Franklin County Data Center
We recently spoke with Dana Hughes, Director for the Franklin County Data Center in central Ohio. Mr. Hughes engaged MAPSYS to assist in converting several applications from an older mainframe to the County’s iSeries server. This project was part of the Data Center’s efforts to modernize and optimize their applications and infrastructure.
The Franklin County Data Center is a service organization providing technology and technology related services to the county agencies. Changes in the Data Center’s customer population and needs prompted Mr. Hughes and his team to re-evaluate where their applications were deployed. MAPSYS was engaged to evaluate the effort involved in reassigning the mainframe applications to the iSeries.
MAPSYS project leader, Terry Payne, and his team worked with Mr. Hughes and the Data Center staff to do the necessary data collection. Following the analysis of the data, MAPSYS was able to provide Franklin County Data Center (FCDC) with a fixed price proposal for the work along with an expected return on the investment. Below is an excerpt from the Executive Overview provided to Mr. Hughes.
“As a result of this analysis, MAPSYS has identified and documented the issues and tasks related to migrating off of the mainframe to the AS/400. We have prototyped [aspects of the conversion]. This will shorten the amount of time and effort to migrate off of the mainframe. In addition, the migration affords FCDC the opportunity to replace or consolidate technologies and antiquated techniques. As a result of this migration, FCDC should be able to eliminate the mainframe system, its maintenance costs, software licenses, and some of the internal support it requires. While some additional hardware and software will be required for the AS/400, the costs are considerably less than those on the mainframe.”
"Incorporating the cost of migration and the incremental hardware and software, the break even point for the migration is 12 months after removal of the mainframe."
Mr. Hughes states that the primary drivers for selecting this solution were “reliability, a seamless transition, cost effectiveness, and it is within our competency”. In addition, Mr. Hughes offered that the project assisted in the “expansion of the skill base of the staff to state of the art industry tools, skills, and techniques”. There were benefits that the Data Center team realized beyond those identified in the project. Among those cited were simplified back ups and better and more flexible deployment options resulting from the consolidation of not only the mainframe to the iSeries but also some stand alone Intel servers which were re-implemented on Integrated xSeries Servers (IXS) also on the iSeries.
We asked Mr. Hughes what advice he had for someone considering a similar project. “Plan. Do the up front analysis. Spend time to prototype and pilot. Allow for and spend the time to train your staff, even within your core competencies. These are new workloads, new technologies, and new procedures and processes…Be up front [with MAPSYS]. Don’t be afraid to engage them fully.” |