by Joseph Brady, Director of Business Development and Cloud Alliance Leader at Treehouse Software, Inc.
This blog focuses on a current Treehouse Software customer – ETS. Headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, ETS is a private, nonprofit organization with approximately 3,000 employees devoted to educational measurement and research. ETS develops and administer a broad range of educational products and services for government agencies, academic institutions and corporations, including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® General and Subject Tests, and the Praxis® assessments. At nonprofit ETS, our belief in the life-changing power of learning is at the root of everything we do — it’s behind the tools we develop to move learning forward, the research that inspires educational progress and the commitment we make to enable opportunity for learners everywhere. We’re with you on the journey to what’s possible.
Business Background
ETS products and services are available to institutions, businesses, organizations and governments in more than 180 countries around the world. The top industries served by ETS are K–12 Education, Higher Education, English-language Learning, Career Development, and Consulting Services.
Business Issue
Most of ETS’s high volume critical application data is stored on an IBM mainframe in IDMS databases. The technology is very old, therefore it is difficult to recruit and retain qualified technical personnel to maintain applications. ETS is moving to Cloud-based computing which will allow them to retire the mainframe environments and modernize the applications. The data is used and shared across several applications. ETS required a solution that would allow them to continue, uninterrupted, daily operations on their mainframe while replicating data to their AWS Cloud platform, where they could develop modern application features. This solution enables ETS to maintain demanding daily processing while they modernize and develop innovative Cloud solutions to meet and exceed customer requirements.
The Technology Solution
Treehouse Software and the ETS team developed a rigid testing plan to implement tcVISION and performed a Proof of Concept to measure the effectiveness of the data replication, considering the high volumes of data changes on the source databases. We collaborated on architecture requirements and installation steps. There were many considerations associated with this process, including monitoring, alarming, configuration options, high availability, measuring the impact to existing mainframe database performance, restart capability, and security. Concurrently, a team of subject matter experts worked on data mappings and translation of database designs from the IDMS network databases to AWS PostgreSQL relational databases. The goal was to be able to replicate two very large IBM mainframe IDMS databases real-time on two Cloud-based PostgreSQL databases. Implementation was done in phases, starting with one non-production database being replicated to the Cloud. High-volume testing was performed on the source database to simulate peak processing, replicating millions of transactions to the target PostgreSQL databases. Many technical challenges were encountered and resolved with outstanding technical assistance from the Treehouse Software support team. Once in production, the tcVISION product was able to deliver real-time data to the Cloud platform with no interruptions to the customer’s daily processing. The customer was then able to develop modern application features and functions in the Cloud to achieve independence from the legacy mainframe systems. Using new Cloud-based capabilities enabled the customer to be more agile with meeting new requirements.
Video: tcVISION Demonstration…
In this video, we show a tcVISION overview, then a demonstration of replication of mainframe data on AWS RDS for PostgreSQL:
Contact Treehouse Software for a tcVISION Demo Today!
No matter where you want your mainframe data to go – the Cloud, open systems, or any LUW target – tcVISION from Treehouse Software is your answer.
Just fill out the Treehouse Software tcVISION Demonstration Request Form and a Treehouse representative will contact you to set up a time for your online tcVISION demonstration.
Treehouse Software's Blog 