Virtual Mainframe

A unique approach that releases business applications to deliver maximum value

Micro Focus’ unique approach makes the Virtual Mainframe a reality. Releasing applications from legacy platforms to deliver value across other platforms, including mobile and the cloud. By replicating the mainframe infrastructure Micro Focus presents a way to achieve business goals at a fraction of the cost of re-writing or replacing applications with off-the-shelf packages.

We make it possible to move applications onto cost-effective, flexible platforms without change or risk to the intellectual property and competitive advantage built into your systems over the years.

Analyze what you have today and where your focus will drive future improvements

Micro Focus application analysis solutions quickly identify which IT systems make the greatest contribution to business as well as those that no longer add sufficient value. Highlighting the most pressing development and modernization needs focuses attention, effort and investment where it returns most value. So, maintenance costs go down and the productivity of development teams goes up.

Rich technical insight into the inventory and structure of the application portfolio accelerates development tasks by up to 40% and gives business-level perspectives on applications. Development organizations identify the best ways to optimize the cost and agility of core applications, managers scope and plan modernization and development tasks better, and developers understand how to adapt their applications to respond to business requirements.

• Understand the value that each of your mainframe applications deliver and the contribution these make to business
• Plan the strategic mainframe modernization initiatives to take your business forward
• Improve quality by measuring and managing change, ensuring that the right return is obtained from streamlining and modernizing applications

Define and manage requirements for stronger alignment between software and business needs

Defining and managing requirements is the bedrock for application development and enhancement. Micro Focus uniquely combines requirements definition, visualization, and management into a single ’3-Dimensional’ solution, giving managers, analysts and developers precise detail for engineering their software. By cutting ambiguity, the direction of development and QA teams is clear, strengthening business outcomes.

For one company this delivered an ROI of 6-8 months, 20% increase in project success rates, 30% increase in productivity and a 25% increase in asset re-use.

Using Micro Focus tools to define and manage requirements helps your teams:

• Collaborate, using pictures to build mindshare, drive a common vision and share responsibility with role-based review and simulations
• Reduce waste by finding and removing errors earlier in the lifecycle, eliminating ambiguity and streamlining communication
• Improve quality by taking the business need into account when defining the test plan

Rehost development and modernize the user interface

Using the mainframe for development activities puts pressure on performance and increases the demand for processing power.

Micro Focus platform modernization moves development processes from inflexible and expensive mainframes onto lower-cost, flexible platforms.

• Increase productivity by as much as 40% through greater distributed processing power.
• Faster time to market as workstation MIPS shorten development and unit test cycles, so new products and features are in use faster, delivering competitive advantage and ROI.
• Innovate more through faster development, subject matter experts can focus on innovation and budget reinvested in innovative projects.

Modernizing the user interface and terminal emulation presents a pathway to the virtual mainframe. Micro Focus’ terminal emulation suite provides unmatched reliability and security to connect Microsoft Windows desktops to any host system with mission critical reliability.

The Micro Focus solutions also convert existing green screen business processes into Web applications and reusable services.

• Increase productivity processing more transactions in less time.
• Increase customer satisfaction with no more ‘please hold, my computer is slow’ messages as an operator flicks through different screens.
• Increase competitive advantage as you differentiate from competitors with little change to infrastructure, catch trends faster with a 360 customer view

Rehosting testing and achieve more with fewer resources

Application testing on the mainframe can take up as much processing power and cost as production, sometimes over 50% of available MIPS. Re-hosting testing onto Windows can more than halve testing costs and the testing environment can be scaled up on lower cost platforms without substantial further investment.

Re-hosting testing – a key element of the Virtual Mainframe – helps organizations achieve more with fewer resources as multiple QA teams can accomplish multiple tasks simultaneously, and additions to new test cycles no longer require additional MIPS.

• Reduce costs as the test workload runs in a lower cost environment
• Improve quality by eliminating testing bottlenecks caused by lack of MIPS available for test and multiple QA teams. Issues can be identified and resolved in a faster timeframe and test coverage can be extended without significant extra cost
• Faster time to market through a replicated environment for test cycles and complete testing earlier without slipping dates or adding costly mainframe MIPS

Once the testing processes have been rehosted onto Microsoft Windows, Micro Focus offers a suite of testing products that can further improve software quality and delivery timescales.

Test early and often to identify and eliminate expensive to fix defects earlier in the lifecycle

Our quality tooling is highly automated and is built around visual interfaces and the notion of reusability. Tests can be run frequently and earlier in the development lifecycle with defects caught and eliminated fast. A comprehensive range of testing tools – from functional testing to cloud-based performance testing – allows users to spot and correct weaknesses rapidly across their application portfolio, even for Web 2.0 applications.

• Align testing with a clear, shared understanding of business goals, so you focus test resources and measure what matters
• Increase control through greater visibility over all quality activities
• Improve productivity by testing earlier in the lifecycle, catching and driving out defects faster

A proven architecture to migrate valuable mainframe applications

The cost of running enterprise applications, and upgrade costs to maintain performance levels, is a persistent challenge for CIOs. According to research by the Standish Group 78% of CIOs plan to migrate applications from their mainframes. Migrating from the mainframe can save millions in running costs – in some cases as much as 91%.

The Micro Focus Reference Architecture demonstrates a proven mainframe rehosting infrastructure providing insight into a viable alternative to the mainframe for mission-critical, production ready environments. For many, this migration route has proved to be the lowest risk option, yielding the fastest return on investment which releases budget to support innovation and growth.

• Reduce costs, application costs have been reduced by up to 80% in some cases
• Improve time to market by delivering new functionality up to 40% faster, so modernized applications start delivering value sooner
• Innovate by reinvesting released budget, new IDEs makes it easier to attract new talent used to working on PCs