http://ibagroupit.com/print/en/case-studies/industry/finance/banking-system-migration.html

Banking System Migration

Industry
Banking

Customer

Our customer is an international commercial bank located in Germany. The bank engages in all types of banking and financial service activities without regional restrictions. With a balance sheet of more than 320 billion Euros, offices in all important commercial centers in Germany, and more than 10,000 employees, it is rated among the ten largest German banks and among the 50 largest credit institutions worldwide.

Project Overview

The project was designed to migrate 50,000 lines of code from CA EasyTrieve to COBOL. Seeking to cut total cost of the software ownership and to eliminate expenses for Computer Associates' EasyTrieve applications support, the bank made a decision to migrate its EasyTrieve code to COBOL. The task was to migrate the source code without changing the logic. The system was comprised of 110 independent modules that generated reports. The converted modules were to produce the same results as the source routines. Another requirement was that the modules were to be converted based on FrameWork (a standard template program that prints reports elaborated by the bank). Names of variables were to comply with the name conventions developed by the bank.

Project Execution

The project was implemented in the following three stages.

  1. Development of a conversion tool to automate most of the routine work. This stage took about two months. Five people were involved: 1 programmer (writing the converter code and the analyzing EasyTrieve constructions), 3 programmers (performing the analysis of EasyTrieve constructions), and 1 analyst (providing the analysis of EasyTrieve constructions and customer communications). To implement the converter, awk + cygwin for Windows2000 and Pearl were used.
  2. Mass conversion and simultaneous debugging of converted modules. As the modules were independent, programmers from several departments were assigned to execute the task. In addition, students undergoing practical training in the company were involved. A total of 15 people implemented the project; however, 93 percent of the work was done by four programmers of the Mainframe Department. This stage took also two months.
  3. Debugging and testing. Four programmers and a team leader were involved. The stage took one month.

Project Results

The project was implemented on time and on schedule. A number of modules were commissioned prior to the deadlines set up in the schedule. The customer was satisfied both with the work process and the results. A representative of the customer said: “As you have formed a productive team with good knowledge, we look forward to continue this cooperation with you in a second conversion project.”