The Business Challenge
Imagine a premium automotive company facing a huge challenge: maintaining and modernising the bill of materials application crucial for its manufacturing operations. This legacy system, while dependable and containing extremely valuable intellectual property, had become outdated and posed inefficiency-related risks.
The company’s decision-makers were faced with an important question: How could they update their essential infrastructure without disrupting the precision and reliability that supported their production lines?
The Vision: Migrate and Modernise
The literally fast-paced world of the automotive industry requires agility and resilience. The leadership team understood the potential of modern cloud solutions to safeguard and enhance their business operations. Cloud migration promised not just a lift-and-shift but a transformation—one that could enable seamless business process integration and unparalleled operational efficiency with state-of-the-art security.
They envisioned a future where their operations could leverage the flexibility of the cloud, ensuring the right parts were always where they needed to be, when they needed to be, without the limitations of their legacy systems.
A Solution that Minimises Risk
The way forward was evident: an innovative parallel operations model as an interim step. The company could ensure that each transaction was processed accurately in both environments by simultaneously running the legacy mainframe in production alongside the migrated system in a fully secure testing environment with real data. Intelligent, automatic regression testing allowed for any discrepancies to be identified and resolved in real-time. This automated parallel testing serves as a safety net—a mechanism that guarantees the integrity of the cloud-migrated systems without compromising ongoing operations. It is akin to tuning a race car while in motion—complex but essential for remaining competitive.
Furthermore, the migrated application can already be modernised in terms of business process integration and functionality. And finally, once the set requirements for operations and security are met, the mainframe will be completely switched off.
Fast Return on Investment
As the company successfully transitioned the bill of materials application to the cloud, multiple benefits became evident quickly:
- Operational Agility: The cloud’s flexibility allows the company to respond rapidly to market demands and production changes without incurring the cost of increased mainframe usage.
- Enhanced Efficiency: Significantly improved response times at high loads allow for real-time operations and streamlined processes, improving overall productivity.
- Future Readiness: The platform change of the bill of materials application paved the way for further migrations to the cloud.
Even more, the project now serves as a blueprint for mainframe migrations in several company sites around the world. (See also the article: Mainframe Migration or Investment Protection – Go for both!)
Automotive Mainframe Modernisation: A Roadmap for Transformation
The journey from legacy to leading-edge technology is challenging but rewarding. A step-by-step approach can significantly reduce risk, allow for ongoing modernisation, and realise business value on the way. Please note: This successful case of automotive mainframe modernisation in the automotive industry can also serve as an approach for other sectors to drive efficiency, security, and agility, paving the way for future growth.
