AWS Announces General Availability of AWS Mainframe Modernization

Cloud Computing

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN),last month, announced the general availability of AWS Mainframe Modernization, a new service that makes it faster and easier for customers to modernize mainframe-based workloads by moving them to the cloud to enjoy AWS’s superior agility, elasticity, and cost savings. With AWS Mainframe Modernization, customers can refactor their mainframe workloads to run on AWS by transforming mainframe-based applications into modern cloud services. Alternatively, customers can keep their applications as written and replatform their workloads to AWS by reusing existing code with minimal changes.

A managed runtime environment built into AWS Mainframe Modernization provides the necessary compute, memory, and storage to run both refactored and replatformed applications and helps automate the details of capacity provisioning, security, load balancing, scaling, and application health monitoring. The AWS Mainframe Modernization service also provides the development, testing, and deployment tools necessary to automate the modernization of mainframe applications to run on AWS. There are no upfront costs, and customers only pay for the amount of compute provisioned. To get started with the AWS Mainframe Modernization service, visit aws.amazon.com/mainframe-modernization.

Many customers today in a variety of industries want to modernize their mainframe-based applications to take advantage of the cloud, but to do so, they need to go through a lengthy and complex process. This process of modernizing mainframe workloads to run in the cloud requires multiple steps to discover, assess, test, and operate the new workload environments. Each step can be difficult and requires custom or third-party tooling that must be calibrated to each individual customer environment—before modernization project teams can begin the intricate task of transforming mainframe programs into cloud services. Because of the complexity involved in modernizing mainframe applications, organizations typically turn to consultants and systems integrators (SIs) to lead mainframe modernization projects. Organizations also face the challenge of needing to configure, run, and operate mainframe systems with modern application development and deployment best practices in the new cloud environments. As more customers want to modernize their mainframe-based applications, they can derive outsized benefits from better tools that make it easier for them to run their workloads in the cloud to realize improved costs and agility.

AWS Mainframe Modernization provides a complete development and runtime environment that makes it faster and easier for customers to modernize and run their mainframe workloads on AWS. AWS Mainframe Modernization integrates the tools needed to modernize mainframe applications using a single environment that creates an end-to-end modernization pipeline. With AWS Mainframe Modernization, customers can refactor their workloads written for mainframes to modern cloud services. Or, customers can maintain existing applications as written and replatform them to AWS with minimal code changes. Whether customers choose to refactor or replatform their workloads, AWS Mainframe Modernization provides a managed, cloud-based runtime environment for the modernized applications that helps automate capacity provisioning, security, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring with no underlying infrastructure to manage. AWS Mainframe Modernization also provides continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) capabilities to enable modern application development and deployment best practices, so customers can operate their modernized workloads in production on an ongoing basis with the superior agility, elasticity, and cost savings of AWS. Customers and SIs can also use AWS Mainframe Modernization to help teams better assess modernizing mainframe applications and de-risk and accelerate the modernization of mainframe workloads using AWS.

“Customers often tell us that AWS is the best place to run any type of application because of its unmatched breadth and depth of purpose-built services. However, businesses in a wide variety of industries have relied on mainframes to run business-critical applications for decades. These businesses naturally want to modernize their mainframe-based applications to reduce costs and eliminate technical debt, but they don’t know how or where to get started,” said William Platt, General Manager of Migration Services at AWS. “With AWS Mainframe Modernization, customers and systems integrators can now more quickly and easily refactor or replatform mainframe applications to run in the cloud. AWS Mainframe Modernization provides the necessary tools for organizations to take full advantage of the elasticity, scalability, and reliability of AWS, while also saving time and money.”

AWS Mainframe Modernization is generally available today in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), and South America (São Paulo) with availability in additional AWS Regions in the coming months.

TCS helps enterprises across the world pursue their innovation, growth, and transformation using AWS. TCS’s AWS Business Unit—a full-stack, multidisciplinary group—offers end-to-end consulting and implementation services and solutions around cloud migration, application and data modernization, managed services, and industry-specific innovation. “Mainframe applications are often the biggest hurdles to digital transformation. Using our Assessment and Migration Factory for AWS Mainframe Modernization, we are helping clients draw up their migration strategy and accelerating their transition to the cloud,” said Krishna Mohan, Global Head of AWS Business Unit at TCS. “Our Assessment and Migration Factory leverages our deep domain expertise in mainframe workload migration, domain-specific reference architectures, and best practices for mainframe modernization to provide clients a faster and surer pathway to transform their mainframe workloads and run them on AWS.”

Infosys Public Services, a U.S. headquartered subsidiary of Infosys (NYSE: INFY), is a leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. “Refactoring mainframe code bases and rehosting mainframe-based applications remain popular modernization approaches for public sector organizations looking to realize the benefits of the cloud and retain the years of business knowledge built into their systems,” said Eric Paternoster, President and CEO at Infosys Public Services. “The AWS Mainframe Modernization service allows us to deliver these benefits to our clients. It has strengthened our already extensive mainframe modernization capabilities and enables us to build modern, scalable, digitally native applications faster—and at a lower cost and risk. For example, we are leveraging AWS services to automate and accelerate the migration of core COBOL-based applications into Java-based applications for a public sector transportation provider. The new applications are more scalable, easier to maintain, and are reducing cost of maintenance for the organization. We are excited about working with AWS in helping public sector organizations modernize their mainframe applications at speed with the AWS Mainframe Modernization service.”

CGI is among the world’s largest business and strategic IT consulting services firms, with intellectual property-based solutions transforming clients’ businesses globally. “CGI’s leading wealth management solution in Canada—Funds360—leveraged AWS Mainframe Modernization to transform into a modern, digitally enabled, and service-based application, while maintaining and enhancing all functional capabilities,” said Len Brooks, Vice President, Global Wealth Solutions at CGI. “The combination of CGI’s capabilities with AWS Mainframe Modernization has delivered modern, best-in class-software, while minimizing disruption and de-risking implementation.”

About Shakthi

I am a Tech Blogger, Disability Activist, Keynote Speaker, Startup Mentor and Digital Branding Consultant. Also a McKinsey Executive Panel Member. Also known as @v_shakthi on twitter. Been around Tech for two decades now.

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