Treehouse Software Eases the Challenges for Mainframe-to-Modern Platform Transformation Programs for Systems Integrators

Unlock Your Customers’ Business Value Faster with Frequent Production Deliveries, Using Agile Methods

Treehouse Software’s product, tcVISION has proven to be vital for the ease and success of many mainframe modernization initiatives.

A big problem for a Systems Integrator (SI), or any mainframe modernization vendor, is the myriad of dependencies between mainframe and open systems data and components. As part of a mainframe modernization project, these vendors need to determine the ordering of phases or waves of applications to be migrated. There are often shared databases that can make it very difficult to move one set of applications without moving others. This can result in the conclusion that they must go with a “big bang” approach, which can lead to a bid for a program with one large delivery at the end with all of the integrated components in place. This is very unappealing to customers as they are paying out big dollars without the corresponding business value of a production deployment. This approach also significantly increases the project risk.

With Treehouse Software’s bi-directional replication product, tcVISION, a subset of applications can be migrated, and tcVISION’s data synchronization capabilities can be used to bridge specific shared legacy mainframe databases to the modern database versions on open systems. This allows them to deliver in phases, thus getting modernized modules in production faster. In addition, it decreases risk as issues can be found much faster with the more frequent production deployments. When the last modules are deployed to production, they would no longer need the synchronization.

As an example, a large Treehouse customer is currently involved in gradually modernizing and replacing a set of applications, and is using a similar approach. The customer will be using their mainframe Adabas database synced with Oracle on Linux, while in the process of modernizing the applications. Treehouse Software’s experts and tcVISION product are making sure the customer’s transition goes smoothly and seamlessly.

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Enterprise ETL and Real-Time Data Replication Between Virtually Any Source and Target

tcVISION supports a vast array of integration scenarios throughout the enterprise, providing easy and fast data migration for mainframe application modernization projects and enabling bi-directional data replication between mainframe, Linux, Unix and Windows platforms. This innovative technology offers comprehensive abilities to identify and capture changes occurring in mainframe and relational databases, then publish the required information to an impressive variety of targets, both on-premise and Cloud-based.

tcVISION acquires data in bulk or via change data capture methods, including in real time, from virtually any IBM mainframe data source (Software AG Adabas, IBM DB2, IBM VSAM, IBM IMS/DB, CA IDMS, CA Datacom, sequential files), and transform and deliver to virtually any target. In addition, the same product can extract and replicate data from a variety of non-mainframe sources, including Adabas LUW, Hadoop/HDFS, MongoDB, Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 LUW and DB2 BLU, IBM Informix, PostgreSQL, etc.

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Visit the Treehouse Software website for more information on tcVISION, or contact us to discuss your needs.

Treehouse Participates in CA IDMS and CA Datacom Technical Conferences

By Wayne Lashley, Chief Business Development Officer for Treehouse Software

Recently I, and others from Treehouse, had the pleasure of attending the CA IDMS Technical Conference in Framingham, MA, as well as the CA Datacom Technical Conference in Plano, TX. Both of these were free events organized by the IUA and CADRE (the IDMS and Datacom user associations), with event hosting and assistance provided by CA Technologies, to provide customers with an opportunity for training, product briefings and technical discussions with product management, product development and with other customers.

I have to commend the IUA, CADRE and CA for their initiative and efforts in putting on these events. With the changes made to the content and focus of CA World in 2014, IDMS and Datacom customers had limited opportunities to learn about product roadmaps and to interact with product representatives. The technical conferences were well-organized, offered excellent technical content—including a full day of condensed product training for both novices and advanced technicians—and even included some social time.

Above: CA Datacom Event

In representing a vendor to these CA customer groups—we have a number of Datacom and IDMS customers using tcACCESS and tcVISION—, I was especially appreciative of the opportunity to get more involved in the community and to have our own technical people benefit from the training and interaction.

I was impressed with the level and quality of resourcing that CA is putting into its development and support teams. Both product groups have adopted Agile methodology for delivering, in a timely way, product capabilities and features that customers “want and will use”. Furthermore, with emerging functionality in IDMS (DB), IDMS/DC, ADS, Datacom and Ideal, there was ample demonstration that CA is embracing modern standards and trends such as SQL, Web services and Big Data.

Above: CA IDMS Event

Readers from IDMS and Datacom shops that were unaware of, or unable to attend, the technical conferences should note that the success demonstrated by the recent events is likely to result in similar technical conferences being scheduled for the future. I encourage you to take advantage of them!

Treehouse Software – Your Mainframe / LUW Data Integration Partner

To learn more about tcACCESS and tcVISION, or to request a demonstration, Contact Treehouse Software today.