A recent survey of U.S. IT professionals  found that over half (56%) say their IT infrastructures are mostly comprised of mainframe computers. And 80% said that the mainframe is extremely critical (39%) or very critical (41%) to their business operations. But, when responding on what contributes to their organization’s use of the mainframe, responses were spread across reliability (34%), security (27%), efficiency (22%), with investment made and flexibility both coming in under 10%. Most IT professionals agree that they will have to modernize their legacy systems at some point, but if your IT infrastructure works, why fix it? 

The reality is the speed of tech innovation is fast outpacing what legacy mainframes are able to offer. Although mainframes are still the backbone of many IT landscapes, they’re simply no match for what’s possible in the cloud. Add in the lack of programming talent to maintain and update legacy applications and given the unprecedented speed of innovation that’s enabled through cloud services, there’s never been a better time to start modernizing for agility, scalability, and sustainability. But where do you start and what are the costs? What’s the time to migrate and can you have the same or better reliability, security and efficiency that you currently have with your mainframe systems?

Legacy modernization is becoming a fundamental business continuity requirement and drivers include both business and IT, making it imperative to focus on both aspects. Application rebuild/rearchitect/re-engineer delivers the highest business value, although with a high-cost timeline requirement. Automated tool-based conversions can migrate legacy applications relatively faster, although loss of knowledge and future maintainability need to be factored in. Rehosting, also called lift and shift, solutions can deliver quick total cost of ownership reduction, however they do not address technical debt, complexity or skills related challenges. Yet, rehosting can be used as part of a “move and improve” strategy, and distributed modernization is gaining momentum. With all of these options, how do you know where to start?

Often the first steps in any major transformative effort are the most critical, and that means starting with a comprehensive and thorough assessment. As part of Wipro’s mainframe modernization services, our initial assessment helps identify program flows and dependencies while building a functional understanding of the best path forward and most-appropriate tools to ensure modernization success. 

Companies that have been successful in their quests to modernize tend to share three key characteristics: they’ve holistically assessed people, process, and technology; they’ve clearly understood and mitigated potential risks; and they’ve met early deployment milestones to deliver quick value and pave the way for continued deployment. 

Wipro helps clients address these issues and more by offering end to end solutions ranging from Business Transformation to Cloud Transformation, including NextGen Application Services for Mainframe Platform which focuses on de-risking the entire modernization journey. 

A unique differentiator supporting our solutions is Wipro’s integrated accelerators platform, ModerniZ, pronounced “modern eye zee”, a new modular automation approach that supports end to end legacy modernization and accelerates the transformation journey. ModerniZ includes runtime analysis, UI upgrades, and database modernization to addresses transformation holistically, providing incremental capabilities that greatly reduce modernization risks while meeting key business objectives.

Additionally, through ModerniZ, Wipro comes to the table with more than 20+ in-house tools that are ideal for most transformation efforts, however, based on your business goals, budget, and timeframes, we’re able to tap into an additional 50+ tools from our extensive partner ecosystem to create a customized, tailored plan for nearly any transformation scenario. 

With an assessment complete, and Modernization Roadmap in-hand, clients can quickly understand and evaluate modernization options, including pros and cons for each, cost/benefit analysis, and Wipro’s recommendations for best fit and target state. 

We are excited to share that Wipro has attained the Mainframe Modernization expertise on Google Cloud. This important accreditation validates that our teams have both the technical knowledge and advanced skills required to help clients choosing Google Cloud, to seamlessly navigate through this important and incredibly beneficial journey. 

Google Cloud offers customers the ability to modernize their mainframe workloads to run reliably on highly secure infrastructure while minimizing downtime risk. Multi-cloud choice and flexibility of a fully managed No Ops environment frees up operations budgets and the use of 100% renewable energy and zero net carbon emission drives sustainability. Google Cloud’s innovations in analytics, ML, and AI allow customers to drive new revenue streams, reduce costs, and surpass customer expectations.

Once the project kicks-off our expert consultants are by your side every step of the way. We’re incredibly proud of the work we’ve done helping clients move their legacy systems to Google Cloud. These include a leading provider of financial data and infrastructure that was able to reduce the time to onboard new customers from six months to a few hours, allowing them to compete with more agile competitors, improve their customer experience, and shorten their time to revenue realization. To learn more and gain additional insights into how modernization journeys to Google Cloud with Wipro evolve, we would like to invite you to read a few of our case studies.

Given the number of companies that have already taken the leap, there’s ample evidence that the benefits of modernization make the effort 100% worthwhile: increased operational efficiency and agility, productivity gains, a reduction in baseline operating cost and business risk, the creation of all new avenues to unlock unique and untapped business opportunities, and so much more. Are you ready to start on a mainframe modernization journey or do you want to know more about what it involves?

For more information on ModerniZ, and why Wipro is the ideal partner to help any business take its mainframe systems to the cloud, please click here.