Current Blog Series: Answers to the top 10 Questions CIOs face when considering an IBM i Digital Transformation Project
We recently launched a new blog series. Over the next couple of months, we will be discussing the Top 10 questions CIOs face when considering the Digital Transformation of their IBM i application portfolio. Following is the ninth in the ten-part series.
Question 9: How do I minimize the risk of my IBM i digital transformation initiative?
If this question is top of mind to you today, you have likely accepted the challenge to address your organization's most urgent strategic imperative - meaningful digital transformation of your IBM i legacy application portfolio. You may have even settled on an approach for the process: either replacing, rewriting, or migrating your core applications.
While your efforts are laudable, the most daunting and dangerous part of the process remains the sheer magnitude, cost, and risk of your endeavor.
Depending on your modernization approach, your IT vendor or in-house staff can help you estimate the cost and time required for the process. If yours is like most IBM i shops, your critical legacy systems' digital transformation will take 2 – 5 years and cost $10-15M. This is well worth the investment considering the value of your essential corporate asset; your critical legacy system is between $7 and 10 M.
The heavy burden of contingency planning, calculating soft costs, and ensuring uninterrupted service falls on your shoulders. What happens if the new system lacks the critical functionality on which your organization depends? How will you minimize and overcome the disruption to your operation when a new workflow is introduced? What additional resources (hardware, software, and staff) will you need to test the new system sufficiently while still running your business on the legacy system? Is it possible to accurately predict and prepare for the cost of lost staff productivity and training?
The likelihood of completing a full digital transformation of your IBM i legacy application portfolio on time, within budget, and without disruption seems slim. However, there are ways to reduce the risk of significant disruption, delays, and cost overruns.
The safest approach is to carefully examine your application ecosystem, along with the operational functions each supports, before you launch the project. This process will enable you to understand the application dependencies and interfaces and effectively break the enormous initiative into "bite-sized" phases. These phases can then be launched independently and sequentially to mitigate the risk and disruption to your operation.
If possible, try to begin with a couple of "quick wins" that demonstrate the value of digital transformation efforts in narrowly focused operational areas that pose minimal risk to your operation. Then, build on the success, momentum, and increased understanding of the modernization process until you are ready to go after the most critical applications which support strategic operations. In other words, crawl before you walk and walk before you run.
This sounds logical, but how do you develop the comprehensive understanding of your IBM i application ecosystem required to create a safe, effective strategic plan?
Deploying visualization technology, such as that of ETS, will clearly show how your legacy systems are organized and will automate the process of modeling and building your strategically phased digital transformation projects. The project builder provides access to your legacy ecosystem as it exists today and enables you to model a variety of project phases and sequences to consider.
Once you determine and launch the best available project plan, you will be able to identify, isolate and minimize your operational exposure as you meaningfully modernize your legacy ecosystem one critical application at a time.
This systematic, technology-enabled approach provides a clear, predictable path forward, an essential prerequisite to any successful digital transformation project.
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