Transoft, a leader in helping companies evolve their existing legacy applications, has completed an application migration project for Mercer Limited ("Mercer"), part of MMC, the global professional services firm. Transoft migrated Mercer’s critical MIDAS Pensions administration application from an HP OpenVMS Alpha platform to an open and more flexible Linux and Windows Server environment. Transoft used its Legacy Liberator toolset for OpenVMS to automate the migration process and hence shorten delivery times, minimize costs and ensure the quality of the migration.

Rob Hussey, Mercer’s UK head of solutions delivery, commented, "Mercer manages more than 1,000 corporate pension schemes and our systems have been developed in-house specifically to provide the configurability required to support this diverse base. MIDAS, our primary administration system, ran on a dual Alpha cluster which was fast approaching capacity due to new business take-on and the addition of new self-service features. We had an aggressive IT investment programme including development of straight-through processing facilities and further enhancing our self-service capabilities. These would increase the load on the OpenVMS Alpha systems further and scalability was not going to be possible without a change of platform. The continued dependency on the Alpha system was viewed as an unacceptable business risk, but given the rich functionality of MIDAS there was no viable package replacement. Migration therefore offered us a fast, cost effective and low risk solution."

Hussey continued, "Our business drivers for the migration of the MIDAS application included moving to Mercer’s standard corporate deployment environment that could be scaled to meet increasing business demands, and would reduce our support and maintenance costs. The application would be positioned for future enhancement allowing Mercer's resources to concentrate on new technology solutions, benefiting the business, rather than diluting their efforts by continuing to maintain the older OpenVMS environment. Ultimately, the aim was to reduce the overall costs of obtaining enhanced services for Mercer's customers."

MIDAS was written in OpenVMS COBOL using the Rdb database and DCL scripting language and ran on HP Alpha server hardware. The COBOL programs and DCL made use of OpenVMS System Calls and Lexical Functions. In addition, the OneView Web-based application interfaced with COBOL programs via a third party middleware product.

Following a PathFinder assessment project of the MIDAS application and proof of concept project to de-risk the key technical elements, Transoft provided Mercer with a fixed price and timescale for its migration. MIDAS was migrated to a fully scalable Linux and Windows environment, with Oracle 10g RAC replacing the Rdb database running on Linux. Transoft used its Legacy Liberator toolset to convert the OpenVMS COBOL code to Micro Focus COBOL .NET (as Microsoft .NET managed code) which included Rdb embedded SQL converted to compliant Oracle SQL. The COBOL part of the MIDAS application was deployed on the Windows Server .NET platform. Transoft’s Open VMS deployment products provide support for the OpenVMS System Services and Lexical Functions, their interface to the COBOL programs, and the DCL emulator. The OneView Web application no longer requires the third-party middleware, but makes Web Service calls directly via Microsoft IIS to the .NET-based C# and COBOL programs. The migrated application was deployed on Linux database servers and Windows Server 2003 application servers. The server infrastructure was HP DL580s.

The new development at Mercer is in Microsoft .NET and C#, with Web Services and XML, within the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE. It was therefore an imperative that MIDAS was migrated to Windows. By converting the OpenVMS COBOL to Micro Focus COBOL .NET it can not only now be developed within Visual Studio, adding to developer productivity, but also it can interoperate with enhancements made in C#.

Transoft completed the migration and acceptance of MIDAS on time and to budget, after which Mercer undertook further extensive system and usability testing of the newly migrated application, and after an initial implementation of 25 pension schemes, the remaining schemes went live a month later.

Hussey continued, "With the migration of the MIDAS application, we retained our existing rich business logic and business uniqueness, increasing the return on the investment in this application. Additionally, the business continued to make changes to the application on the HP Alpha platform during most of the migration timeline, as the Transoft migration process did not demand a code freeze at the start of the project and there was no retraining of users required. Finally, the feedback from the business users is that the performance of the migrated system is significantly improved and we now have a fully scalable environment to support future growth."

Paul Bradbrook, Transoft’s Managing Director, commented, "Companies like Mercer, with critical applications on a near end-of-life platform, have three options. They can rewrite their code from scratch, replace with a package or migrate. Mercer, like many other organizations, found that migration proved to be the most cost-effective and lowest risk option. And migration, as we have found at Mercer, is usually the first step in an evolving modernization strategy."

Hussey concludes, "Through the successful migration and roll-out of the MIDAS administration platform, Transoft has demonstrated to Mercer that it has the methodology, software tools and skills to deliver complex projects on time, to budget and to an agreed level of quality. And as the migrated MIDAS application is now positioned on Windows, our platform of choice, we are already seeing accelerated enhancement and integration with other core IT systems, gaining further return on its investment."

About Transoft
Transoft, part of IRIS, is a leading provider of innovative and pioneering modernization solutions, with hundreds of thousands of organizations worldwide using our products and services.

Our aim is to enable our customers to increase business value and maintain competitive advantage by maximizing the potential of existing applications. This provides rapid return on investment, reduced costs, improved productivity and efficiency, and the ability to manage operational risk.

With over 20 years’ experience, and expert staff dedicated to servicing the needs of organizations with legacy systems, we pride ourselves on a tailored approach to customer service. Major organizations such as The Gap, L’Oreal, Boeing and Balfour Beatty have enjoyed the business benefits of a Transoft application modernization strategy. We work with a large network of VARs, System Integrators, ISVs and technical partners to offer unparalleled solutions.

As an organization, the IRIS values are Customer Focus, Honesty & Integrity, Innovation, Passion and Service Excellence

About Mercer
Mercer is a leading global provider of consulting, outsourcing and investment services. Mercer works with clients to solve their most complex benefit and human capital issues, designing and helping manage health, retirement and other benefits.

Mercer outsourcing business is a market leading provider of benefits outsourcing and is recognized for its consultative approach to solving clients’ most complex benefits administration challenges. The services they offer include pension plan administration, flexible benefits, absence management, scheme closures/ wind-ups and bundled pension solutions. Mercer has over 1,300 employees looking after over 1,000 schemes and 1.6m members.

Mercer Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., which lists its stock (ticker symbol: MMC) on the New York, Chicago and London stock exchanges.