Micro Focus Mainframe Solution

A unique approach that delivers maximum value from core IT assets

Attempts to modernize IBM mainframe systems can be hit by the complexity of the existing business application environment.

Now it is possible to modernize core zEnterprise assets so that they become flexible applications which respond quickly to changing business demands.

The Micro Focus Mainframe Solution accelerates traditional IBM mainframe analysis, development, testing and workload deployment processes to enhance all elements of the zEnterprise application delivery journey. It resolves the complexities of the application environment and helps organizations:

• Ensure a thorough understanding of the application portfolio at both management and technical levels
• Expand the skills pool by bringing modern development and testing techniques to the mainframe environment
• Exploit zEnterprise flexibility and contemporary tooling to provide unrivalled development, testing and workload optimization environments
• Enable choice for modernizing mainframe applications

Discover more about enterprise application modernization.

Base your modernization strategy on a single source of truth.

Micro Focus application portfolio analysis solutions help quickly identify which IT systems make the greatest contribution to business, plus those that no longer add sufficient value. Understanding pressing development and application modernization activities needs attention, effort and investment focused on where it returns most value. The returns are significant: maintenance costs go down, while the productivity of development teams goes up.

Enterprise Analyzer provides rich technical insight into the inventory and structure of the application portfolio. It accelerates IT change and provides business-level perspectives on applications. Development organizations optimize the cost and agility of core applications as managers scope and plan modernization and development tasks better, while developers understand how to modernize applications to respond to business requirements with a higher degree of confidence.

• Understand the value that each of your mainframe applications deliver and the contribution these make to business
• Plan the strategic mainframe modernization initiatives to take your business forward
• Improve quality by measuring and managing change, ensuring that the right return is obtained from streamlining and modernizing applications

Efficiency, skills and collaboration cuts through the development backlog

By bringing mainframe development onto contemporary IDE technology, project teams can take advantage of productive development frameworks and collaborate more efficiently. Without the constraints of scarce mainframe resources or the need for in-depth mainframe skills or application knowledge, developers deliver application modernization changes faster and with greater assurance.

• Increase productivity by as much as 40% through best-in-class developer tooling
• Faster time to market as workstation MIPS shorten development and unit test cycles, so new products and features are in use faster, delivering competitive advantage and ROI
• Innovate more through faster development, subject matter experts can focus on innovation and budget reinvested in innovative projects
• Expand the resource pool with contemporary tooling, legacy applications become easier to maintain and modernize to a much wider development community and new IDEs make it easier to attract new talent used to working on PCs

Discover more about the Micro Focus products for mainframe development

Improve quality and remove bottlenecks for faster service delivery

Testing applications on the mainframe can take up as much processing power and cost as production, sometimes over 50% of available MSU/MIPS. Testing can be an expensive and inflexible bottleneck, which doesn’t meet the increasing demands for efficient service delivery. 
 
Enterprise Test Server removes both the bottleneck and the risk to delivery schedules that quality, cost and time challenges cause. By breaking down capacity barriers, it introduces flexibility and makes it possible to exploit application modernization resources to meet delivery schedules on time and in budget.

This unique capability revolutionizes the application service delivery process, making it possible to meet increasing business delivery demands.

• Reduce costs of testing resources and contain costs of expanding test resources
• Improve application quality and unify the development process
• Faster time to market by removing capacity bottlenecks

Discover more about the value of rehosting testing on cost effective platforms with Enterprise Test Server

Improve the user interface – improve the customer experience

Micro Focus’ terminal emulation suite modernizes the user interface, providing unmatched reliability and security to connect Microsoft Windows desktops to any host system with mission critical reliability.

The Micro Focus solutions also convert existing green screen business processes into Web applications and reusable services.

• Increase productivity by processing more transactions in less time
• Improve user experience by providing a single point of view across multiple platforms
• Deliver reliable and secure access to information and data with the highest level of encryption

Discover more about the terminal emulation products from Micro Focus

Deploying COBOL and PL/I applications across a choice of enterprise platforms

By redistributing or rebalancing zEnterprise or mainframe application workload, CIOs can build new flexibility into IT operations that more closely support the business. Where it makes sense, deploying mainframe applications on other key platforms can yield significant business benefits and potentially save significant operating budget.

The Micro Focus mainframe solution includes technologies executing both COBOL and PL/I applications across z/Enterprise and other key non-mainframe environments.

• As part of a fit-for-purpose strategy, core applications can be redistributed to run on a variety of platforms such as z/Linux, Linux, Windows, UNIX and the cloud with minimal change
• Innovate by reinvesting released budget to realize modernization strategies faster to deliver greater advantage
• Application costs have been reduced by up to 90%

Find out more about Micro Focus products for zEnterprise workload optimization.

The Micro Focus Reference Architecture demonstrates a viable alternative to the mainframe for mission-critical, production-ready environments. This application modernization route has proved to be the lowest risk option for many companies, delivering the fastest return on investment and releasing budget to support innovation and growth.