August 9, 1999

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Legacy Systems: Reinvest Or Restructure?

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The data stored in legacy systems isn't necessarily old-fashioned, either. Information stored on mainframes is almost as likely to be current data files as historical data, according to a survey of 400 development or IT managers in large companies released last month by market-research firm Evans Marketing Services. Respondents were allowed to select multiple answers in five categories listing reasons for using mainframes; 78% of respondents said they use mainframes for storing legacy data and 74% answered that they use them for current data.

Truckload carrier and logistics firm Schneider National Inc. in Green Bay, Wis., exemplifies the trend to store new data on older systems: The company is using IBM's VisualAge for Java software and its Websphere application server, which provides Web services over intranets or the Internet, for its IBM System/390 mainframe to develop a Java-based Order Capture System that will replace a manual ordering and tracking system. Schneider employees, business partners, and suppliers will be able to connect to the system via Web browsers, says VP of application development Steve Matheys. The goal is to ship items more quickly, make more runs, and increase revenue. Online communications will also ensure accuracy, he says.

Matheys says this kind of system wouldn't be possible with a client-server architecture, because the management and infrastructure to maintain it worldwide could double IT costs.

"The Internet gives us the opportunity to go back to a big mega-server," says Matheys. "We keep data on the mainframe and allow connected clients to deliver the information to anyone, anywhere, through a customized interface." Matheys says IBM has been a good partner, ensuring backwards compatibility so that new products don't destroy the code from old systems and paying close attention to S/390 and the Internet.

IBM says that's been a challenge. "The world has been changed once again by the growth of the Internet to allow companies to trade globally. That means more demand on our servers," says Rob Vrablick, senior strategist for IBM S/390.

High-performance proprietary systems are valued by companies with Internet plans for several reasons: They offer high-availability features not found in commodity hardware, can scale up incrementally, and usually include a powerful database to handle high volumes of queries. Citicorp Services Inc. in Chicago lauds Compaq's Tandem Himalaya K2000 technology for these reasons. Citicorp is ramping up a 10-year investment in the technology, partly in preparation for making data and benefits available over the Internet to millions of government services recipients.

Mark MacKenzie, president of Citicorp Services, says the business logic Citicorp built into its transaction applications supports the transfer of welfare payments and other government subsidies, including food-stamp distribution and Social Security benefits, from social-service agencies to individuals. In the last three years, the number of transactions processed per month has grown to 22 million. By next spring, Citicorp will be handling welfare, food stamps, and state disability benefits for New York state residents, which could increase the number of transactions per month to 30 million, according to MacKenzie. The company is adding Tandem units and extending existing platforms to support growing transaction volumes.

While MacKenzie says it might be years before some social-service program recipients have access to the Internet, others are already online. Tandem's NonStop Kernel operating system on the K2000 ranks among the most highly available, and that level of fault tolerance is necessary because Citicorp is investigating using the Web to make "lifetime critical benefits" accessible, MacKenzie says.

Compaq's Tandem division, meanwhile, is working to make Himalaya an Internet Age system. An E-business software bundle introduced this spring includes middleware that lets customers and partners access data on Himalaya from other platforms, including Windows NT servers. It also gives users a single view of multiple heterogeneous databases, enabling access via standard Web browsers. Additionally, its Transaction Server for Java incorporates Corba transaction middleware to let customers raise the failover capabilities of Java applications, while Active Transaction Pages let Java developers write nonstop applications from server-side Java scripts.

"We're preserving core capabilities such as linear scalability," says Pauline Nist, Compaq's VP for Tandem products and technology. "But we're also supporting an open Java interface for new applications, we can run Windows NT applications, and we support the same kind of environment that open systems do."

Despite their virtues, legacy systems are sometimes undervalued by IS executives, says Scott Dinsdale, VP, CIO, and chief technology officer at BMG Entertainment in New York, a division of media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG. "Too often, they want the latest, greatest technology," Dinsdale says, "when instead they should look at the in-house systems that perform."

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Illustration by John Bleck

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