FNTS & TSRI Partner to Optimize Mainframes, Cut Costs, Drive Innovation

OMAHA, Neb. & KIRKLAND, Wash. (August 8, 2024) – Mainframe operations and maintenance expenses, i.e., system Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), are the fastest-growing IT expenses for enterprise organizations. Many of these systems house decades of technical debt alongside the organization’s critical data and business rules. Today’s technological advances, including artificial intelligence (AI), disaster recovery, and real-time data analytics, far outpace the capabilities of these increasingly fragile legacy systems, which stifle an organization's ability to innovate and meet customer expectations. In addition, the tight labor force and significant gaps in skills challenge organizations to support these mission-critical systems. IT managed services provider FNTS is launching a new partnership with software modernization services provider TSRI, empowering organizations to embrace their digital future through Mainframe Optimization.

“While the mainframe is a platform of choice for enterprises that rely on computing power and stability, its legacy technology and software requirements are complex and expensive for organizations to maintain without the latest technologies or skilled staffing in place,” said FNTS President Kim Whittaker. “When it comes to Mainframe Optimization at FNTS, no mainframe is too big, no environment is too complex, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. We can support any path to optimization and modernization.”   

FNTS and TSRI work together to assess and optimize mainframe environments for the customer’s best outcome, whether that’s simply rehosting or fully modernizing and replatforming the data and workloads simultaneously or in phases. With this strategic roadmap, the FNTS and TSRI team can continuously execute modernization priorities, empowering organizations with the competitive agility to meet end-customer demands and substantially grow their business.   

Rehost through Mainframe-as-a-Service   
Organizations can leverage their legacy mainframe with a Mainframe-as-a-Service offering. Like a standard “lift-and-shift migration,” this approach optimizes and migrates current workloads to a cloud-like environment on the mainframe or FNTS’s onsite data centers. Rehosting doesn’t require code changes and ensures existing mainframe data is managed and fully available, making this a feasible option for some applications long-term, or an attractive first step to gain immediate cost savings before a full-scale modernization to cloud. On average, clients can save up to 20% in IT budgets annually using this model. Additional cost efficiency can be achieved through license analysis, software consolidation initiatives, database optimization, and determining which applications and data should remain on the mainframe and which can be retired or moved to the cloud.  

Modernize and Refactor Applications   
The mainframe applications code, databases, user interfaces, and externals are transformed to 100% functionally equivalent modern solutions and languages, including Java and C# .NET Core. Automated refactoring rules are applied to the code, leveraging modern programming standards and quality scans to achieve maintainable, human-readable, forward-development-ready code. This 99.9X% automated process reduces technical debt, including removing dead and redundant code, consolidating duplicate records, eliminating code smells, and resolving security vulnerabilities. Custom refactoring rules tailored to customers’ unique business needs can also be applied and reused across enterprise-scale IT ecosystems. Converting applications and services to newer, more contemporary code allows organizations to innovate, stay agile, and be competitive while accelerating time to value and often decreasing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by 80 – 90%.

   
Replatform to a Contemporary Cloud-Native Environment    
Converted databases and applications are integrated into a flexible and scalable architecture via containerization that can include any cloud platform, SaaS, or hybrid-cloud model, taking full advantage of each cloud platform’s performance and scalability features, AI frameworks, resilience, and service environments. In addition, the modern ecosystem is enhanced with automated test frameworks, CI/CD pipeline templates, and prioritized customer support, accelerating business-driven development and a path to evergreen modernization.    

“Through industry-leading automation and insight, our joint Assessment and Mainframe Optimization solution empowers IT teams with better decision-making, smarter digital transformation, and long-term cost reduction,” said TSRI President Nicolas Newcomb. “We rapidly bring enterprises into modern AI-ready cloud environments, while maintaining their ability to benefit from emerging services across hybrid architectures. As pioneers in AI modeling, we constantly evolve our methods to ensure mission-critical systems are modernized with the highest fidelity outcomes, and the least risk and business disruption in the industry.”  

The Time to Optimize is Now   
Through Mainframe Optimization and Application Modernization, enterprises can unlock innovation, agility, and long-term operational savings through rehosting and/or end-to-end application and database modernization. By consolidating software, decommissioning hardware, where appropriate, and transitioning more IT costs to an operating expense model, organizations stand not only to avoid risk and save on capital expenditures, but also to gain control and flexibility over their critical IT infrastructure.

Learn more about Mainframe Optimization at www.fnts.com/mainframe/mainframe-modernization.  

About FNTS 
As a nationally recognized trusted advisor in managed IT services for close to 30 years, FNTS has a proven history of modernizing mainframe environments, along with a wide range of operating systems including: Windows, Linux, AIX and IBM i. FNTS also has a passion for all things multi-cloud and provides flexible, industry-specific cloud solutions, with a continued focus on orchestrating agility, transparency and IT optimization for our customers, all while keeping cost containment top-of-mind. With an elevated security posture consisting of layered security solutions, FNTS specializes in partnering with customers in highly regulated and compliance-driven industries.  

FNTS operates one of the most secure, technically advanced data centers in the United States, where the full scope of its operations is based. Headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, FNTS is a subsidiary of First National of Nebraska (FNNI). FNNI and its affiliates have $30 billion in assets and nearly 5,000 employee associates. For more information, visit www.fnts.com. 

About TSRI 

TSRI is an industry leader and innovator in automated software modernization and cloud readiness. TSRI delivers a 99.9X% automated solution to document, assess, refactor, and migrate software applications to modern cloud-native, hybrid, & on-prem environments, including mainframes. Using model-driven proprietary software called JANUS® Studio, TSRI transforms over 35 input languages, including COBOL (IBM Z, HP Tandem NonStop, AS/400, Unisys, Honeywell-Bull and even already rehosted environments), JCL, PL/1, PL/SQL, Ada, CA-Ideal, Fortran, and more to human-readable and maintainable Java, C# .NET Core, C++, C, and other modern languages.   

TSRI transforms 100% of customers’ applications, databases, data, user interfaces, and externals, including middleware and utilities. TSRI's highly efficient automated transformation process applies refactoring rules to remove technical debt found in the legacy applications, improving code quality, performance, and security. TSRI delivers every transformation with a 100% functional equivalence guarantee and a transformation warranty.   

Established in 1995 and headquartered in Kirkland, WA, TSRI has completed over 250 modernization and documentation projects for organizations across industry and government entities, including the DoD and the U.S. Public Sector. For more information, visit www.tsri.com.