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BHF-BANK migrates from z/OS to Unix

Initial situation

The traditional domain of IBM mainframe systems – with a strong focus on data processing in banks and insurance companies, public administrations and other large organizations – which is driven by business requirements dictated by digital processes, has been experiencing a shift to new operating platforms. True to this trend, leading financial service provider BHF-BANK decided to migrate to a different operating platform as part of introducing a new core banking system.

Today, homogeneous IT landscapes based on a technology stack (e.g. using IBM, Microsoft or Unix/Linux systems) are no longer the norm. Most customers with a longstanding hosting background now employ hybrid infrastructures comprising e.g. home-grown programs run on the host combined with server-based applications operated on other systems. BHF-BANK started taking this to the next level by migrating all operations to a server-based operating system platform. The decision for this strategy was made after selecting a new core banking system based on Unix/Linux.

The comprehensive migration project also requires the bank to set up all scheduling, output management and print distribution products on the new platform. Migrating the new scheduling system alone will generate approximately four man years of work. Beta Systems Professional Services extensively supports BHF-BANK in successfully executing this project. The switch is scheduled for completion by the end of 2015. Replacing home-grown, host-based programs with modern, standards-based core banking software – this is presently the key pillar of the modernization strategy at BHF-BANK and many other major banks.

The reason for this unbridled growth is that it allows financial institutions to reduce expenditures for system operation and maintenance, implement new business processes much faster and better meet increasing legal requirements. This is crucial given the increasingly strict internal and external compliance regulations that govern this industry. Therefore, meeting new provisions by means of home-grown host applications incurs great costs while failing to deliver an immediate benefit to customers.

A modern Unix-based system such as Avaloq, which BHF-BANK started introducing in early 2015, allows the bank to meet challenges including compliance, transparency and traceability of business cases much more effectively.

Challenge

The traditional domain of IBM mainframe systems – with a strong focus on data processing in banks and insurance companies, public administrations and other large organizations – which is driven by business requirements dictated by digital processes, has been experiencing a shift to new operating platforms. True to this trend, leading financial service provider BHF-BANK decided to migrate to a different operating platform as part of introducing a new core banking system.

Implementation

Beta UX Suite BHF-BANK: Undertaking a technology shift of this scale naturally also has a direct impact on which operating platform to use. Beta Systems is ready, whatever the platform of choice: The Beta UX Suite delivers software tools for scheduling, job log and output management as well as archiving in Unix environments, complementing the traditional host-based product range. These tools help companies to carry out this transition as smoothly as technologically possible.

BHF-BANK serves as an excellent example. It has been using a comprehensive portfolio of Beta Systems products to manage its host-based IT processes for nearly 20 years. And now, they are moving to a new system landscape with the aid of the Beta Systems Professional Services team, which has developed a dedicated standardized procedure based on their own tools and checklists that reflects the experience gained in many projects. The procedure facilitates successful scheduling & batch processing, log management, output management as well as document archiving migrations.

The first step in the BHF-BANK migration project involved replacing the former document archive with Beta UX ContentMaster. This took precedence over introducing the new core banking solution and replacing the z/OS platform. The legacy system was introduced in 1994 and has not seen any further development by the manufacturer for a long time. The distributed Beta UX ContentMaster solution from Beta Systems ensures forward-looking, legally compliant archiving of a broad range of different document types including account statements, securities notifications, forms and scanned incoming documents such as remittance slips.

This solution is already supporting daily operations at BHF-BANK. A total of approx. 80 million documents were transferred to the new archive. LogMaster and Beta UX DistributionMaster are additional modules of the Beta UX suite for job log management and output management. On the Unix platform, they seamlessly perform the tasks previously handled by Beta 92 and 93. Thanks to the positive experience made with Beta Systems in the past, the bank decided to use these tools to guarantee a seamless transition process.

Beta UX LogMaster offers functions for automatic log processing, indexing and analysis, automatic log event response, audit-compliant archiving in the original format, company-wide provision via web browser and many more features. When it comes to evaluating and archiving job and process logs on the hardware, operating system and application level, the tool is an invaluable aid. It enables full documentation and evaluation of business processes, thus driving process optimization and helping the operator meet internal GC standards as well as legal regulations.

The switch to Beta UX DistributionMaster also greatly improved output management quality. While the predecessor operated under z/OS mainly served as a ‘load distributor’ by allocating the incoming documents to the respective distribution channel (printer, archive…), BHF-BANK can now use defined logic to control document dispatch. The documents are read and the assigned based on certain criteria. Beta Systems adjusts the standard output management functions according to the customer’s requirements.

Some examples of how bank customers benefit from this: Thanks to bundling, they will now receive a single batch mailing or, even more conveniently, a PDF via e-mail rather than five different mails. Another task that needed to be carried out right alongside implementing job log and output management was to set up a new scheduling scheme for the core banking system. On the mainframe BHF-BANK used a z/OS-based scheduler to control the core banking processes. As part of the migration, the batch processes needed to be transferred to a new, non-centralized scheduling system outside the mainframe context. “Such a transfer requires painstaking planning while taking the future operating concept into account,” explains Nikolaus Merz, IT Production Planning at BHF-BANK, continuing, “first, you must separate applications into those that will still be used in the Unix environment and those that will be phased out.”

The next task is to extract the workflows from the legacy scheduler in an automated fashion. Here, the bank used the XINFO IT information system from HORIZONT GmbH.

Solution

Undertaking a technology shift of this scale naturally also has a direct impact on which operating platform to use. Beta Systems is ready, whatever the platform of choice: The Beta UX Suite delivers software solutions for scheduling, job log and output management as well as archiving in Unix environments, complementing the traditional mainframe-based product range.

The migration was implemented in collaboration with our workload automation partner arvato Systems. The Beta UX Suite – which comprises the ContentMaster, DistributionMaster and LogMaster components – facilitates the seamless transition to Unix. The suite’s complementing streamworks job scheduling software from arvato Systems paves the way from mere scheduling to full-fledged workload automation.

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