{"id":805,"date":"2018-05-14T08:40:53","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T14:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.morphis-insights.com\/?p=805"},"modified":"2024-01-26T11:08:35","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T11:08:35","slug":"cobol-legacy-modernization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morphis-tech.com\/blog\/cobol-legacy-modernization\/","title":{"rendered":"How We\u2019ve Taken the Pain and Risk Out of Legacy Modernization"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1995, a team of graduate students went on a mission to create new performance standards for legacy modernization software<\/strong><\/a>. 23 years later that same core team, led by CEO Luis Andrade, has delivered the most advanced solution available today for modernizing legacy systems.<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[x_blockquote cite=”Kari Branjord, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Product Management, ERP at Ellucian.” type=”left”]”While we looked at several, there wasn\u2019t another vendor that could execute with the same level of proficiency as Morphis. Their technology was vastly superior to anyone else we considered.”[\/x_blockquote]<\/p>\n

The mission has always been to develop a single modernization platform<\/a> capable of ingesting any legacy language<\/strong> and automatically outputting a modern, re-architected, cloud-ready equivalent (currently in J2EE\/Java or C#\/.NET) – a many-to-many model. This has enabled learnings from disparate projects to be brought to bear on subsequent projects and for economies of scale that yield the fastest, lowest cost, lowest risk modernization solution on the market today.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, 100% automation is a goal with the degree of openness of the source language dictating the variety of code patterns and the resulting level of automation possible. Cobol<\/a>, along with Oracle Forms<\/a>, yields the highest automation level. Even then, every modernization project is unique and the ability to analyze the legacy system – to \u2018recover\u2019 the existing design – is critical for a successful project. This not only allows customization of the tools to be used for transformation but highlights migration risks, thereby, enabling risk mitigation strategies<\/strong> to be put in place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Morphis<\/a> has developed its own analysis tool set specifically for this purpose and it is this approach that has enabled Morphis<\/a> to deliver some of the world\u2019s largest, most complex modernization projects in recent times.<\/span><\/p>\n

See our case studies >><\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Ellucian<\/strong> <\/a>is an example. The project, which included the migration of over 4,000 pages from Oracle Forms<\/a> to Java<\/a>, specifically aimed to transform the user experience, accessibility, and extensibility for Banner\u00ae by Ellucian<\/strong><\/a>, the world\u2019s leading higher education ERP system, which serves 1600 institutions across 40 countries. Many of the modernized forms had embedded business logic and the completed project was delivered in under two years without disruption to customers.<\/span><\/p>\n

With legacy banking systems still making headline news<\/span><\/a> the rest of this post concentrates on Cobol modernization<\/strong><\/a> and illustrates how we\u2019ve taken the risk out of modernizing these old but crucial business systems.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cobol Migration<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

A good language translator does not simply translate each word in a sentence, rather he\/she translates the ideas and the meaning of each sentence.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, the right migration strategy for a software application can\u2019t be limited to the translation of instructions between the source and target programming languages. Rather, it should capture and preserve the intentions of the developers of the original application.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why our approach leverages the configurability of the Morphis<\/strong> <\/a>platform to deliver an integrated: comprehension, reengineering, enhancement and migration<\/strong> environment, that is tailored to each project. This environment uses models to represent all of the source environment\u2019s components and characteristics as well as those of the target environment, adhering at all times to industry and\/or client best practices for programming.<\/span><\/p>\n

Markings and transformations are configured for all these models, be it source or target, allowing:<\/span><\/p>\n