Modern businesses endeavor to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives in order to stay relevant, drive growth, and attract and retain customers. A significant part of this transformation also involves the modernization of legacy AS400 or IBM i systems to infuse greater agility across the organization.
Failure to modernize obsolete AS400 systems can hold back companies from operating at the pace of change. According to one study, CIOs spend 40-60% of their valuable time managing legacy systems. Another study suggests that the maintenance of age-old systems can eat up over 75% of the IT budget in banks and insurance organizations.
In this blog, we’ll dwell on the common challenges encountered with legacy AS400 systems, the key drivers behind modernizing these systems, and how organizations can go about transforming their AS400 systems.
Legacy AS400 Systems and Their Challenges
Though AS400 systems may be integral to the functioning of an organization, they pose an array of challenges owing to their outdated architecture and inherent inflexibility. Legacy systems often fail to integrate with modern technologies, which is why they impede growth and innovation. Businesses that still work with legacy IBM i technology may face one or more of the following challenges:
- Low Compatibility: Outdated IBM i software may be incompatible with modern technology/third-party apps.
- Limited Flexibility: AS400 solutions often cannot adapt to new innovations.
- Poor UI: Clunky, sluggish interface inevitably translates into a poor user experience.
- Costly Maintenance: Owing to their monolithic nature, AS400 codes are expensive to maintain and update.
- Security Risks: Age-old applications weren’t designed keeping modern security standards in mind.
- Low Productivity: Long loading times, frequent bugs, and redundant features may hinder employee productivity.
- Lost Business Opportunities: Lack of innovation affects an organization’s long-term profitability.
Key Drivers and Benefits for AS400 Modernization
Now that we understand why the modernization of AS400 systems is critical to achieving competitiveness, let’s have a look at the benefits businesses can realize by upgrading their outdated applications:
- Operational Efficiency: Outdated IBM i systems cannot deal with large volumes of data generated by end-users. Upgraded apps, on the contrary, can handle heavy workloads easily, paving the way for efficient operations.
- Security & Compliance: Upgraded applications are more resistant to cyberattacks and malware. They are also more likely to be compliant with the latest security requirements.
- Cost Optimization: Modernization does away with the hassle of frequent system updates, infrastructure maintenance, and staff training associated with aging systems.
- Business Agility: With AS400 modernization, your business becomes ready to evolve and keep up with the latest technology trends.
- Opportunities to Harness Data: Legacy storage solutions prevent users from making the most of the data available to them. Data migration opens opportunities for analyzing large swathes of data to inform business strategy and decision-making.
Things to Consider Before Planning AS400 Modernization
Upgrading old AS400 applications can be a complex, time-consuming endeavor. Stakeholders need to ask themselves certain questions before embarking on their modernization journey.
- Which features of your legacy system need no change?
Not every feature on your IBM i systems may necessarily be obsolete. Create a list of features that still work well. Start your modernization exercise by replacing features that hold you back from achieving your goals.
- What objectives do you want to realize through modernization?
Organizations may have specific reasons for upgrading old systems-some want to speed up workflows, others want to leverage emerging technologies such as AI-ML or big data. Your modernization roadmap should be reflective of these objectives.
- How long will the modernization exercise take?
Some of your core operations running on IBM i systems may be impacted during the transition. It is, therefore, imperative that you are aware of the time involved in modernization. Else you may end up hastening the process, resulting in suboptimal outcomes.
By knowing the answers to the aforementioned questions, businesses can avoid the pitfalls of modernization and select the best approach to upgrade their AS400 systems.
How to Modernize Legacy AS400 Systems-the Complete Modernization Strategy
Here is a step-by-step process businesses can follow when transforming their AS400 systems.
- Assess Legacy Systems
The very first step in the modernization process is to evaluate your AS400 systems against Gartner’s six drivers-cost, risk, complexity, agility, business value, and business fit. So, if an old IBM i application is expensive to maintain or poses undue security or compliance risks, it’s time to modernize it. Likewise, if an application lacks the agility to meet the changing business demands, or doesn’t offer the required value, it needs an upgrade.
- Define the Problem
If an AS400 system doesn’t match your present-day organizational or IT needs, it’s time to refine the problem further. What precisely is causing friction for users (customers or employees)? Target the specific user stories.
When doing so, it’s also essential to understand what works well in legacy software. This understanding of what works – and what doesn’t – can also help determine a suitable modernization approach.
- Choose the Right Approach to Modernization
Once you have clearly defined the problem, it’s time to decide how your AS400 application will be updated. There are seven common approaches to modernization, known as the seven Rs, each with its own degree of complexity and payoffs.
- Retain
This is a low-risk approach that involves no change in the code or its environment. The legacy AS400 application is encapsulated and accessed as a service through APIs.
- Rehost
Rehosting, also called lift and shift, involves the redeployment of the AS400 application to another physical, virtual, or cloud infrastructure. This approach is fast and involves little to no changes to the application.
- Replatform
In this case, the application is moved to a new run-time platform. While the code structure and functions remain the same, the code is reshaped slightly to ensure compatibility with the new platform.
- Refactor
Refactoring involves the optimization of the existing AS400 code without any change in external behavior. The process helps minimize technical debt and enhances app functionality. Refactoring may involve the removal of outdated frameworks, libraries or inefficient features.
- Rearchitect
One step further, this method involves shifting the IBM i application to a new architecture in order to boost its capabilities. The code is significantly altered to enable integration with new technologies. Businesses that want to leverage microservices architecture commonly choose to rearchitect their monolithic apps.
- Rebuild
Unlike rearchitecting, where only parts of the application are modified, rebuilding involves rewriting all components of the application from scratch. What remains unchanged is the scope and specifications of the application.
- Replace
This is possibly the easiest and fastest method of modernizing an AS400 application wherein the old application is discarded and replaced with a newer one. This is usually achieved through the purchase of a cloud-based solution.
Choosing any one among the seven above-mentioned options requires organizations to assess their impact in terms of cost, risk, security, workload, architecture, and business continuity. Equally important are factors such as evolving consumer demands, scalability, and business agility. How much importance a business attaches to any of these factors depends on their priorities.
Also, instead of going with just one modernization approach, organizations can opt for a gradual transition to modernization wherein they can first encapsulate or rehost their IBM i application while choosing to rearchitect or rebuild in the long term.
4) Choose the Right Modernization Partner
As most organizations do not build or modernize applications all the time, their internal teams may not have the expertise to manage a new environment, use modern systems, and make suitable decisions e.g. what modernization approach should be chosen or how they should plan their transition to the cloud.
And that’s where comes the need for a trusted AS400 modernization partner that can guide them through all aspects of their transformation journey. Choosing a technology company specializing in AS400 modernization with proficiency in DevOps practices and agile methodologies can stand them in good stead.
5) Observe and Optimize
Once your modernization journey has kickstarted, it’s imperative that the changes are constantly tested and optimized in order to make sure there are no issues with databases or connectivity with other services during the cutover. Continual optimization is essential to make your application adapt to evolving demands.
Planning to Modernize AS400 Systems?
There’s no denying that archaic AS400 systems can prevent businesses from operating at the pace of change and hold back their growth. Whether it is for improving the customer experience or for streamlining internal processes, these applications need constant optimization to stand by the rising competition and user expectations.
If you’re planning to modernize your AS400 systems, schedule a free consultation session with our tech experts today.
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