OXFORD, UK – MOVE2OPEN (m2o), a leading provider of data migration and application conversion solutions, announced the successful transfer of Allgaier away from the Mainframe and onto the Windows Platform. Allgaier is a systems supplier in the metal forming sector of the automotive industry, producing pressed parts and ready-for-installation components. In 2004 Allgaier migrated its Mainframe IT into a standard ERP Solution. Some applications were not covered by the standard ERP solution, so Allgaier decided to use I2C from m2o and NetExpress from Micro Focus to transfer them to the Windows platform and away from the mainframe.

Automated conversion speeds up migration away from the Mainframe environment

The existing mainframe system at Allgaier lacked flexibility. “The move from traditional Mainframe Systems to Server based solutions is becoming a popular way to achieve cost savings and increase application performance and availability,” comments Huw Price, Managing Director of m2o. The new ERP solution helped Allgaier to reduce costs dramatically. Expenditure on hardware in particular is now much lower. The migration from an IBM Multiprise 3000 to Windows Servers took 13 months in total.

In order to make a clean start on the new ERP solution, Allgaier decided to keep some old material and project data on the mainframe for up to two years. This proved to be very expensive, because it was necessary to keep an IBM-T3-Server going and all the software licences running. As a consequence, Allgaier decided to migrate this project data to Oracle as well. With the help of Saxonia Systems AG and the I2C tool from m2o the data was migrated from CA-Datacom to Oracle and the programs were translated from CA-IDEAL to Micro Focus COBOL in one month.

Application behaves exactly the same as it did on the Mainframe

Ensuring the application behaved the same as it did on the Mainframe was a priority. At the same time the environment had to still be familiar to end users to minimise disruption. The 'historic' project programs are now running on Windows 2003 servers and the application behaves exactly as it did on the mainframe. The changes have not affected end users at all, and application performance has even improved after the migration. “The cost savings of not having to renew a Datacom licence or maintain an IBM-T3-server have been significant,” concludes Huw Price. Because there has been no disruptive change for end-users Allgaier has not incurred any additional costs or delays relating to re-training.


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