Anubex Natural Conversion Techniques
Ben Wilson, Anubex

Application Portfolio Management and Analysis
Chris Hoover, Relativity Technologies

System Modernization:
The Time is Now, The Reasons are Many & The Power is in Your Hands
William Ulrich, Tactical Strategy Group, Inc. (TSG, Inc.), Founder & President

Legacy applications have outlived many of the designers, developers and users that originally conceived and built these systems. In spite of this, the software continues to process millions of transactions and billions of dollars of monetary value every day. Yet few people remain who can decipher, enhance or decouple these complex engines of commerce.

The state of the legacy systems challenge includes inconceivable architectures, rampant redundancy and a long trail of obsolete functionality - intermixed with mission critical code.  For the better part of the last two decades we have wrestled with, wrapped, tried to replace or even ignored these systems.  But this is no longer an option.  For organizations to grow and thrive, it is time to defang the proverbial legacy beast.

The ability to fully decompose application and data architectures; map those architectures to modern paradigms; move those systems across platforms, languages and design representations; and fully retool and redeploy these systems is in your hands.  The tooling, processes, standards and people are in place - if organizations are willing to engage the challenge.  This discussion will provide attendees with critical insights into why systems modernization is not only possible, but also essential to the future of many organizations.

William Ulrich is the Founder and President of TSG Inc.  He is a hands-on consultant who works with organizations from a variety of perspectives to defang the legacy beast.  He is Co-Chair of the OMG Architecture-Driven Modernization Task Force, Co-Chair of the Business Architecture Conference, and an author of hundreds of articles and three books.  In 2005 Mr. Ulrich was awarded the "Keeping America Strong Award" as seen on the Heartbeat of America for his work in the field of systems modernization.

William Ulrich has more than twenty-seven years in the information management field.  His system transformation strategies have been the basis for migration projects worldwide.  As author of TSRM/USRM, a widely deployed information redevelopment methodology, he is viewed as a leading authority on systems transformation within the IT industry.

About Tactical Strategy Group, Inc. (TSG, Inc.)

Tactical Strategy Group, Inc. (TSG) is a management-consulting firm founded in 1990 and specializing in organizational and information transformation strategies.  Fortune 1000 companies, government agencies, high-tech companies and consulting firms have sought the advice of TSG on system transformation, business continuity planning, supply chain management, market deployment, partner alliance, information management and integration planning.

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Vendor presentations

The Migration Roadmap - Strategic Frame for Applications Modernization
Scott Hulse, Director, Applications Transformation, EDS Corporation

The Global Applications group of EDS Corporation will provide a Point of View on applications modernization, including risk management, strategic program alternatives, and lessons learned from government and commercial clients.  The strategic frame of an enterprise modernization effort addresses both the timing of benefit streams, and the impact on the user community.  EDS uses a tiered approach to identify, manage, and deliver these programs with minimal impact to clients, their customers, and ultimately the IT organization.  EDS will present the structure and client benefits of their Center of Excellence applications delivery model, and recommendations for mitigating risk and selecting solution partners to assist with discovery, delivery, and support of the modernization program.

Scott Hulse is an industry transformation executive with EDS, leading the industry practice for applications transformation in the US.  He has led strategy and migration programs for some of EDS’s largest clients, and has a dedicated team of experts in application modernization.  Prior to EDS, he has been a senior manager at Price Waterhouse and Arthur Andersen Business Consulting, in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  He has an MBA degree from the University of Southern California, and a bachelor degree in Mathematics from UC Santa Barbara.

About EDS

Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS) has over 117,000 professionals in over 60 countries, supporting government and commercial clients worldwide.  The Global Applications group maintains over 2.3 billion lines of code in more than 170 programming languages across more than 60 centers of expertise, including the following:

• 40,000 Applications professional resources
• 9,500 Mainframe professionals
• 4,000 Java professionals
• 5,000 Microsoft professionals
• 2,300 .NET professionals

For more on EDS, please visit www.eds.com

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Unisys and Enterprise Modernization
Ali Shadman, CTO, Systems & Technology, Unisys Corporation

Unisys Enterprise Modernization (EM) leverages all of Unisys’ rich resources to develop and execute market-driven projects around industry standards and best practices. The low-risk, high-return set of services, software, and platform solutions transform critical legacy assets to lower-cost, more agile systems – and position enterprise technology to support whatever changes may be around the corner. Unisys will present its comprehensive portfolio around enterprise transformation based on the Unisys Enterprise Modernization Framework and utilizing their core six modernization styles. Mr. Shadman will also cover their offerings around modernization strategy development that includes Application Portfolio Analysis and Management as well as Knowledge Mining and Abstraction – arguably the necessary first step(s) in all modernization projects and ones that provide substantial value to the business and IT alike.

Ali Shadman is the Chief Technology Officer of Unisys’ Systems & Technology Division. In this role, Ali represents the division to both internal and external audiences to position and drive strategic technology direction in the market place in addition to creating business opportunities around commercial software offerings and related engineering services.

Previously Ali was Vice President and General Manager of the division’s Open Source Solutions group and before that VP and GM of Innovative Programs Business, responsible for commercializing leading edge R&D efforts

About Unisys

Unisys is one of the world’s largest and most accomplished technology services and solutions companies. With decades of experience in legacy environments, in hardware and software, in applications and infrastructure, Unisys is one of very few companies that can understand the issues associated with modernizing aging IT environments.

Additionally, their expertise in consulting, systems integration, outsourcing, infrastructure, and server technology helps their clients achieve secure business operations with the quality of service and the cost efficiencies that industry standards and best practices promise. By leveraging the Unisys Blueprinting approach, they make visible the impact of their customer’s decisions – ahead of investments, opportunities and risks. From discovery to delivery, Unisys can be your one-source for all your modernization needs.

For more information, visit: www.unisys.com

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Automated Natural/Adabas to C# SQL Server Modernization – Demonstration
Philip Newcomb, TSRI President, Founder & CEO

Modernizing Data:  Issues and Approaches
Wayne Lashley, COO, Treehouse Software, Inc.

In any legacy application modernization initiative, modernization of the data is usually a relatively minor component in terms of overall project effort. Yet failure of the data modernization process can and does cause failure of the entire project.

A comprehensive data modernization strategy must promote a number of important tactics and features.  Modernization can be undertaken through a combination of techniques including replication, distribution and migration.  Each one requires a sound understanding of the importance of metadata, as well as emerging standards such as Java Persistence API (JPA).  We will review all these issues and considerations and show why a number of the companies presenting at NAMS-IF partner with Treehouse Software, Inc. (TSI) to mitigate data modernization risks.

About Treehouse Software, Inc. (TSI)

Treehouse Software, Inc. (TSI) is celebrating its 25th year of business as the leading ISV for sites using Software AG’s Natural programming language and Adabas DBMS, and for the past 12 years has been the premier provider of Adabas data migration, replication and integration products and services. By leveraging products and services from TSI, companies and service providers undertaking migration projects can meet the most complex demands of database migration, coexistence and integration, thus minimizing data migration—and project—risk.

Wayne Lashley, TSI Chief Operating Officer, oversees TSI product development; sales and marketing; technical support, documentation and QA; partner relations; pre- and post-sales service delivery; and corporate technology. Wayne has accumulated more than 23 years of Software AG product experience in a career that began in the late 1970s. Prior to joining Treehouse in 2000, Wayne held IT technical and management positions in software development, higher education, financial services, government and primary industry sectors.

The Business of Mainframe Migration to Windows
Scott Rosenbloom, Midrange Alliance Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation

More and more companies are moving workloads from their mainframe systems to Windows Server.  This session addresses the business dynamics and benefits options of such a modernization strategy for the enterprise CIO.  Mr. Rosenbloom will also cover the topics of scalability, reliability, manageability, and supportability of Windows as it compares to the mainframe, and the strategies for moving workloads or entire systems over to Windows.  Can Windows really measure up to the mainframe it replaced?  Examples of proof that it can are modernization successes such as the London Stock Exchange, which processes over 15 million messages a day to over 107,000 trading screens worldwide, or Callaway nuclear power plant, that is betting the farm of the reliability of SQL Server.

Scott Rosenbloom has spent over 20 years in the host access, integration and security market.  Scott currently runs the Midrange Alliance Program (MAP) at Microsoft.  The goal of the MAP program is to build and promote an ecosystem of application and tools providers as well as systems integrators which have specific expertise in both legacy systems and the Windows platform.  Prior to joining Microsoft, Scott was chief strategist at WRQ driving the future direction of host and enterprise application integration offerings.  Scott also spent ten years working for IBM in various capacities including development, systems engineering and consulting.   

About Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation - Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.  For information on Microsoft’s legacy modernization solutions, please see www.microsoft.com/mainframe

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About Oracle

Oracle Corporation was founded in 1977 in Redwood, California. They introduced the first Relational Database Management System based on the IBM System/R model and the first database management system utilizing IBM's Structured Query Language (SQL) technology.

Today, the Oracle DBMS is supported on over 80 different operating environments, ranging from IBM mainframes, DEC VAX minicomputers, UNIX-based minicomputers, Windows NT and several proprietary hardware-operating system platforms, and is clearly the world's largest RDBMS vendor.

Oracle employs more than 42,000 professionals in 93 countries around the world. Their expenditure for research and development is approximately 13% of their revenues.

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Modernization - Development with Eclipse; Applications with MDD & SOA
Arne Gerhard, innoWake USA, Solution Specialist

Modernizing Natural environments is a daunting task.  See how you can start benefiting quickly by applying Eclipse's principles like code completion, tasks, and versioning – increasing productivity up to tenfold.  Take this modern environment one step further by using the latest technologies from service oriented architecture and model driven development.  You can keep most of your Natural code, stay clear from yet more technology dependence and become much quicker at fulfilling your customers' requirements.  Rounding off with a live demo of a real world application where all these principles have been applied.

About innoWake USA

innoWake international is a specialist in combining known and new technologies, offering efficient solutions for integrating and migrating mainframe and host systems to an up-to-date software architecture.  innoWake develops software in close conjunction with customers giving results that truly fit the individual customer's needs.

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