Mainframe to Cloud Migrations: Expert Insights from AWS, Confluent, and Precisely

Key Takeaways:

• Enhance capabilities through partnerships: AWS, Confluent, and Precisely accelerate mainframe modernization efforts, providing you with essential tools for success.
• Minimize migration disruptions through phased implementation, starting with low-risk, high-value projects.
• A strategic and tailored approach to mainframe modernization can enhancing business agility and innovation.

Replicating mainframe data to cloud environments is a challenging but transformative undertaking that boosts your organization’s operational agility and innovation.

To explore this topic, experts from AWS, Confluent, and Precisely came together to discuss the challenges and opportunities of this migration. The panel included:

• David Yahalom, Principal Product Manager at AWS
• Jeremy Hogan, Staff Solutions Engineer at Confluent
• Ashwin Ramachandran, Senior Director of Product Management at Precisely

Each participant brought a fresh and unique perspective to the conversation, and together they shared countless valuable insights that you can apply to maximize the benefits of migrating your mainframe data to the cloud.

You can watch the full session for everything you need to know, and read on below for a sneak-peek at some of the top takeaways.

Unlocking the Potential of Mainframe Modernization

Mainframe modernization is crucial if your goal is to integrate legacy systems with modern cloud technologies.

As David Yahalom of AWS shared, “We see our customers asking for AWS-made capabilities to help them along their modernization process for mainframe applications. These applications are some of the most business-critical for our customers, and we see them as existing on a nexus of criticality and complexity with decades of technical depth.”

Yahalom goes on to emphasize that each modernization journey is unique, which is why AWS offers various solutions, from refactoring to data replication and beyond, that meet the needs of a wide range of new innovative business initiatives in the cloud.

Strategies to Minimize Downtime and Disruption

Minimizing disruption during the migration involves strategic planning and phased implementations. Panelists agreed that starting small, with tightly scoped high-value projects, is the best approach.

Jeremy Hogan of Confluent elaborates, “Identify a fairly low risk, low lift workload. If you need to service a mobile app that just needs read-only access, that’s very expensive to run directly to the mainframe. So that’s an immense cost reduction if you just take that and move it off to the cloud.”

Smaller steps can produce impactful progress, without disruptions, as you start setting your sights on even larger initiatives.

More Powerful Together: Partnership Synergies with AWS, Confluent, and Precisely

The synergy between AWS, Confluent, and Precisely is a strong example of how strategic partnerships can enhance your organization’s capabilities during the mainframe modernization journey. Here’s what our panelists had to say about how critical this collaboration is for customers:

“Last year we launched two solutions that integrate with Precisely CDC database replication technology – that’s AWS Mainframe Modernization Data Replication for both mainframe and IBM I. Our collaboration with Precisely has allowed us to reduce the time to market in providing those critical solutions for our customers,” says Yahalom.

Ramachandran adds, “We are heavily engaged with the AWS team … figuring out ways in which we can continue to differentiate the solution in the market and address a broader array of customer use cases that relates to mainframe modernization.”

Rounding that out, Hogan says, “With Precisely available as a native service on AWS, you can easily deploy Confluent alongside—either fully managed, cloud-native Confluent Cloud through AWS Marketplace or a self-managed software offering, Confluent Platform. Once Precisely is deployed, it’s point-and-click easy to start syncing into Confluent … Partnerships don’t get much tighter than that when there’s two parties, let alone three companies that work together like this..”

What does all of this mean for you? The real-time data replication and accessibility that you need in the cloud, for better outcomes from your modernization initiatives.

Overcoming Cultural and Technical Challenges

“We hear from our customers that they have challenges with their existing mainframe workloads,” says Yahalom. “These include high operational costs, decades of technical debt, a lack of agility, reduced capabilities to innovate at a fast enough pace for them … and also there is an ever-increasing shortage in skill sets.” Mainframe modernization services need to be tailored to help customers overcome those challenges head-on so that customers can reduce costs and respond faster to market changes.

And it’s not only technical challenges that hinder progress. Hogan and Ramachandran both point out roadblocks within the cultural mindset of an organization, and a common reluctance to embrace new technologies.

Ramachandran stresses the importance of gaining trust within an organization to successfully implement modernization initiatives, suggesting that showing the potential of what can be achieved with modernized data practices can help in gradually shifting the cultural perspective. That way, you make sure that the team clearly sees the benefits rather than feeling threatened by changes to their traditional workflows.

Data Integrity and Real-Time Data Replication

Data integrity – data with maximum accuracy, consistency, and context – helps power better decision-making across your business.

But as Ramachandran points out, integrating and replicating data are fundamental first steps; without access to the data, ensuring its integrity is impossible. Advanced capabilities like geocoding, geo enrichment, and spatial analytics also contribute to data enrichment, which provides broader business context.

And data observability, he says, is also key in building trust with data users: “What’s my replication latency looking like? What does my backlog look like? Am I operating on data that’s up to date or is it behind, and if it’s behind, how far behind am I? Those are the kinds of things we try to surface to users so they can have confidence in the replication itself.” 

Ready to Make the Migration?

If your business is in the process of replicating mainframe data to cloud environments or you’re determining your best course of action, watch the full roundtable discussion with our expert panel for even more invaluable insights. Then, get ready to transform your organization’s approach to mainframe data and leverage the cloud for greater innovation and efficiency.