MollerGruppen

2
Making the change,
reducing the risk
Knutsen says the business had assumed, with
hardware tending to lower in price, there would be
little need to change the existing set up. “But under
the IBM mechanism we would now be paying for the
MIPS we were using, not the hardware. With our MIPS
increasing 15 per cent each year, we’d gain nothing on
hardware reductions.”
This shock, he says, was the impetus to start a
discussion with HP, already suppliers of server
and software. It was at this stage Knutsen was
introduced to a concept he was unfamiliar with:
mainframe migration.
“I was invited along to an HP event, where I met some
people from the HP Center of Excellence for Mainframe
Migration. It certainly captured my attention; we then
had a guy from the Center of Excellence come to visit
us. We ended up doing a three-day workshop with a
feasibility study and recommendations.”
Migrating from IBM z/OS platform to a new
environment based on HP-UX 11i v3 and DB2 UDB
running on HP Integrity rx8640 servers, the plan
promisedasignicantreductioninoperationalcosts.
It would also allow MøllerGruppen’s IT department
to retain the main responsibility of operating the
platform, albeit supported by HP on business critical
systems. MøllerGruppen would have an optimised
usage of tools and well-proven processes, based on
ITIL to connect IT objectives to overall business goals.
The proposal consisted of HP Integrity rx8640
servers, HP XP24000 Disk Array storage, HP Business
Technology Optimization software for monitoring,
HP Mission Critical support, Oracle Tuxedo, DB2 UDB,
Microfocus development tools, backup software
and batch scheduler. HP Global Methods would help
execute the project.
The new platform would simplify the modernisation
of applications. MøllerGruppen would still administer
parts of the solution in COBOL, as previously, but the
platform would provide a greater range of hardware
and software options, reducing costs in development
and administration. It would run on an open platform
with standard applications in, among others, database,
transaction-managing and compiling.
HP’s business case looked compelling. “We were
increasing our MIPS by 15 per cent each, so under the
previous contract we’d have seen a tripling of the price
by 2015,” says Knutsen. “With a migrated system
we keep with 2007 price-level all the way through. It
sounded a bit too good to be true. Normally that means
it’s not true.”
Reference visits were made to a bank, a retailer
and a Police Force, to see a mainframe migration in
progress. “We were concerned that any modernisation
would require us to run two separate systems side
by side. This means less organisation risk and less
disruption to the business,” he says. “They all told us it
was possible.”
Maintaining the code
Knutsen’s next concern was to convince his 12
COBOL programmers they had a future: “We’d been
producing code for 30 years with our guys deep into
the mainframe world. Would we be able to use them
and their business process knowledge in the future to
maintain a Java code?”
Further interaction with the HP Center of Excellence,
showing the before-and-after code, helped win over
the programming team. Training on Java demonstrated
thesimilaritiesratherthanthedierences;thosethat
wouldn’t retrain were close to retirement age, others
would be needed for occasional COBOL maintenance.
“We spent time persuading people, calming them down
and taking away this fear of change,” he explains. “This
was an important part of the process.”
Customer
solution at
a glance
Hardware
• HPIntegrity
rx8640 servers
• HPXP24000storage
• SANBrocade
switch 8/24
Software
• HP-UX11iv3
• HPBTOsoftware
for monitoring
HP Services
• HPGlobalMethods
• HPMission
Critical support