In most cases, councils lease, rather than purchase, the IBM mainframes which run the applications to process this data and this can be very expensive. The Royal Borough was in this position, they were leasing their 51 MIPS mainframe and despite the mainframe no longer running at anything close to full capacity, the council was still investing a significant amount to ensure their historical data was sufficiently safeguarded.
The Challenge
In January 2002, in line with the growing parliamentary drive for cost effective, streamlined eGovernment, the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead council obtained funds to facilitate cost saving changes to its data management strategy. Old council tax, non-domestic rates and housing benefit systems held on the mainframe were targeted as an area for development that could greatly increase the council’s cost effectiveness.
“We were required to keep this financial data to comply with legal regulations, but we were paying over £300,000 each year in hardware and software leasing fees to enable us to do this. We felt this was way too much; we had to find a lower cost option.” said John Tordoff, Technical and Development Services Manager, at the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead’s Business Improvement Division,
This called for a risk-free way to move the data from the high-cost mainframe system to a lower cost environment. However, once the council had decided to migrate off the mainframe, they were then faced with the problem of how it could be done, without compromising the data. The key factors affecting the migration were firstly that the integrity of the council’s data was maintained, and secondly, that the project could be completed and the new system in place well before April 2003, which is when they would need to sign an additional years lease of the IBM mainframe environment.
Previously organisations wishing to move this capability from the mainframe had three options, develop their own in-house application to retain the data, archive the material to microfiche, or finally have it 'shoehorned' into a package. In the past, these methods have often resulted in corruption of data or they have left the IT department taking on the role of a software house; constantly developing the system to cope whenever a query is made to retrieve data. None of these options appeared satisfactory to John Tordoff; indeed, they represented a whole new set of potential development problems.
Migration to Windows
When John looked more closely at the simplicity of the demands made upon the archived data, it gradually became clear that an existing Intel based machine running Windows 2000 server would be sufficient to meet their processing requirements.
In the past, such an option would not have been available as Windows servers, although significantly lower cost, could not deliver the stability and performance of the mainframe. However, as Intel servers and Windows technology have evolved rapidly, it has become possible to deliver performance and availability only previously available on the mainframe.
John Tordoff spent around six months conducting a detailed feasibility study of the options, until finally settling on the option of migrating their systems and data from the mainframe to a Windows environment. Since the system was written in COBOL, it was logical to approach the leading provider of COBOL application development and deployment software, Micro Focus, to help them devise a low risk migration plan.
John Tordoff explained, “Micro Focus understood the value of our legacy COBOL applications and was able to offer us an innovative approach to reuse our existing assets. Their proposed solution was that with one project, the entire environment would be transferred onto a Windows server with minimum ongoing development or management required."
The solution
Micro Focus’ software enabled the IT department at Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to perfectly emulate the application, enabling Micro Focus staff to work on the project off-line from the mainframe. They then delivered a new environment, based around a version of Micro Focus Enterprise Server that would offer the council continuous access to the data after the mainframe was shut down.
In preparation for the system going live the application was then modified to only allow ‘read-only’ access to the archive data before being deployed on an existing Windows 2000 server with a single CPU and a 200 Gigabyte hard disk.
Kevin Brearley, Public Sector Manager, Micro Focus, commented, "Our aim was to cause as little disruption to the council as possible and preserve familiarity for the council employees using the systems. To all intents and purposes the users would never know they were not reading from the same mainframe that has been in place for the last 20 years."
The Micro Focus solution ensured the Council’s 12GB of data comprising 16,000 tables with 120 million rows was migrated to Windows with minimum changes to the legacy applications. The migration project was completed, on schedule, as promised in less than two months with no impact on the council in terms of disruption to service, performance or system availability. “We cut over without any issues, queries are being completed as fast, if not faster than on the mainframe and the system has always been available whenever officers have needed to use it.” said Tordoff
The Benefits
In terms of total cost of ownership, the benefits of the migration kicked in the moment the mainframe was removed. Reusing systems instead of replacing them meant the council incurred a one off charge, with substantial savings in terms of recurring annual costs. The hardware and software leasing costs for COBOL, CICS, DB2 and other related software to access the data when it resided on their IBM System 390 mainframe, were immediately severed. In addition, the council is now free of the expense for IBM’s periodical software updates and the costs associated with having a dedicated team to manage the mainframe infrastructure.
“Recurring annual costs related to running the system have been slashed from over £300,000 to less than £10,000, we saw a return on our initial investment to migrate the system in less than three months and the technicians managing the mainframe have been assigned to work on our more strategic projects.” stated Tordoff.
Not only were costs reduced but also existing skill sets were re-used. Since the legacy system was effectively re-used, the staff did not need retraining, and the council were able to avoid the associated costs - a very attractive advantage for any business implementing change. In addition, since no new functionality will be added and the data will not change, the mainframe migration has also freed resources to concentrate on other new in house development projects. John Tordoff said: “The beauty of the Micro Focus solution is its ability to migrate legacy applications and data with only minor source modifications. As a result the pressure on the IT department is reduced; the need for retraining is eliminated so resources can be deployed quickly onto new projects.”
Another benefit that wasn’t obvious until the project was completed was an improved working environment. “It wasn’t until the mainframe was removed that we realized the amount of extra space we had and how much more comfortable it is for our technicians working in our machine room. The mainframe generated a lot of heat, even with our air conditioning working hard, now its gone it’s like having a new air conditioning system.” explained Tordoff.
The Future
The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead’s innovative approach has defined the way in which councils can preserve access to vital historical data at a fraction of the costs whilst avoiding expensive retraining costs. With increased pressure on local councils to meet compliance targets, the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead has also managed to free up existing resources to work on more strategic projects that will deliver additional benefits to the boroughs constituents. This is a hugely attractive proposition for local government, and it is likely that other councils will follow suit going forward.
Quelle: PublicTechnology, 02.08.2005
