SOA-based Legacy Extensions

Mainframe solutions have always been perceived as large and powerful. Unfortunately, they have also been perceived as isolated, inflexible and difficult to maintain. This was true in many cases because of the proprietary technologies used to create these systems. The advances in technology, architecture and standards in recent years have resulted in a technology landscape that is holistic in nature. These new technologies provide opportunities to reuse system components that were previously inaccessible.

Client Situation

Legacy systems contain mission-critical processes and data, which embody the activities, rules and knowledge of an enterprise. The rapid pace of change in the world today requires organizations to add new functionality and to integrate processes quickly and effectively to sustain competitive advantage. Such legacy systems are characterized by:

• applications that effectively execute business processes and enforce business rules
• databases that are robust
• performance that is reliable and fast, with large capacity, and
• component technology that does not provide easy integration with other technologies.

System owners need to respond quickly to demands for new functionality, including providing standards-based web services for consumption by external systems.

IAI's Solution

IAI can enable your legacy systems to be extended with new functionality or to interact effectively with other systems by exposing business processes through a Service Oriented Architecture. SOA enables web services to be used to interact with legacy processes. It enables organizations to add new functionality quickly, while retaining the core business processing in the legacy environment. This approach to reuse unlocks external access to the robust applications and well-defined business rules embodied in legacy systems. At the same time, it ensures compliance and security throughout all layers of the architecture.

Value of this Approach

Implementing SOA enables an organization to provide new functionality quickly and at low risk, by reusing business processes already implemented in its legacy systems. This approach leverages the large investments in those systems. The result is rapid response by organizations to changing needs with minimum cost and no disruption to current operations.

IAI’s Legacy Modernization Practice

To learn more about IAI’s capabilities with SOA-based extensions to legacy systems, see:

• Solution Architecture for legacy platforms, databases and languages
• Methodology and Tools that we use to automate and manage projects
• Client Summaries for government and commercial projects
• Micro Focus Partnership
• Modernization Alliances
• Contact us!