For over 150 years, this major financial services company has been one of Europe’s leading financial institutions. As with most large financial enterprises, mainframe systems are key components of banking IT infrastructure. A large part of the organization’s core banking applications are mainframe-based, but some of the bank’s applications operate on technologies that are approaching obsolescence. The organization needed to preserve the integrity of its existing systems while moving toward a more modern, digital portfolio.
To that end, the organization launched a search for a mainframe application-mapping solution. After evaluating several options, the organization chose the IBM® Application Discovery and Delivery Intelligence (ADDI) solution, an application discovery tool designed to help companies accelerate modernization.
A manager from the organization explains the decision: “We made our choice based on an evaluation grid that included important criteria in the company’s context, such as access security and the technological completeness of the tool. We determined the IBM ADDI solution aligned most closely with our technical, functional and security requirements relative to the competition.”
Increases
Shorter file search time increases employee productivity
Reduce
Elimination of unused code helps to reduce CO2 emissions
According to the manager, the aim of the project was “to take proper control of the makeup of our portfolio, to deal with the obsolescence of certain components and to prepare for future developments,” he says. “Gaining a better understanding of our software assets will help us upgrade vulnerable software components while minimizing the associated loads, risks and costs.”
The ADDI tool enables members of the organization’s infrastructure and technologies team to understand their IT portfolio on a whole new level. Not only can they easily visualize the links between and among programs, modules, tables and files; they can also use the tool’s graphic view to modify the way programs communicate with each other. In addition, the tool helps the team identify “dead code”—sections or programs that are no longer being called upon by other elements of the portfolio—and remove it to optimize system performance.
The team also uses the IBM tool to develop scripts for automating the creation, construction and updating of mapping projects. This helps them respond to requests for reports and create accurate, up-to-date maps. In fact, some local banking regulations require operators of vital banking applications to provide application and technical mapping elements, so requests of this sort are both expected and extraordinarily important. With IBM ADDI, managing compliance with the regulation is straightforward.
Among the many capabilities brought forth by the IBM solution, one of the simplest stands out to the team as a major boost to productivity. “Many of our users comment on the ease and speed of the file search function,” says the manager. “The results are available and usable in a few minutes. In comparison, it takes a few hours to set up and run that search using legacy tools.”
The manager also cites his team’s increased preparedness for an audit as a key benefit of the IBM solution. “Previously, it would take us several days to manually compile the full mapping of an application in response to an audit. Now, thanks to IBM ADDI, not only is the map available at any time, but the generation of other reports in response to an audit can be carried out in just a few minutes.”
Finally, the IBM solution contributes to a much greater good by helping the organization identify and eliminate unused lines of code. “Every unused line of code consumes unnecessary server resources and therefore has an impact on the environment. With the aid of IBM ADDI, we hope to measure the carbon impact reduction associated with our removal of this dead code and these unused programs,” the manager says.
This multinational financial organization supports over 25 million clients daily and is one of the leading European financial services groups.
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