FairCom offers the most effective and efficient solution for Open COBOL systems
Looking for the most cost effective and time efficient way to modernize a non-mainframe COBOL system? You’re not alone. Many companies, aware of the enormous savings on the operational side and the revenue enhancing opportunities on the profit side, are looking for the most cost effective and time efficient way to modernize a non-mainframe COBOL system.
When it comes to offering the most effective and efficient solution, there is no offering for an open COBOL system better than FairCom’s c-treeRTG. Not only does c-treeRTG save money on licensing costs, it offers enormous savings by cutting down on the amount of time spent on modernization, meaning less development costs and allowing resources to be put towards other company objectives faster. Plus, by modernizing faster than the competing approaches, companies that utilize c-treeRTG realize savings from not experiencing unnecessary outages or down times, which are typical of riskier and more complex modernization approaches, like rewriting or porting.
Sound too good to be true?
It does, but the solution is real. The secret, to put it simply, is that c-treeRTG enables companies to modernize without touching a single line of COBOL code. This is because we understand that COBOL is not the problem. The problem is with the data. (For a great explanation of our data-focused approach, check out this article at IT Jungle.)
Since we focus on the data, modernization occurs by enabling your COBOL systems to easily integrate with modern languages and systems. c-treeRTG allows you to access your live COBOL data files simultaneously through many different interfaces besides your own COBOL program. With the power of SQL, you can use ADO.NET, JDBC, ODBC, Python, PHP and many others to query your data files. c-treeRTG is a combination of a full COBOL file system and a powerful, dynamic database server that maps all COBOL files into data tables, including support for REDEFINES and multiple keys.
How does FairCom’s modernization compare with others?
For many, modernization means rewriting the COBOL code (also known as the language-focused approach). Rewriting your code is a path you need go down with extreme caution because you are essentially starting from scratch. Rewriting code is also highly susceptible to run-away costs, huge amounts of time spent, and a likelihood you will not succeed on your first attempt.
Then, there is the time it will take for the new system to stabilize, as all new V1.0 systems need mileage to become dependable. As a vendor for mission-critical applications run by Fortune 100s companies, it is in the DNA of FairCom technology to be a reliable solution. Knowing that an existing COBOL application is robust and field-proofed along its many years, FairCom understood it to be a huge inefficiency that rewriting the application loses all that stability and introduces unknown amounts of new bugs and problems that may require years to be cleared up. This is one of the major reasons we developed c-treeRTG, so that developers had an option to avoid this opportunity cost.
Examples of modernization approaches, as told in dollars and cents
- Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s modernization project that resulted in $749.9 million spent during a five-year period to replace its core COBOL system.
- A study of 10 insurance companies who migrated from their legacy systems. The average was more than $10 million spent in a period of more than three years for each company. The lowest dollar amount reported was $3 million.
- And then there is The New York Times, which tried twice to modernize a COBOL legacy system. The first attempt failed after four years of effort. The second attempt was successful, but its completion was a year behind schedule.
One common denominator for the insurance companies and The New York Times is the massive amounts of code that were involved. For the insurance companies, the modernization efforts involved millions of lines of legacy code, with the smallest amount reported by one of these companies being 500,000. The project(s) at The New York Times involved more than 2 million lines of code.
Since FairCom provides the ability to modernize your COBOL system without dealing with the code, you can save as much as 80 percent of what it would cost you if you rewrote (replaced) COBOL, and it can be done in a fraction of the time. By focusing on the data, it also means that you don’t have to take the “big-bang” approach: Files can be converted and made accessible as you need, allowing you to modernize per modules, rather than as a turn-key solution. In addition to cost and time savings in the short term, our customers receive a robust, dynamic system that extends the life of their COBOL system and lowers their total cost of ownership because the modernized COBOL system is still intact but now can be maintained and updated with modern languages.
Learn more about how easy it is to modernize your non-mainframe COBOL system by visiting FairCom.com/products/c-treertg, schedule a demo or download free trial version.
Related Posts:
COBOL modernization is real and it works
c-treeRTG provides safe and successful COBOL migration
c-treeRTG V-3 Resource Kit for legacy system modernization and migration
