OVERVIEW...

With the unstoppable advance of e-business, IT organizations are confronted with a number of new challenges, in particular:

• Managing the heterogeneity of their application environments,
• Developing new application management skills.

What is application modernization?
In a word: This is an obligatory transition for all companies that wish to keep their competitive standing on the market by ensuring the longevity of their information systems. This modernization presupposes an ability to rapidly adapt the company’s main applications to new technologies, and open them up to new market standards.
The stakes are even higher when we consider that companies must continually improve their applications to stay ahead of the competition, while maintaining their existing system. The system already in place contains the company’s business rules. This legacy is absolutely vital to the company’s business activities, as well as representing a sizeable investment. Rewriting the entire system would be far too expensive and time consuming.

In this climate of sweeping change, IT directors will need to know how to work with new technologies while staying true to the spirit of existing legacy applications. This is where ARCAD comes in.

HETEROGENEOUS ENVIRONMENTS...

Naturally, new technologies will link up with existing databases and processes. Any changes in one or the other can have a big impact on peripheral functions.

• How can all these links be revealed?
• How can these heterogeneous components be transferred to production in a synchronized manner?

You will find the answers to these pressing questions in the ARCAD-Open Repository core and in the ARCAD-Skipper suite. Open Repository gives an overall view of an application, whether it is built from native components or components from other systems (Windows, Linux, or Unix). It also catalogues all of the inter-relationships between these applications. ARCAD-Skipper manages the entire change cycle, including synchronized deployment on heterogeneous servers.

THE ARCAD APPROACH...

Modernizing your native System i applications means making technical choices that will still be around years down the road. Whatever strategy you need to implement, you will be confronted with four major concerns:

• Gaining a clear and accurate view of existing applications,
• Maintaining stability of your information system despite these far-reaching changes,
• Conserving your teams’ homogeneity and productivity,
• Keeping track of the resulting increased system complexity.

How to do it?
Get a handle on the different stages of the modernization process, from auditing existing applications to defining a common methodology for managing developments:

• Auditing existing applications,
• Rationalizing applications,
• Documenting business rules,
• Using your database architecture to design new models,
• Migrating RPG code to its more recent versions,
• Merging development environments (native, Java),
• Defining a common methodology for development management.
  

SHARING SKILLS...

When new skills are needed, new resources are usually close behind. The question becomes how to transfer the functional knowledge of existing applications to a new population-especially since this knowledge is often stored only in the heads of existing teams. How does an organization go about transferring this knowledge, as simply and—of course—as quickly as possible?

Rely on ARCAD-Observer for your solution. This product will automatically generate and update the technical parts of your documentation, including:

• Data models,
• Flowcharts,
• Program structure charts,
• Program calling chains,
• Workflow diagrams,
• Cross references.

In addition, ARCAD lets you centralize existing functional elements in a single place, and enhance this documentation with information entered by developers. The results are produced in HTML format, for easy information sharing. ARCAD-Observer also supports project mode documentation management, integrating all of your updating issues. This suite can either be purchased in its entirety for a company's internal use, or alternatively in the form of a retro-documentation consultancy project performed by ARCAD Software itself or by a partner company.

ADVANTAGES...

ARCAD-Skipper offers security in multi-platform development, while ARCAD-Observer enables rapid comprehension and sharing of information system knowledge.

OVERVIEW OF APPLICATION MODERNIZATION...

To find out more, here is a complete overview of Application Modernization:

Application modernization is a vast subject. Everyone knows that the choice of change strategy taken now will determine the successful operation if the company's information system for the next decade at least. To add to the confusion and uncertainty of the period, there is a plethora of different routes to take. As a starting point, we will present a panorama of the subject based on our experience in the field...