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May 15, 2023Greg Patterson

IBM i is the backbone of mission critical applications for over 120,000 customers worldwide in every conceivable industry and company size, particularly with companies ranging from $50 million to $1 billion in annual revenues and specializing in manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and healthcare. In other words, IBM i supports a significant share of the global economy.

Although the IBM i platform is very productive, there are many things we can do to modernize our applications and provide more value to the business. But this is easier said than done. Some of the biggest challenges that that we face relate to skills. Its a lot harder to find RPG developers than it is to find somebody who knows Linux or open source tools. Thankfully, many of those technologies programming languages, databases, frameworks, version control, CI/CD tools, and more have been integrated into the platform.

Customer applications that I see every day on IBM i have often been around for 20 or 30 years, or longer. They work, but because they are often monolithic in nature, they are challenging to maintain and lack agility. Many of us have onboarded new people either IT staff or end users and when they see a green screen, their faces drop and eyebrows raise. We know that we can do amazing things with the platform, to show that IBM i is so much more than the green screen.

When I first started on IBM i in the early 2000s, it wasnt as straightforward to integrate with other technologies and administrators were often unwilling to share access to the system. Now, there are secure methods to integrate with the platform and provide self-serve access to end-users, customers and partners.

Here are some of the challenges affecting IBM i shops and the performance of their businesses because the two are inexorably linked:

You can quickly give any RPG, COBOL or CA 2E (SYNON) application a graphical interface. It doesnt matter if its a homegrown or a third-party application, and what OS/400, i5/OS, or IBM i release it is. This is a good start but it isnt always sufficient.

Some larger-scale transformation strategies include:

Rewriting an application is typically the most expensive transformation approach. While this approach carries risks and often involves a longer timeline, there are valid business reasons why some applications are better suited for a rewrite. Perhaps you need to modernize smaller applications that are highly customized to the business and/or closely integrated with various systems. Or, you might be looking for an innovative solution that doesnt exist and requires a custom solution.

There are ways to automatically discover and extract business rules and convert some of the legacy RPG or COBOL code to other languages such as Java. There are also different techniques available for moving your applications to other platforms, such as emulation software.

Automated conversion tools are available, too. Our conversion process has a discovery process at the beginning and analysis often finds that companies are only using about 60 percent of an applications code base. This means that you dont necessarily have to modernize the entire application. Fresche has what we call a transformation factory. It generates modern code that is easier to maintain and evolve. The new code can still run on the platform and, if necessary, off platform. These projects provide predictable results in a predictable timeframe.

That said, in most cases we encourage modernizing your applications and databases so you can meet your business goals while preserving your investment in IBM i. One of the things we encourage people to think about is that IBM i is more than application code and a database to feed it:

We regularly work with customers who are evaluating the future and wondering whether they are going to stay on the platform. Regardless of whether or not you stay on the platform, its important to remember that you will need to deal with more than the RPG, COBOL, or CA 2E (SYNON) code and the Db2 for i database. You will also need to consider the user interface and your strategy for making sure the modernized applications are maintainable going forward.

The key to the success of moving your IBM i applications forward is developing a strong business case with a fundamental understanding of how each of the projects elements and concepts fit together, as well as how technology can be leveraged to fulfill that business case.

The best place to start is with an application portfolio assessment and disposition mapping, which might look something like this:

Modernizing the various applications above can seem daunting when you look at it as a whole. But you dont have to do it all at once. Many clients going through a larger transformation will use one of our 5250 refacing products as a starting point to provide a modern interface in a short period of time. We can build out from there by developing new applications, and transforming existing code, database and user interface, depending on the clients needs.

Ultimately, the goal is to have modern applications that support the business in its current state and provide room to grow. These IBM i applications may still be running on premise or they might run in the cloud. The most important first step is developing your strategy and building the business case to sell the benefits of modernization internally. We often help clients build that business case by talking to executive and technical teams to understand the current state of their IT, then developing a roadmap for modernization.

Its key to have these discovery conversations before we touch any code.

Finally, theres so much more that IBM i shops can do to modernize their applications. Fresches full suite of solutions cover a broad spectrum our goal is to offer products and services that IBM i shops need to get their applications and systems current and keep them there. A few examples include:

Assess and Plan:

Integrations and APIs:

Maintain and Support:

Cloud and Managed Services:

Enhance and Innovate:

Modernize and Transform:

User Interface Development:

Security and Compliance:

So, reach out to us and explore digital ideas, discuss a project, or validate your strategy with our business and IT strategists. Get moving!

We have a team of experts who can help you build a portfolio-based strategy that is tailored to your business needs. I encourage you to get in touch to discuss your goals and how we can help. You can contact me at greg.patterson@freschesolutions.com or connect with a strategist here.

Greg Patterson is an IBM i modernization specialist at Fresche Solutions. He has been in the IT field for two decades, the last dozen with Fresche. In addition to business development activities, Greg also coordinates pre-sales technical demonstrations and discussions, performs business analysis and is sometimes involved at the coding level for specific projects.

This content is sponsored by Fresche Solutions.

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