How do you transform the slow pace of technological innovation within a federal agency into an opportunity for innovation and IT systems modernization? Start by taking a cue from the partnership between TSRI and GovCIO. With backing from the Federal Government’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) our joint teams propelled the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from an outdated twentieth-century Unisys COBOL system into modern, service-oriented Java that was performant and functionally equivalent.
TSRI worked with GovGIO on their process designed to successfully migrate the applications to the Microsoft Azure cloud. They started by defining the five key project goals and taking an inventory of system components, including intersecting platforms. Once we had identified what the unique technical challenges were and how to address each, we created testing strategies and migrated the data stores for each system. Finally, we executed an automated code conversion and refactored the legacy COBOL code.
TSRI’s partnership with GovCIO executed a rapid, holistic mainframe migration process for HUD that has improved their organizational performance while minimizing risk. On day one after the productions systems were switched over from the Unisys mainframe to the Microsoft Azure cloud, the new system supported 25,356 users and 299,715 transactions with only three user problems reported. These are the HUD systems that manage, store, and protect all the personal financial and employment-related eligibility information for FHA insured financing. Given the criticality of the data managed every day by HUD, it was important that the migration run without impact on operations. The result could be seen in the first 30 days during which the new system disbursed just over $2.7 billion dollars in HUD program funds without a single error.
Review the details of how TSRI and GovCIO successfully executed this complex modernization project in our recently published case study.
The 9 Low-Risk Steps That Led to Success
You might be surprised that HUD and other government agencies still run their IT on mainframes using COBOL (first released in the 1950’s), or MUMPS (from the 1970’s). Running on these aging platforms presents an extensive list of challenges to these agencies: data management, growing storage, collaboration, security, etc. The modernization process typically involves risk, time, and significant expense. It’s understandable that a large agency like HUD would want to select a partner they knew could deliver a low-risk, high-accuracy result.
Working together, we adhered to GovCIO’s nine-step best-practices process that resulted in modernizing systems to modern cloud architectures that can now evolve with HUD, while preventing negative impacts to their mission, day-to-day operations, and security.
For more details on the nine-step process that enabled HUD to enter the cloud age, read our latest white paper with GovCIO.
A first-person account of HUD’s modernization process with Roger Knapp – Executive Vice President and HUD Program Manager
Only a few engineers know what it feels like to lead a major government agency through an automated mainframe modernization. Roger Knapp is one of them and has been working in the field for over 30 years. As Executive VP of Engineering & Service Delivery at TSRI, Roger has unique insights on the HUD project. He sat down to share them in an interview with GovCIO as part of their Partner Spotlight.
In a short chat, he shares how the TSRI-GovCIO team overcame the challenges not only of modernizing a nationally mission-critical system at risk of obsolescence, but also how to deal with the presence of dynamic SQL data in the legacy application logic.
Get the story straight from Roger in his interview with GovCIO.
TSRI is Here for You
As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments. We bring software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years.
No change in business logic.
Reduction in overhead costs.
Continuous development during and after migration.
These are a few modernization concepts that Scott Pickett, TSRI’s Vice President of Product Operations and Service Delivery, discussed on his recent appearance on Amazon Web Services’ APN TV channel.
“TSRI allows for an ability to do automated transformation of not only your language, but your application to the cloud environment, allowing you to bring in skilled, modern technology to your legacy implementations, being able to drive down the cost point associated with ongoing operational costs, and being able to deliver new applications, new functionality, new screens, and new capabilities in that modern language,” he said in his talk.
So what does that mean, exactly?
In TSRI’s modernization of a major European bank to the cloud, that meant they modernized approximately 80,000 lines of code at 99.7% automation. In other words, only 384 of those lines of code were hand-written. That's big for a project of this size—but it's huge when you're talking about applications with hundreds of thousands or even millions of lines of code!
For any organization, whether in commercial enterprise organizations like the banking client mentioned above, or in government agencies, modernization reduces risk.
“You're able to bring a new skill set, new experts that know Java and know CI and CD tools and apply them to your legacy application that's been modernized,” Scott said. “It literally also allows for the ability to drop tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, off your monthly costs.”
As Scott also noted in his presentation, “we can not only transform code quickly…because there are very, very few manual changes, but it also means that you can migrate to the cloud and then be able to not have any business logic change associated with that migration.”
Maintaining business logic is a big deal when it comes to systems that measure their age in decades rather than years and the original programmers have long since moved on.
One other interesting point Scott brought up is how TSRI’s tools have enabled customers to maintain agility and competitive advantage by providing its clients with the modern, cloud-based applications they need—all while reaching back to its legacy DB2 database that supports the applications that have yet to be modernized.
Throughout the talk, Scott also pointed to how TSRI has adopted a step-wise model, which modernizes small applications or pieces of an application, tests for validity, then pushes into production before the next applications are transformed. Such a methodology allows the client to continue to develop in the legacy language, maintain a common data set, and minimizes business disruption to almost zero.
“There’s no big delay. You can continue developing the legacy and we can migrate those legacy applications while the transformations are happening and migrate them into your modern environment,” he said.
Scott also explains the steps of an automated migration in layman’s terms and how a TSRI transformation integrates cleanly into cloud services like AWS using containerization and microservices.
We of course don’t want to spoil the presentation by giving everything away, so head over to APN TV and watch for yourself to learn about how automated modernization to the cloud will save your organization time, money, and the headaches from continuing to maintain legacy systems.
TSRI is Here for You
As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments. We bring software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years.
One of the largest Japanese Car Manufactures now uses TSRI’s modernization methods to increase efficiency in their manufacturing systems. With the help of systems integrator Comture Corporation, TSRI was able to successfully transform 120k lines of COBOL to Java, in a three-week time-period, with over 99% automation levels.
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Code Modernization: Focus on Ada
Ada was designed and released from 1977 to 1983 as a high-level object-oriented language for use in real time and embedded systems. It is used extensively in systems such as air traffic management systems, banking and financial systems, communication and navigational satellites, medical equipment, and in military applications. Currently, although the Ada language has been updated, it is not as common as it once was. The ratio of Java programmers to Ada programmers is now about 20 to 1.
When that stalwart of facile enterprise development, Visual Basic 6, was retired by Microsoft, it left companies with a variety of problems. While many were able to immediately upgrade to Visual Basic .NET, Java, C++ and other platforms, cases remain in which VB6 was so embedded in the software infrastructure that it could not be easily changed or extricated. TSRI has been working on code transformation of numerous languages for many years, and now includes VB6 transformation.
Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) awarded a sole-source contract to The Software Revolution, Inc. (TSRI) for documentation of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS).
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Customer: Federal Aviation Admin. & Computer Sciences Corporation Source & Target Language: C Blueprint Lines of Code: 124,767 Duration: 3 months Services: Legacy "As-Is" Documentation, Transformation Blueprint®
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Raytheon contracted with TSRI to modernize, refactor, and develop code-level documentation for the Global Positioning Navigation and Timing Systems (GPNTS) Navigation Sensor System Interface (NAVSSI) Replacement Project. These systems support combat, command and control, information and other mission critical capabilities.
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Customer: US Navy & Raytheon Source & Target Language: Ada to C++ Lines of Code: 221,372 Duration: 8 months Services: Tuned JANUS Studio® to NAVWAR codeing standards, Code Transformation, External Interface Resolution, Code and Design Optimization, Automatic Refactoring, System Integration & Test Support, Transformation Blueprint ®
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