s predicTion proved To be correcT: aLmosT The enTire migraTion coULd be carried oUT aUTomaTicaLLy”

to us. By using AMT-LION, we can optimally protect our investments in BFS and we will be able to continue to use BFS for years in an IT environment that is many times more interesting from a costs point of view than a mainframe. Because we now work with open systems, we are also able to support changes in our business processes quickly and easily with IT.”

customer IFN Finance

sector Financial services

problemA central application that is crucial to business operations also requires a much too expensive mainframe infrastructure.

solutionMigration to Asysco’s Migration Technology (AMT) LION. This allows existing business logic to be transferred largely automatically to a Windows-based system environment. In the way, existing investments in mainframe applications are optimally protected.


Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Customer Solution Case Study

Bank Migrates from Mainframe System to Align IT resources with Business Objectives

"With the new solution we are in total control of what

we can develop for Mashreqbank. It means a faster

product development cycle and increased competitive

advantage."

Asad Sagheer, Vice President of Architecture, Mindscape IT

Overview Country or Region: United Arab

Emirates

Industry: Financial Services

Customer Profile

Mashreqbank is the largest private sector

bank in the United Arab Emirates. It offers

a range of products and services from

retail banking to treasury management.

Business Situation

Support for the Mashreqbank mainframe

computing environment was coming to an

end. In addition, the system was holding

back new product development.

Solution

Mindscape IT migrated Mashreqbank

applications to a new architecture, which

runs on the latest Microsoft®

technologies, including Microsoft

Windows Server® 2003.

Benefits

� Mainframe applications migrated with

low risk.

� IT architecture meets business aims.

� Batch processing times halved.

� Faster development of new products

and applications helps bank meet

market demands.

Mashreqbank, the largest private bank in the United Arab Emirates,

ran its core banking applications in a Unisys mainframe computing

environment. At the end of the support cycle for this technology, the

bank made the strategic decision to replace its mainframe with

systems based on open standards. IT services and consulting

division Mindscape IT rolled out the new infrastructure with support

from Microsoft® and HP. After a two-week proof of concept at the

Microsoft Technology Centre in Dubai, it implemented a solution

based on Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 64-bit, Microsoft SQL

Server™ 2000 64-bit, and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. As

a result, Mashreqbank has halved batch processing times. Plus,

product development is faster, ensuring the bank continues to

meet customer needs.

Situation Many financial services providers are

examining the system architectures that

support their core retail and commercial

banking processes. This process is driven by

the need to respond to rapid and

unpredictable changes in demand, customer

requirements, and channel offerings.

These are some of the challenges facing

Mashreqbank, the largest private bank in the

United Arab Emirates with assets of

U.S.$13,560 billion and a strong brand

identity in the Middle East. The organisation

needs state-of-the-art IT systems to support

its innovative products and services and

relies on its own IT division, Mindscape

Information Technology (IT), a Microsoft®

Certified Partner, to maximise the value of its

technology investments.

Approximately two years ago, Mindscape IT

reviewed its strategy. It identified the need to

upgrade the existing Unisys mainframe

environment, which historically ran core

banking applications.

Asad Sagheer, Head of Architecture and

Standards, Mindscape IT, says: “Upgrading

would have cost a great deal of money. We

saw an opportunity to make a significant cost

saving and increase our independence by

moving away from mainframe technology and

rolling out systems based on open

standards.”

The final decision to upgrade or deploy open

standards-based systems was based on the

following criteria:

• The ability to handle current

volumes and SLAs.

• Enhanced system performance.

• Improved user response times.

• Minimised total cost of ownership.

• Support for future growth.

Mindscape IT explored the option of

upgrading the mainframe technology with the

existing supplier; however, the team

identified a number of disadvantages. These

included high implementation costs, reduced

return on technology investment, possible

lack of integration with other internal

systems, and continued lock-in with a

proprietary solution provider.

Vijaykumar Kunnath, Program Manager,

Mindscape IT, says: “Ultimately, migrating to

an architecture based on open standards was

attractive because it gave us full control over

our IT landscape. We avoided dependency on

a single, proprietary technology provider, and

gained more control over primary

programming work. This would result in the

ability to develop new applications and

launch new products more cost effectively.”

Solution Once the decision had been made to migrate

the Unisys infrastructure to open-standards

based technologies, Mindscape IT engaged

Dutch mainframe migration specialist Asysco.

Its LION technology takes applications written

in COBOL or LINC and translates them for use

in open environments, including Microsoft

Windows Server® 2003. Mindscape IT then

approached Microsoft and HP and asked

them to work in partnership with Asysco and

support the project.

Sagheer says: “We wanted assurances that

mainframe service levels could be

maintained with a Microsoft and HP platform.

We also had a number of questions regarding

the overall architecture, including which

software and hardware solutions would

deliver optimum performance.”

Given the critical nature of the applications

running on the Mashreqbank mainframe in

the United Arab Emirates, Mindscape IT

decided to run an in-depth product strategy

and roadmap session, followed by a proof of

“We saw an opportunity

to make significant cost

savings and increase

our independence by

moving away from

mainframe technology

and rolling out systems

based on open

standards.”

Asad Sagheer, Head of Architecture &

Standards, Mindscape IT

concept (POC) with Asysco, Microsoft, and HP.

These sessions took place at the Microsoft

Technology Centre (MTC) in Dubai and

evaluated Windows Server 2003 Enterprise

Edition (64-bit) integrated server software

and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 Enterprise

Edition (64-bit) database technology, both

running on the latest HP hardware. Microsoft

Operations Manager 2005 also ran as part of

the new environment, monitoring

performance and completing routine

management tasks.

The two-week POC began with a partial test of

the core banking applications to ensure the

successful translation of LINC and COBOL

applications. Mindscape IT and Asysco then

ran a series of batch loads and scenarios,

with Microsoft and HP helping to fine tune the

solution in a simulated production

environment.

Jan von Rouwendal, Chief Executive Officer,

Asysco, says: “Moving from a mainframe to a

Microsoft-based platform, Mindscape IT was

concerned that it might not be able to

maintain application performance. The

testing at MTC dispelled these fears and

proved that moving away from Unisys

increased performance and opened up a

range of new opportunities for the bank.”

The POC gave Mindscape IT the chance to

evaluate a range of hardware configurations.

Sagheer says: “Our operations mainly run on

HP hardware and we have great experience

of using its technology. We wanted to

continue the strong relationship we have with

the company and enjoy the benefits of using

Microsoft and HP technologies together. This

combination was a very strong foundation for

such an important system.”

Based on the results from testing at MTC,

Mindscape IT decided to install HP ProLiant

BL 25 and BL45 blade servers running AMD

dual-core Opteron x64 processors. Farid

Gemayel, Financial Services Sales Manager

at HP says: “The proof of concept was very

successful and showed the excellent

performance of the HP servers, AMD

processors, and Microsoft software

solutions.”

The roll-out of the new environment was well-

coordinated. Mindscape IT first migrated the

branch operations of Mashreqbank in Doha

and Qatar using Asysco LION technology. The

bank’s finance subsidiary Osool Finance then

also migrated. These implementations

included Windows Server 2003 Enterprise

Edition and SQL Server 2000 Enterprise

Edition. They preceded a later migration of

the Mashreqbank data centre.

Benefits By migrating Mashreqbank core banking

applications from mainframe technology to

an open architecture based on Microsoft

software, Mindscape IT is helping the bank

align its IT strategy with key business

objectives. This will help the organisation

meet customer demands more efficiently and

increase its competitive advantage.

Reduced Mainframe Migration RisksReduced Mainframe Migration RisksReduced Mainframe Migration RisksReduced Mainframe Migration Risks

Mindscape successfully converted all of the

LINC and COBOL applications, including large

production and historic database programs,

using Asysco LION 5.2. During this process,

there was no need to reengineer applications

or rewrite a single line of code.

The project was delivered on time and on

budget, taking just two days to fully convert

and migrate the core banking applications. It

went live in January 2006, and today around

1,500 end-users in 60 branches throughout

the United Arab Emirates and Qatar turn to

the new system to handle more than 1.5

million transactions daily.

Jan von Rouwendal says: “Some banks don’t

believe these large mainframe applications

“All of the partners

involved in the project

did a fantastic job of

providing support very

early in the process to

give us the confidence

that made this project

such a success.”



“Moving from a

mainframe to a

Microsoft-based

platform, Mindscape IT

was concerned that it

might not be able to

maintain application

performance. The

testing at MTC dispelled

these fears and proved

that moving away from

Unisys increased

performance and

opened up a range of

new opportunities for

the bank.”

Jan von Rouwendal, Chief Executive Officer,

Asysco

with millions of lines of code can run in a

Microsoft environment. We have delivered a

99.99 per cent automation level with a like-

for-like migration. This significantly reduces

risk because we’re not trying to reinvent

applications.”

For Mindscape IT, the new environment

provides reliability to match the mainframe

legacy system. Gemayel says: “HP promises

99.95 per cent uptime for the new system

and since January 2006, it has been running

around-the-clock without any service

interruption.”

Excellent Performance Halves Times for Excellent Performance Halves Times for Excellent Performance Halves Times for Excellent Performance Halves Times for

Batch Processing Batch Processing Batch Processing Batch Processing

With the new solution, daily batch processing

times have fallen from six hours to three

hours. Furthermore, end-of-month processing

times have gone down from nine hours to just

five hours.

The most telling performance figure is CPU

utilisation, which has been reduced from 90

per cent on the Unisys mainframe, to around

20 per cent using Windows Server 2003

running on HP blades. This increases the

amount of time a server has for other

requests, improving network efficiency and

reducing demands on server resources. The

blades have delivered increased application

performance, while consolidating the number

of servers in the data centre.

Sagheer says: “Blade servers built on AMD

processors offer powerful application

performance and a low total cost of

ownership.”

Delivering Value Through Increased Delivering Value Through Increased Delivering Value Through Increased Delivering Value Through Increased

ProductivityProductivityProductivityProductivity

The value of the new solution to

Mashreqbank goes far beyond return on

investment. It includes reducing time-to-

market for new solutions and adding value to

its existing investments.

Sagheer says: “With the new solution we are

in total control of what we can develop for

Mashreqbank. It means a faster product

development cycle, which delivers a

competitive advantage to the bank.”

Vijaykumar Kunnath says: “The LION

development environment gives us a lot of

flexibility in terms of version control and

multiple generation sets. This has resulted in

productivity improvements within our team.

The LION Developer software is very easy to

learn, and both mainframe and Microsoft

Visual Basic developers have adapted to this

new environment pretty quickly.”

The flexibility the new infrastructure has

introduced will help Mashreqbank adapt

more efficiently to new challenges and

demands. Sagheer says: “The new

architecture is helping us to build a cohesive

strategy to support our operations. It is not a

question of completing this project and

leaving it at that. Instead, we have laid the

foundations for the development of

Mashreqbank, its continued innovation, and

its success in a highly competitive market.”

Trusted Technology Partners Support Trusted Technology Partners Support Trusted Technology Partners Support Trusted Technology Partners Support

Strategic ObjectivesStrategic ObjectivesStrategic ObjectivesStrategic Objectives

By forming an alliance with Microsoft, HP,

and Asysco, Mindscape IT has deployed a

new architecture, which supports the

strategic objectives of the bank. The

environment was only rolled out after

extensive testing carried out by all partners

over a two-month period. Employees from

each partner visited Mashreqbank on a

regular basis to design and test the

architecture before the proof of concept

began. Due to the nature of the project,

Mindscape IT had to eliminate all migration

risks.

Sagheer says: “This project far outweighed

anything we had done before in terms of

“Blade servers built on

AMD processors offer

powerful application

performance and a low

total cost of ownership.”



importance. All our questions had to be

answered up front because we had to be sure

that on January 9, when we migrated to the

new environment, the bank continued to do

business. All of our partners did a fantastic

job of providing support very early in the

process, giving us the confidence that made

this project such a success.”

Fast Delivery of New Products Fast Delivery of New Products Fast Delivery of New Products Fast Delivery of New Products

By moving to open-standards, Mindscape IT

can look to the future with confidence. It is

developing a POC for migrating Mashreqbank

to Asysco LION 5.3, which supports SQL

Server 2005 and will subsequently move to

the Microsoft .NET Framework development

environment.

Sagheer says: “We are continuing to work

with Microsoft, Asysco, and HP, testing new

beta products, and taking part in early

adopter programmes. I think we will see

many advantages over the next five years

from our involvement with all of these

companies.”

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio For more information about the Microsoft

server product portfolio, go to:

www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx

For More Information For more information about Microsoft

products and services, call the Microsoft

Sales Information Center at (800) 426-

9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft

Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-

2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-

hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone

(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in

the United States or (905) 568-9641 in

Canada. Outside the 50 United States and

Canada, please contact your local

Microsoft subsidiary. To access information

using the World Wide Web, go to:

www.microsoft.com

For more information about Mindscape IT

products and services, call (971) 4 363

2100 or visit the Web site at:

www.mindscapeit.com

For more information about Asysco

products and services, call (34) 981 202


www.asysco.com

For more information about HP products

and services, call or visit the Web site at:

www.hp.com

For more information about Mashreqbank

products and services, call (971) 222


www.mashreqbank.com

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Windows, the Windows logo, Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Document published August, 2006

Software and Services � Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

− Microsoft Windows Server 2003

Enterprise Edition 64 bit

− Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise

Edition 64 bit

− Microsoft Operations Manager 2005

Asysco: Solutions for Financial Institutions

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