The mainframe system that runs LION’s business functions was more than 30 years old. Since then, system functions have been added and changed extensively to address changes in the work and management environment. Although it had performed efficiently for years, after three decades, several issues had begun to occur in the systems. For example, mainframe data could not be used for data analysis such as business intelligence.

Aging applications and system complexity due to long-term use were affecting performance and finding and keeping skilled resources for maintenance was difficult. And, the cost to support and maintain the mainframe and systems was so high that there was little-to-no IT budget left for new development.

LION knew it was time to address the aging mainframe, its legacy applications, and overly complex data management. They considered a rebuilding option, but rejected it because of its difficulty, high risks, and questions around accessing source codes. Instead, they decided to migrate the host systems on the mainframe to a virtual server to reduce maintenance costs and total cost of ownership.

LION chose TmaxSoft OpenFrame to migrate their mainframe. OpenFrame offered few risks compared to rebuilding. LION could continue to use their source code easily, and there were no internal design changes. In addition, no additional resources or skills were needed for migration.

• The scope of the project included:
• Ensuring the independent operation of online and real-time processing
• Integrating inter-system operation
• Unifying distributed data
• Migrating to the integrated, virtual x86 server while maintaining the business logic for 90 sub-systems on the mainframe
• Migrating to Oracle Exadata from IBM DB2

After the migration, the company reported that maintenance and operating costs were reduced by 60%, maintenance productivity was improved, accessing and using data is easier, and system processing performance improved by 20 to 30%. The development environment responds to IT business continuity planning, and the knowledge and skills of retired engineers have been handed down to a new generation.

A robust IT architecture is important for ensuring all operations in the plant run smoothly and that data exchange between all departments is seamless. In addition, because the manufacturing plant often runs 24 x 7, support and issue resolution at any point in time with no or negligible downtime is critical. In addition, the plant uses many enterprise-grade software products and systems, all of which can increase TCO. To keep costs down and address these challenges, KMI needed an RDBMS that offered high availability at a lower cost than Oracle’s RDBMS—and middleware to ensure integration between systems was seamless while optimizing plant operations.

KMI chose TmaxSoft Tibero as RDBMS because of its compatibility with Oracle, plus JEUS and WebtoB to ensure compatibility between multiple platforms, including its manufacturing execution system (MES), parts traceability Information system (PTIS) and internal quality information system (IQIS).

As a result of the deployment of Tibero, JEUS, and WebtoB, KMI’s SLAs of 24x7 support for production databases, no downtime during issue resolution, and responses to issues in two hours could be achieved. In addition, the TmaxSoft product combination delivers the robust architecture, high performance, and high availability that KMI needs at its busy plant. KMI reports a reduction in operation and maintenance costs and expects a reduction in TCO of at least 50% in 5 years when compared to the alternate option of Oracle’s RDBMS and Middleware with all features and maintenance.

FUNCEF has two major challenges. A new Brazilian Law called the General Data Protection Law means that FUNCEF must adjust its data protection and security policies to avoid future leaks of data or personal data exposure. In addition, its number one priority is digital transformation—supporting its beneficiaries via digital processes and experiences—and its IT team has been charged with making it happen with a constrained budget.

More specifically, FUNCEF needed to reduce database costs to free up budget for addressing the compliance and digital transformation challenges. The goal was to move to the cloud, but that was problematic due to a lack of licensing options from their legacy database vendor.

FUNCEF systems need to run 24x7 with very high availability (HA). Every environment must be replicated and set up in HA mode with a hot disaster recovery (DR) site with the same SLAs as the production environment. However, the vendor’s inflexible licensing model created a difficult situation for FUNCEF, along with high costs.

With reliability and availability its north star, FUNCEF analyzed the database market and selected TmaxSoft Tibero because it could keep the business running with the same level of reliability availability and performance as the previous database. The difference was a much lower TCO compared to the legacy database vendor. The savings and the ability to TmaxSoft to tailor the contract according to FUNCEF's needs were the icing on the cake.

With Tibero, FUNCEF has been able to deliver its cloud strategy and crate it's DR faster than it would have with its legacy database. FUNCEF was able to start projects that had been postponed because of the high costs of maintaining the former database and its inflexible licensing model. FUNCEF estimates 90% cost reduction in licensing and maintenance year over year.

The mainframe system that enabled some of Entergy’s most critical operations was implemented in 1981. The company had been rearchitecting its legacy systems but still had some mission critical applications running on IBM z/OS. The cost to support the systems increased each year.

These issues needed to be addressed; it was not possible to maintain the status quo any longer. Moving some applications over and a few other options, such as rewriting, were also on the table. However, these were too big of an undertaking with no guarantee of success. As a result, the company realized all mainframe programs, databases, storage, scheduling, and interfaces would have to be ported onto new virtual servers in its virtual environment. Migrating the mainframe was the most
viable option.

TmaxSoft delivered a proof of concept (POC) that showed that programs could be moved without change and that they would perform the same as they had on the mainframe. Entergy saw that the lift from the old platform to a new platform would have huge benefits and enable the company to successfully shut down the mainframe.

Entergy selected TmaxSoft to migrate its mission critical applications to the OpenFrame platform and migrate its data to the Tibero RDBMS, both running on Linux. TmaxSoft assisted with application migration, which included recompilation of the application programs on Linux and building both a production and a test environment. The file system (PS, GDG, VSAM) was migrated and ADF COBOL was rewritten to Java. TmaxSoft also provided OpenFrame and Tibero services, mentoring and training for developers and administrators, and product installation and configuration. Entergy's team took decades of programming and made it all work on a Linux platform.

After the migration, the company reported that processing time was the same and, in some instances, faster than on a mainframe. Significant decrease in annual run costs of over 70%, and the application footprint decreased significantly as well. The new modernized solution supports growth and innovation, enabling the energy company to better serve its customers.

One goal of Urban Local Bodies was setting up civic city centers (e-city centers) located throughout cities in Gujarat to enable quick access to information and services. Achieving the goal required an application for centralizing citizen services and customizing existing applications so they could be reached from a single access point. A master database was needed to make the necessary information available from the internet.

Each e-city center needed enough nodes to handle core activities such as payment of taxes, granting licenses, and more. Data centers and nodes also required high availability with absolutely no downtime for smooth digital transactions. Therefore, having the right database and RDBMS was critical to the success of the initiative and the centralized application.

The government of Gujarat chose TmaxSoft Tibero as its master database and RDBMS solution. The government made this decision after analyzing Oracle 12c (with RAC) vs. Tibero. Tibero offered a lower-cost, flexible, true enterprise solution that was more compatible with the database and system architecture of the government’s solution. Tibero also best met the requirements of responsiveness, transparency, and accountability. The government of Gujarat was impressed by Tibero TAC, a failover operation based on a shared disk clustering system environment.

Since implementing Tibero, the government of Gujarat reports a reduction in operation and maintenance costs. Total cost of owners over five years has been reduced at least 50% compared to the alternate option of Oracle with RAC and maintenance. The government was also able to deliver the centralized application in five months. The TmaxSoft team’s quick response to issues and concerns was also appreciated by the government.

SC Data Center, Inc., an affiliate of Colony Brands, had six core business systems (700 MIPS) housed on an IBM mainframe. This closed environment was preventing the client from meeting the performance expectations of increasingly tech and mobile savvy consumers. The mainframe was also preventing the company from being nimble and responsive to market changes and customer demands. SC Data Center, Inc. wanted to be able to innovate and decided that a move to the cloud would be their best option. Moving to the cloud would also eliminate high mainframe and infrastructure costs. The long-term goal was to shut down the mainframe completely.

After weighing several options, including application rewriting, SC Data Center, Inc. decided that modernizing its mainframe was the best choice. It would allow them to move legacy apps to the cloud without a major rewrite that could affect business logic and code. It would also set them up to re-architect and create new apps in the new cloud environment for the future. They also needed reliability and availability for all the processing, especially the real-time credit approvals.

SC Data Center, Inc. chose TmaxSoft OpenFrame to modernize its mainframe. A deciding factor in their choice of OpenFrame was the Active-Active Cluster, which provided the reliability and availability SC Data Center, Inc. needs to deliver efficiency, performance and speed. Another factor in the company’s decision was the OpenFrame business model.

The project scope for mainframe modernization with OpenFrame involved moving all the client’s legacy applications to the AWS cloud. This included interpreting the mainframe’s 3,685 COBOL applications and the 327 mainframe assembler programs, migrating the mainframe’s 867 middleware and on-premises CICS transactions and 5,766 batch processes, modernizing 4,741 datasets and 400 datacom tables and installing OpenFrame operation and management functions in the new environment. One of the key applications that was required to move forward with the mainframe modernization project was a packaged manufacturing suite. TmaxSoft teamed up with the customer and vendor and enabled the Assembler-based proprietary software to run flawlessly in production.

As a result of the project, all the client’s legacy apps are now on the AWS cloud. SC Data Center, Inc. reported an annual cost reduction of approximately 75%. Performance matched the expectations across their business operations, including for the online, real-time systems and web service transactions. OpenFrame on the AWS cloud platform also provides high availability and reliability so that an interruption in the cloud does not affect online processing.

Most importantly, SC Data Center, Inc. now has the infrastructure for innovation and business agility. After the mainframe modernization, the company’s developers were able to build a fully integrated automation solution to streamline customer data management, achieving in days what couldn’t be accomplished previously. Future plans include making OpenFrame a hub of the company’s technology infrastructure.

Modernizing legacy applications has helped SC Data Center, Inc. significantly reduce its dependence on the mainframe, gain the agility and efficiency needed to innovate, get its costs under control and improve application performance. Thanks to OpenFrame, this customer is seeing significant ROI.

CTOS had an x86 system with MySQL databases, and a Java application that ran on three instances of Apache Tomcat. Each instance of Tomcat connected to its own MySQL database, each of which could only handle 1000 customers at a time. The CTOS sales team was experiencing slow response times during peak hours, and any increase in customers would require a new set of applications and another database server. CTOS needed better scalability and relief from data consolidation.

In addition, CTOS needed to increase its data security because of a Malaysian government policy that mandates the encryption of customer data via a security algorithm.

CTOS required a scalable database solution that offered better performance, data security, data consolidation, application integration, and cost savings.

CTOS analyzed the database market and selected Tibero to address their database management challenges because of its core business system and the Tibero Active Cluster (TAC), Tibero Active Storage (TAS), and transparent data encryption (TDE).

Tibero offers CTOS robust, scalable database management that improved database performance and handled an increase in transactions much better. Tibero’s support for tablespace and column encryption with various cipher algorithms provides the data security required by the Malaysian government. In addition, Tibero’s application integration features allow it to work with the Java application without any code changes.

Most importantly, query response time per 100 concurrent users decreased by 94%.

Horizontes Creativos had decided to develop a new customer relationship management (CRM) system to serve as a single repository for all the different interactions the company had with its customers. The goal was to unify all the actions and campaigns developed by its sales team.

The new system had to centralize all the information collected from different sources and departments about its clients and their projects. This information would enable the company to analyze the results of previous campaigns and create new ones.

The IT department was on a tight timeline, so they wanted proven and risk-free technology for developing and operating the new CRM platform. In addition, there were budget constraints, so they needed to minimize development expenditures. They needed a database that would not consume 60% or more of the total development costs.

After analyzing the database market and reviewing both enterprise solutions and open source solutions, Horizontes Creativos selected Tibero as the central database for the new CRM platform.

Tibero offered Horizontes Creativos a robust, reliable database that was competitive in price and that perfectly adapted to its methodology and development tools.

Because of Tibero’s adaptibility, the development team did not have to invest time and resources in learning new tools. As a result, they were able to stick to the established development schedule and go live on time.

Tibero enabled Horizontes Creativos to reduce the costs associated with application development by providing a robust, high-performance database solution with all the monitoring and management tools they needed.

Horizontes Creativos now has a flexible database engine that can adjust to new projects by integrating with the company’s different systems.

Ibergraf Siglo XXI needed a new inventory control solution for the products and machinery in its warehouses. This solution is key to the business because it enables employees to maintain the proper flow of materials and goods and, therefore, optimize their resource planning.

The current inventory control system was obsolete, so Ibergraf Siglo XXI was not able to manage and update the flow of materials and resources in real-time. In addition, the system integrated with a database that had high development and maintenance costs, adding to the expense of upgrading the entire system.

The main challenge, for the IT team, was to find a database solution that would allow both the development of the new management platform and the migration of all the data from the old platform to the new one without disruption or risk, and in the shortest possible time so as not to affect the development of the new solution.

Ibergraf Siglo XXI chose Tibero as the database for its central inventory management solution. The IT team made this decision after analyzing other databases. Tibero was flexible, a true enterprise solution, compatible with the system already deployed, and competitive in pricing.

The entire project included the development of a new inventory management solution, which replaced the old solution, and migrating all the data from the old platform to the new one.

Tibero was 100% compatible with the old database, so the data migration was automatic and took just a few hours.

In addition to having no impact during implementation and migration, data loading, reporting and other data processes improved by 70%.

Ibergraf Siglo XXI is confident that, thanks to the scalability of Tibero, they will be able to evolve more systems over time.

For production, Heel follows the best practices of Lean Six Sigma by searching for and eliminating processes that negatively affect time and effort without delivering value. To that end, the company wanted to develop innovative methods for customer management and sales processes that would improve analysis and cost management. However, a legacy CRM system and no direct access to databases were holding them back.

With a set budget and a need for creative control, Heel decided to modernize the CRM. This required a new database because the existing ones were difficult to update and use, with data loads of 6–8 hours. The new database needed to be accessible in Spain, integrate with the new CRM, enable accelerated processes, and have a flexible architecture.

“A database cannot be a barrier to evolution. Tibero helps and facilitates this evolution.”—Oscar Generoso, Director of IT and Sales Excellence, Heel España

Heel chose Tibero after evaluating other products, including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and MySQL, along with freeware. Tibero offered predictability in pricing and licensing and the flexibility of installation on-premises, on a virtual server, or in the cloud. The other products were not able to deliver on all these requirements.

The project scope included a complete implementation of the Tibero database as a repository for the CRM and the migration of other base Oracle data that is used for analysis and business intelligence processes. Engaging, contracting, and working with TmaxSoft was easy. The involvement of the technical team in the project and the technical support were above and beyond the norm.

In addition to not having any problems with the implementation and operation of the database, Heel reports that Tibero has delivered an 80% improvement in processes such as data loading, importing, and BI reporting, along with up-to-date data for analysis, which enables the business to make better decisions. Heel is confident that Tibero can evolve as needs change and new processes are introduced and the company grows the CRM.

Very importantly, after centralizing all information in the new CRM and Tibero, integrating the remaining applications was easy, as was optimizing processes. The result is a unique repository of information that can be simply and quickly updated.