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NatalieHughes
Jan 14, 20212 min read

Question 1 of 10: Why not stay on the IBM i platform indefinitely?


 

Current Blog Series: Answers to the top 10 Questions CIOs face when considering an IBM i Digital Transformation Project


Over the next couple of months, we will be discussing the Top Ten questions CIOs face when considering the Digital Transformation of their IBM i application portfolio. Following is the first in the ten-part series.


Question 1: Why not stay on the IBM i platform indefinitely?


As the global pandemic drags on with resulting shelter in place restrictions, most enterprise businesses' survival depends on their ability to support a remote workforce. This requirement has led even the most conservative IT organizations to consider cloud-based solutions for their enterprise-critical systems seriously.


Yet, the magnitude of the effort is daunting. Traditional legacy applications are monolithic and offer little to no visibility into what the systems do. If yours is like most organizations, you lack accurate, up-to-date documentation of your mission-critical applications and have no access to your system's original authors or technical subject matter experts who have a deep understanding of your complex application portfolio.


Most likely, your organization has relied on your legacy IBM i systems to support critical business operations for decades successfully. Some in your organization, maybe even you, question why you should take on such an enormous effort when your application portfolio runs like a well-oiled machine.


It is quite tempting to stay on the tried-and-true IBM i platform. In many ways, it is as familiar and as comfortable as an old shoe. But if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that our beloved platform offers limited access to the internet, the cloud, and most emerging strategic technologies. For most of us, the budget for maintaining these old systems represents the majority of our authorized expenditures while offering little or no strategic value or new operational capability. The cost to maintain these systems will soon consume our IT budgets and eclipse the available funding for meaningful technical advances.


Even with increasing maintenance costs, access to qualified legacy technical talent is dwindling, and our backlog is mounting. Technical debt will soon be insurmountable as access to legacy technical experts disappears. As a result, our vast investment in our essential corporate asset, our legacy application portfolio is at risk.


What will happen when the last legacy application expert disappears? How will you support the mission-critical systems required for your organization's daily operations?


Though there are significant challenges with our IBM i systems' digital transformation, the risks of retaining the languishing legacy systems are profound. Legacy systems do not address the ever-increasing calls to support a remote workforce. They offer no meaningful access to the cloud or emerging strategic technologies.


We have reached the point where the pain of staying the same has exceeded the pain of change. Adopting modern, cloud-based systems is a strategic imperative.



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NatalieHughes
Oct 17, 20202 min read

The Biggest threat to our Nation’s Infrastructure is Our Aging Legacy Application Software

Over the past 40+ years, our nation’s businesses, organizations and Federal, State and Local government agencies have invested trillions of dollars to develop powerful software that successfully runs critical functions for their respective organizations without fail on a daily basis. Even today, these applications, containing hundreds of billions of lines of out of date programming code, are among the most valuable corporate and organizational assets in our economy.

Unfortunately, over the decades, these legacy systems have not kept up with the pace of new strategic technological innovation. Though this software is now several generations behind the latest technology, these applications continue to provide essential operational support to our nation’s corporations, organizations and government agencies.

Collectively, our corporate and political leaders, and our IT industry have turned a blind eye to the risks posed by these aging legacy applications. For the past 15 years, the overwhelming investment in strategic software has focused on deploying modern technology to the front end, “public-facing” applications while leaving the back end, “back office” functionality where it has been since the 70’s and 80’s or before.

This incremental “kick the can” practice has led to nationwide complacency regarding these inflexible, fragile systems. When consumers of these systems access modern, front end applications, they assume that the systems are state of the art. Few realize that behind the front end veneer, most of the workload is performed by cumbersome, outdated legacy applications with a dwindling number of resources capable of supporting them.

The recent Coronavirus pandemic and our government’s response to the catastrophe has publicly and decisively exposed the grim reality about the true state of our nation’s critical enterprise systems.

As the U.S. economy was largely shut down resulting in an historic loss of jobs, the CARES Act was passed to inject urgently needed funds into our ailing economy. Though the Federal government acted swiftly to pass this legislation, the outdated systems in most states have been unable to process applications for the new unemployment benefits provided for in the law.

This crisis has revealed the threat posed by our collective failure to face, accept and address the challenge of updating the nation’s most critical infrastructure – its aging legacy applications. Though this is one of the first nationally recognized failures of this magnitude, it will not be the last. It is only a matter of time before other outdated legacy systems suffer the same fate with severe consequences to the corporations and governments that depend on them.

In subsequent blogs over the next few weeks, I will discuss the threats posed by this crumbling infrastructure, the limitations of ineffective stop gap solutions and will ultimately propose how we can successfully transform these applications. Doing nothing is no longer a viable option.


ETS can help you make the transformation https://www.etsassociates.com/contact-us.




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NatalieHughes
Oct 17, 20202 min read

Why has the Enterprise Market yet to Embrace the Promise of AI and Machine Learning?

Narrow focus limits Enterprise return on investment


Why does the Enterprise Market fail to embrace the promise of AI and Machine Learning? Many of the greatest minds in technology have been focused on Artificial Intelligence for years. Virtually every Tech Giant has launched high priority, big ticket initiatives in this area. Pundits from Gartner, Forrester, MIT and Deloitte peddle the allure of AI and Machine Learning.


Yet Gartner's 2018 survey shows that only one in 25 CIOs have implemented AI in their organization. Why?


Many AI enthusiasts are anxious to deploy AI but lack a specific problem or a clear vision to apply it to. Worse, without a high priority objective with a clear return on investment, it is difficult to secure a commitment for such a project.


Today, most AI applications focus on new applications such as evaluating retail customer behavior, detecting fraud in financial transactions, facilitating the recruiting process, assisting with employee productivity and improving shipping logistics. Important, to be sure.


Some Enterprise AI applications focus on mining legacy databases for insights and ways to monetize the data assets. Also important.


Yet all of today’s AI applications seem to assume that legacy enterprise applications and their inherent limitations will live forever. They focus strictly on minimizing legacy limitations (e.g. technical debt and lack of adaptability), monetizing the value of the legacy data or adding value with “bolt on” applications that must be integrated with the legacy applications. In other words, they fail to address the most significant issue.


Utilizing AI for comprehensive Digital Transformation


If AI and Machine Learning are going to meaningfully transform business functions, their power must be applied to the enormous multi-trillion-dollar problem of Enterprise Legacy Digital Transformation. Harnessing the power of this technology will unleash the biggest assets of the world’s largest corporations, governments and organizations – their legacy business rules that run their operations seamlessly every day – from the limitations of proprietary legacy hardware and operating systems.


These business rules locked in monolithic legacy applications are considerably more valuable and less available than the legacy data that many AI applications attempt to classify, interpret and mine for insights. Once the business rules are liberated from their aging platforms, the high cost of maintenance and lack of adaptability to changing business needs will be a thing of the past. The new AI and Machine Learning platforms will enable the enterprise domain and subject matter experts to work with data scientists on detailed, actionable roadmaps with clearly marked milestones for high value digital transformation and to revolutionize how software is developed, modified and maintained. And the world will never to be the same.


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