A 70% reduction in IT expenditure may seem impossible for any company these days but one international financial services organisation is seeking to do just that.
More specifically that stated aim is:
"...to reduce and maintain an [IT] expense ratio of between three and five percent across the division (down from 10 to 15 percent), and to reduce back office costs significantly. Further benefits anticipated are improved data flow within the division, exploiting our information assets, streamlining existing business processes, better client integration using Internet technology and establishing a global, low-cost environment."
How? - Migration of legacy COBOL code to a distributed computing environment.
Reduce Costs
The primary objectives for migration projects are always the same - to improve operational efficiency and reduce the cost of doing business. The primary ways we can help you do this are:
- Reduction of IT hardware and software costs through the standardisation of IT platforms
- Corresponding reductions in headcount
Improve Information Assets
Accurate information is reliable information hence much more useful. It is information on which business decisions can be made with confidence. High quality information that communicates something important rather than something irrelevant is key, as if offers knowledge and, as the saying goes, knowledge is power. We can help you in three ways regarding the quality of information:
- Improve the quality of the information at every point in the process
- Provide the means for capturing clean, accurate and consistent data to improve decision-making
- Automate the end-to-end flow of data , transforming that data into information and hence useful knowledge
Flexible and Future-Proof
Today's business lanscape is truly within a global village, requiring collaboration with all manner of complementary organisations and, as the rate of change only seems to increase, puts ever increasing demands on companies to be extremely agile and hence able to respond to dynamic and unpredictable markets. It is in this evolving and changing world that we can deliver truly enormous benefits to owners of legacy applications by helping them to:
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React faster to new business opportunities - achieved via reduced complexity
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Deliver an IT architecture to enable, rather than choke, business evolution
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Build IT systems that can change and be adapted to meets new business requirements and they occur
Invariably such changes are easier to develop and maintain within a uniform system comprising industry standard third party components such as Oracle database, BEA or IBM application integration, Java language, and Sun servers. The alternative - integration and further enhancement of multi-platform applications - although perhaps offering reduced initial investment, will invariably result in further complications in the future development of the over IT landscape. The end result of this is reduced flexibility, adaptability and productivity.
Enabling E-Business
The collaboration demanded from today's businesses operating within the global village does not just come with flexible and adaptable systems. Although that is important, it is the power of the Internet that has provided a step-change in the way that organisations do busiess with each other, exchange information and interact for mutual benefit. Whilst the internet as a whole was originally over-hyped, iti is not under-valued with much nervousness around IT investment in Internet technologies.
The application of our tools to legacy code unlocks the value in the applications, enabling them to exist in an Internet-ready environment without huge investment in specialist e-commerce applications. In addition, they can then be connected to existing e-business architectures, ERP applications, B2B exchanges, etc. This can mean access to all the opportunities that e-business brings - closer customer relationships, the locking in of suppliers, new channels to market, new market sectors, etc - all because we help you connect legacy applications to an e-business world.