Case Study - National Manufacturing Company

Project: Legacy Mainframe to Open Systems Migration Services

Executive Summary Our client is manufacturer that operates a nationwide distribution network and world-class manufacturing facilities throughout the United States. They are the second-largest office furniture manufacturer in North America, as well as the nation's leading manufacturer and marketer of gas and wood-burning fireplaces. They have also been recognized as one of the 400 Best Big Companies in America for the six consecutive years, and one of America's Most Admired Companies by Fortune magazine.

The Business Challenge Our client strives for innovation and excellence in their industry. They often utilize new and emerging technologies to drive the corporate directive, to improve quality, and to speed delivery of their products. The current legacy system was heavily customized to meet the needs of the business, but was difficult to maintain and had many technical limitations. Our client was beginning to exceed the processing capabilities of its legacy mainframe and was nearing the end of a licensing period. Our client desired to move off the mainframe platform to an open system in order to address both the capacity issues as well as the technical limitations. The challenge was to migrate to a new platform capable of providing the functionality to improve quality and delivery while mitigating cost and business risks.

Challenge(s) Being Met Experienced FirstShore resources were used to migrate existing applications from the legacy platform to an open (IBM AIX) platform. This project allowed our client to avoid the sizable re-licensing requirement from their current mainframe vendor. FirstShore resources were able to move to a hardware platform that is better, cheaper, and faster than their current mainframe while keeping their application software investment intact. All of this was achieved well below the financial parameters of the re-licensing proposal, allowing our client to realize an immediate ROI for the project.

The FirstShore team was called upon to participate in the full project development process. The FirstShore delivery model provided a flexible methodology to achieve the desired results. Offsite FirstShore resources were utilized in conjunction with on-site client resources, with periodic site visits by the project manager and FirstShore management team, and as-needed on-site working sessions to address technical complexities as they arose. This approach freed existing client associates to focus on the daily production business needs,

Services Provided
Outsourced Technical Competency relative to the following:

• Project Management
• Technical Managers, Programmers/Analysts and Testers
• Programming, Unit Testing and Documentation

Benefits Being Delivered
First Shore minimized client risk while providing the support to deliver quality technology services to the enterprise in a cost effective manner:

• Reduced IT support costs
• Improved client ability to focus on key strategic business initiatives
• Allowed client to retain key employees to focus on the business while FirstShore performed the majority of the technical services for the project

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