Unlocking the Innovation, Agility and Cost Savings that Mainframe Modernization Offers

While mainframe platforms have long been relied upon by businesses due to their computing power and stability, they are expensive and complex to maintain – challenges that are becoming more difficult to overcome.

Aging legacy infrastructure has been put to the test in recent years due to growing demands from consumers to have digital services and tools at their fingertips. According to IBM, 71% of Fortune 500 companies depend on mainframes for their business-critical transactions and data processing. As a result, more organizations want to understand how mainframe modernization can address their current pain points:

• Software requirements for mainframe systems are complex and expensive to maintain, especially as systems reach end-of-service life.
• Mainframe operations and maintenance costs are the fastest-growing IT expenses for businesses.
• There is a growing talent skills gap challenging organizations to support these antiquated but mission-critical systems. As older generations of legacy professionals retire, critical skills to run mainframes are becoming harder to find.
• Many mainframes have limitations when integrated with modern technologies.

These challenges create extreme business risk, especially for enterprises running core, decades-old legacy applications.

Demystifying Mainframe Modernization

At FNTS, we see mainframe modernization as a long-term strategy to help organizations improve performance, innovate, reduce operating costs and add the flexibility of the cloud in their IT environment.

In 2020, 98% of organizations had plans to move legacy apps to the cloud, according to a Mainframe Modernization Business Barometer Report. The ability to migrate workloads to contemporary public and private cloud environments, or a multi-cloud model, helps organizations adapt to real-time demands while cost-effectively extending the life of their mainframe investment.

While mainframe migration is a large and complex undertaking, FNTS ensures a seamless transition through a holistic, best-of-breed Mainframe Modernization-as-a-Service solution that’s scalable and maintainable. FNTS migrates and rehosts existing mainframe applications, ensuring they are managed and fully available between current state and future state in the cloud. This phase of modernization reduces operating expenses and remediates staffing risk while applications are refactored and replatformed to the cloud. During the refactoring and replatforming phase, workloads are converted to newer code and migrated to the FNTS Private Cloud or an Azure Public Cloud. During the automated code transformation and data conversion process, automated testing occurs to dramatically reduce risk, effort and project duration. Organizations also can choose to keep certain applications in a mainframe environment, which would continue to be hosted by FNTS as part of our Mainframe-as-a-Service model.

Achieving Successful Outcomes

FNTS has been a go-to partner for mainframe solutions for more than 25 years, making digital transformation of legacy systems more affordable and accessible to clients in a wide range of industries, including financial services, healthcare, government, retail, manufacturing and education organizations. Our experienced certified mainframe professionals understand our clients’ operational and regulatory needs and deliver seamless and cost-effective operations remotely or in our world-class data centers. We optimize mainframe costs through utilizing economies of scale, minimizing potential downtime, mitigating risks and providing additional value through storage, backup and disaster recovery services. Our project managers, engineers and service support personnel work with clients to provide clear sightlines to tasks and timelines throughout the transition. The FNTS engagement and implementation process creates clear visibility to tasks and risk remediation that consistently generate the following successful outcomes for organizations:

✓ Eliminate ongoing software and operating expenses associated with maintaining equipment on-site

While each environment varies, the Mainframe-as-a-Service rehosting model saves organizations 15 to 20% on average, while refactoring and replatforming to the cloud through Mainframe Modernization-as-a-Service can achieve cost savings of 70 to 80%. Savings can be compounded if application modernization timelines are expected to run for multiple years. One of our state government clients was able to reduce mainframe costs by $1.5 million per year by having FNTS host its mainframe workloads. We consolidated their software and leveraged our economies of scale to save them in licensing costs; enhance the depth and breadth of technical resources; and implement a robust disaster recovery solution.

✓ Access to around the clock IT support and resources.

We provide personalized support, roadmaps and guidance for compliance and auditing, guaranteeing the value of your cloud deployments, especially when staffing and backups are needed.

✓ Future-proof workloads with the latest technology, equipment and best practices.

Experience improved performance and processing times with our reliable and redundant infrastructure and configuration. By partnering with FNTS, you also will have access to the latest technologies, strategies and resources.

✓ Enable staff to focus on more customer-oriented projects.

Give your teams the time and agility needed to focus on more long-term, strategic initiatives by leveraging a team with deep skill sets.

✓ Minimize both operational and financial risk.

FNTS provides the expertise and resources needed to handle your mission-critical workloads.

✓ Stay competitive in the marketplace.

Many organizations fear they will be left behind competitively if they fail to modernize. Leverage the latest technology innovation and software development approaches, including Agile, DevOps, business intelligence, artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things and more.

Over the past few years, organizations have been challenged to find capital to support customer-facing projects, such as modernizing apps to make daily transactions more efficient. As a result, they’re looking to repurpose capital they would otherwise spend on refreshing on-premise mainframes or implementing additional storage, backup and disaster recovery solutions. Mainframe modernization is a fully managed approach that lets organizations reap the benefits of the cloud while reducing total cost of ownership. Whether you’re planning a mainframe exit strategy or mainframe modernization, FNTS has decades of experience and is ready to assist.