Fujitsu ADABAS/ NATURAL Migration Service

Migrate from Adabas to RDBMS and from Natural to Java or C# Low Risk Migration Service without Vendor Lock-in

The Fujitsu® TransMigration™ program can help clients move from a legacy environment based on the Adabas™ database and Natural™ programming language to either the Microsoft .NET™ development framework or open source.

The Challenges of Migrating

As Adabas and Natural have aged, it has become increasingly difficult to optimise development and maintenance of the applications. Like many older technologies, Adabas and Natural suffer from the following issues, each of which can severely affect organisational viability.

The options available to organisations running Adabas and Natural have traditionally been:

• Stay with Adabas and Natural on the current platform;
• Re-host the Adabas/Natural environment on a UNIX or Microsoft Windows™ platform, which may reduce the cost of mainframe usage, hardware and maintenance;
• Re-write the system to meet current and future functionality requirements;
• Convert the code using a generator;
• Find a package to replace the systems and undertake the required systems integration;
• Decommission the applications; or
• Convert the systems to Java or C#™ code, retaining the current architecture and code structure.

However, many of the issues with Adabas and Natural will become increasingly acute over time, eventually making the platform impossible or impractical to run.

Rewriting the system yourself is a high-risk, expensive and time-consuming undertaking.

Using a generator to convert code shifts vendor lock-in from one company to another. And retaining the existing architecture is unlikely to be suitable for the new environment.

Fujitsu’s Approach

Fujitsu, with our TransMigration partners, has created an alternative.

To begin with, we conduct an application value assessment workshop to learn about your Adabas / Natural environment and desired outcomes.

From this workshop we identify suitable initial applications to migrate project and give reasonably close estimates of the cost, timeframe and resource requirements for undertaking the entire migration. We migrate your Adabas database to a relational database platform such as Microsoft SQL Server®, Oracle®, UDB DB2®. We migrate your applications using either C# for .NET or Java 5. Your new environment can be hosted on Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux, zLinux or z/OS.

While we do not make functional changes to your applications, we introduce a number of enhancements including:

• XML capability to make it easier to connect and integrate the application with others;
• The application is migrated to an architecture that is suitable for the target environment;
• Use of modern relational database and object oriented programming techniques; and
• A consistent web browser interface to make the application easier to access and use.

During the migration process, our automated tools accurately document every aspect of your legacy application and, if required, its replacement. This approach, combined with a rigorous priming and project management methodology, ensures we create good-quality, maintainable code that is suited to the new environment.

Unique synchronisation technology allows the legacy application to continue running from Adabas while the new version runs in parallel from the modern database platform, ensuring the data remains accurate and up to date.

Our approach includes a very limited freeze period of source code to reduce the risk of functional drift. To minimise the opportunities for bugs to be created due to manual intervention, the final migration is entirely automated.

The Benefits of our Adabas Natural Service

The major benefits of the Fujitsu TransMigration program for Adabas and Natural are:

• Removing your organisation’s reliance on Adabas and Natural;
• Reducing licence costs;
• Reducing the complexity of your technical portfolio;
• Increasing access to cheaper and more readily available technical resources by moving to modern, commonly used languages and database platforms;
• Creating good-quality, maintainable code that is suited to the new environment and architecture;
• Potentially reducing mainframe usage by moving to commodity or midrange server hardware;
• Removing vendor lock-in by avoiding generators;
• Reducing risk through industrialised testing;
• Increasing testing and rollout options and reducing risk through database synchronisation;
• Increasing the speed and accuracy of application development and maintenance by using current development tools;
• Increasing access to leading-edge technology;
• Creating complete and accurate documentation;
• Increasing the ease of interfacing through XML enablement;
• Reducing end-user training requirements as all screens have the same topography and navigation; and
• Creating a more secure technical roadmap for the future.

Interested in finding out more?

If you answer “Yes” to any of the following questions, please contact Fujitsu for a more in-depth discussion of our TransMigration options for Adabas Natural.

Critical questions

1. Are you concerned about the longevity of Adabas and Natural?
2. Do you want to move your application portfolio to .NET or open source?
3. Is the cost and availability of support resources causing concern?
4. Is Adabas or Natural interconnectivity restricting your technical options?
5. Do you want an environment with less vendor lock-in?
6. Are licensing costs eating up too much of your IT budget?
7. Is your speed of development or time to market too slow ?
8. Is your organisation highly risk averse yet needing to move on?

Please contact your Fujitsu client executive directly, email transmigration@au.Fujitsu.com or download the questionnaire and send it to the above email address for an estimated timeframe and costing.