iSeries Modernization has been on the radar of CTOs/CIOs for quite some time now. There are many types of modernization techniques and cloud migration is one of them. There are three main types of migration approach to relook your AS400 architecture: Re-hosting, batch job migration, Re-architecture. Re-hosting and job migration are the quickest migration method with negligible amount of coding and isn’t extensive, neither expensive.

Application re-architecture, however, involves changing the entire architecture of the application with extensive modification done to source code without altering its external behavior. Typically, most legacy applications have monolithic codes; due to this, it is extremely difficult for these applications to be upgraded and when moved to cloud they may still have issues, which can take a very long time to pinpoint and fix since the code isn’t modified to fit the cloud native microservices architecture. Making your iSeries applications cloud native can enable your application take the advantage of all the capabilities that the cloud provides, which include scalability, security, to name a few.

Why do you need to rethink you AS400 Architecture?

  • Superior Application performance: By re-hosting the AS400 applications, you are just getting rid of the hardware, but you can’t unleash the potential of cloud since your applications is still not programmed to be cloud native and hence rely on hardware and software. Batch job migration will again help you manage applications better due to workload transfer, but scalability, flexibility will still be out of reach for non-cloud native as400 applications.
  • Better security: By making the as400 application cloud native, the applications can utilize the security of the cloud to the fullest.
  • Hassle Free Integration: Because a microservices architecture is fully enabled on the cloud platform, the re-architected as400 application won’t have any integration issues.
  • Increased Productivity: Productivity rises when developers work in a cloud-native environment, as the code used can be clearly understood, and with the ability to integrate their software with other cloud resources, thereby leveraging existing functions rather than coding them into their own applications.
  • Increased time to market: With cloud native environment, developers can build and deploy applications at a faster rate which in turn speeds up time to market.

Below are the key elements involved in Re-Architecture the as400 applications to make them cloud native:

Micro-services: Modern applications run logics without worrying about the hardware & servers, and the computing time is inversely proportionate to the costs involved. This can be done by using a cloud- based API gateway and serverless applications with the like of AWS Lambda/Azure functions, etc. These can decouple business functionalities and can be managed at larger scales using services that open- source clouds offer.

Application, containers, and queues: Message queues is a form of asynchronous service to services communication used primarily in serverless and microservices architecture. Containers are typical option for deploying software and managing them, they are used to abstract applications from physical environment in which they are running. The cloud container services (also known as dockers) along with message queues are core to the execution of any process & application service.

Data persistence & Data Lake: When you create an automation application, you can enable data persistence function for your data variable objects. This effectively keeps the data intact even when the server goes down or crashes. Data lakes helps with housing extremely large data volumes. The cloud container services (also known as dockers) along with message queues are core to the execution of any process & application service. These can decouple business functionalities and can be managed at larger scales using services that open-source clouds offer.

Data analytics, artificial intelligence & machine Learning: Data analytics, AI and ML can assist with making as400 applications cloud native. When the information is checked for wellbeing and quality, the subsequent stage is to create numerous bits of knowledge for navigation. More up to date strategies and rule-driven methods like machine learning and AI reasoning can assist companies with performing predictive analytics and AI driven automation on top of the current framework activity.

The Approach to Rethink AS400 Architecture - Yay or Nay?

As mentioned above, if you are considering AS400 migration, re-architecting the iSeries applications to be cloud native helps organizations take full advantage of the various benefits that the cloud has to offer. If you are looking to migrate your AS400/iSeries to cloud, but not sure what approach to take, drop us a note, our team maybe the light at the end of the tunnel.