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SANJAY RUWALI: Hello, my name is Sanjay Ruwali.
At Wipro, I lead Mainframe and Midrange Services.
Three important aspects, as I see them--
first one, building a holistic business case
around modernization.
Let's start with the problem statement.
Why do we want to modernize mainframe?
Is it about cost, skills, legacy code, or mainframe
is not fitting well into your digital journey?
It could be a combination of reasons.
Building a mainframe modernization plan,
which will deliver against these objectives,
is the critical first step.
The technical solution and commercial case--
so whether it's in-place modernization
or you're moving away from platform Z
by means of re-host, rewrite, or refactor,
these will predominantly be the solutions under consideration.
Besides the technical solution detailing,
it's important to identify and build a commercial case
around the whole project.
So now let's talk about cost versus timeline.
For a large and multi-year project
like mainframe modernization, it's
possible to get into situations, like project
delays, underachieve targets, solution changes, et cetera.
A good financial modeling for the project
is very, very essential.
When it comes to mainframe operating cost,
it's largely about the software, which
is the biggest spend on mainframe,
followed by mainframe hardware and hardware maintenance.
Do you know all your software and hardware costs
for the next five years?
What contractual flexibility do you
have with your software suppliers
if your mainframe organization eventually
starts reducing the mainframe utilization?
Do you get a flexibility there from your vendors?
These are some very important questions.
Knowing them up front and including them
in the business case will go a long way
in assessing the success of your modernization program.
Do you have all the risks identified for the migration
phase?
And do you have a related mitigation plan?
Continued service availability during migration,
that's been the biggest concern most mainframe app owners have.
Now, you may have been operating mainframe
for decades in the traditional way.
Post migration to cloud, your support structure
will go through some important changes.
If mainframe re-host is used, you
may still require some of the mainframe-centric skills
at target.
Application and data security will be a lot different
on mainframe versus on cloud.
Your disaster recovery and business continuity planning
will require an update as well.
My third point is about orchestration,
which is a very vital aspect for a large and complex project
like mainframe modernization.
This typically involves effort from multiple entities,
sometimes multiple forms.
I'll give you a case example here.
For a recently concluded large mainframe modernization project
for a US customer, as a global system integrator,
we at Wipro orchestrated the entire effort
across multiple functions and vendors.
Now, if you notice, there are more than eight
different parties involved here.
And it's very important to bring everybody together and work
towards the eventual outcome.
So that's the role of the orchestrator.
I'll end this session with a question.
So for your modernization project,
who is on the driver's seat?