We’ve heard the term ‘digital transformation’ used almost to the point of exhaustion in the past couple of years – but it’s not just a lot of hot air: It’s the future. IDC predicts that digital transformation will attain macroeconomic scale over the next three to four years, changing the way enterprises operate and reshaping the global economy. According to the research company, “By 2020, 50 percent of the Global 2000 will see the majority of their business depend on their ability to create digitally enhanced products, services and experiences.”

To meet the challenges of what IDC calls the ‘digital transformation economy’, organizations need to modernize their core technologies to meet consumer and staff needs – including the mainframe architectures that provide the very foundation of many businesses these days.

If you’re ready to upgrade your architecture but you’re concerned with the risks, time and cost of a complete rewrite, however, there is another option: Rehosting.

What is Rehostin

Rehosting is an option whereby existing mainframe applications move unchanged to a modern open system, such as multi-tiered, SQL-based x86 environments, or the cloud.

“With Rehosting, IT departments can leverage their existing mainframe skills as well as the skills of the open systems teams”

Each has its own advantages. Rehosting to an x86 system results in lower capital expenditure in the long term, newer systems result in lower purchase costs and have reduced space, power and cooling requirements over their lifetimes.

Cloud-based architectures, on the other hand, offer flexibility. Not limited by on-site hardware, cloud providers can scale capabilities to match user demand by utilizing enterprise-grade servers. Additionally, operating applications through the cloud opens the door to new services, which can further boost a business’ ability to compete in today’s marketplace.

Why Rehosting?

For many businesses, Rehosting can be a thoroughly cost-effective way to overhaul mainframe architectures. When performed properly, Rehosting provides many of the benefits of a rewrite, with significantly fewer risks and costs.

Safety is also improved, since existing mainframe security is maintained, and additional safeguards provided by modern SQL databases can now be employed quickly and easily.

If you’re still not convinced, here are 10 important reasons to look closely at Rehosting:

1. It helps fund necessary innovation. Rehosting has been proven to dramatically reduce infrastructure and operating costs. These funds then can be reallocated to innovation – which may include the rewriting of legacy apps.

2. It can support bimodal or two-speed IT- Bimodal IT is a Gartner concept created to help CIOs understand that their IT estate must support both traditional and agile models of IT delivery in order for them to make informed decisions about infrastructure, processes, people and tools.

3. It allows a business to exploit the cloud- Rehosting is critical to helping an IT organization extend its modernizing apps to the cloud. Your choice of a Rehosting application should offer the option of running it in a cloud.g?

4. It’s less risky than rewriting. Re-engineering projects can take years. Rehosting is not only faster, but it also means no changes to the underlying business logic or user interface, with no negative impact on the enterprise. It requires minimal training, and the system operates in exactly the same way.

5. It increases uptime and reliability- Rehosting gives the ability to configure Active, and Active clustering across your infrastructure provides the foundation for the ‘five nines’ of availability in this ‘always-on’ world.

6. It improves performance and manageability- The ability to dynamically scale your environment based on business demand eliminates the need to always provide resources for peak processing – even though they may only be required for short periods of time – maintaining maximum service and reliability. You pay for what you use, with no impact on the business.

7. It helps identify system inefficiencies- Through Rehosting, you might discover portions of your source code go unused. Rehosting allows you to review all of your legacy code for efficiency and usage patterns.

8. It enables a business to leverage existing workforce and skillsets- Mainframe experts still exist because so many mission-critical systems in enterprises are still running mainframes. With Rehosting, IT departments can leverage their existing mainframe skills as well as the skills of the open systems teams.

9. It helps increase agility and time to market- According to CGI, apart from vendor lock-in, organizations still dependent on mainframes are confronted by four realities: slow time-to-market; aging skills pools; lack of access to best-in-class software; and high maintenance costs.

10. It allows a business to provide the best customer experience- We live in an always-on world with consumers expecting a highly personalized customer experience, even in the virtual realm. Rehosting allows you to unlock the value of your mainframe apps by exposing them to web services for mobile and digital applications, transforming the customer experience.

A Changing Enterprise Landscape

Enterprise organizations benefit when they resist seeing modernization as a ‘one-off’ project where progress and innovation stop at the end, and instead embrace modernization as a cycle. For businesses that want to modernize but are wary of a full rewrite, Rehosting provides the platform an organization needs to meet the demands of the new digital economy and ensure its future success.