Isn’t it time to think about retirement?

For over 50 years, the mainframe has been working very hard with no holidays (aside from a little downtime every now and then)! Is now the right time for your mainframe to be retiring?

There is no consensus here…

Some organizations believe that yes, the ‘old boy’ should retire.  Other companies are adamant that their mainframe will remain their strategic platform for the future.  While still others believe that they should take some workload off the ‘old boy’ and let the new kids on the block share the burden.

With over 30 years of experience in enterprise computing, LRS has helped customers in all of these situations.  In a series of three blogs, I will explain how LRS can:

1. Strategically help when you do, in fact, decide to retire your mainframe
2. Assist with an enterprise-wide output management strategy when your mainframe will continue to be the platform for the future
3. Take away some of the workload from the ‘old boy’ – reducing MIPS and therefore costs

This series of blogs will also be complemented by seminars – with the first one being held in Rotterdam on January 21st 2016.

Adieu friend…

The decision has been made to retire your mainframe.

One option is to “lift and shift,” i.e., replicate everything you have in the mainframe environment on another platform. This will allow you to protect your investment and keep all of your applications intact.

However, when porting the mainframe applications to the New World of open systems, many basic elements of the printing infrastructure will be retired as well. For example, there is no open systems equivalent to the Job Execution System (JES) spool used to manage mainframe printing. Forms creation in languages such as AFP do not readily translate to open systems. There may also be application-specific routines that deal with certain printing functions or specific printer languages used, some of which may no longer be available.

Document creation and output therefore plays a key role, both in your business and in a lift-and-shift migration.  So, once you wave goodbye to your retiring mainframe, how you will you print and view documents in the New World?

Among other things, the LRS Enterprise Output Server (EOS) acts as a functional replacement to the JES spool, eliminating the need for modernization teams to deploy numerous costly Windows print servers or develop new document management facilities from scratch. Complemented by a set of Transform products, the EOS can also deal with manipulating and converting output to the formats needed in the open systems environment.

During migration, your mainframe legacy report management systems and document repositories will also take a bow and retire. Many offer no equivalent open systems version. How then will you access all of your historical customer correspondence and legacy reports?

LRS has a team of archive conversion and migration specialists who have completed well over 50 legacy archive migrations. They offer in-depth expertise in ensuring all archived documents, in the likes of CA-View, Control-D and ViewDirect, can continue to be accessed and viewed online in our open systems solution.

It may be that you will not ‘lift and shift’ but instead roll out new open systems applications — perhaps SAP or a similar solution. Again, LRS can play a key part here. Offering enterprise output management for all applications on all platforms, and delivering documents to any destination, the LRS Enterprise Output Server can help you simplify your printing infrastructure to reduce complexity and costs.

So, you agree to let the ‘old boy’ retire and take things easy. You can be assured that LRS will help you take things easy as well!