Welcome to another edition of Talsco Weekly

Modernization: When to Justify a Legacy Upgrade. Modernization Starts with the Business, and the Tech Follows.
Digital: The priorities driving digital acceleration.
Cloud: Migrating LPARs to the Cloud.
Development: An Introduction to Multithreading in Node.js.

Modernization

Since the early 1970’s “mainframes and other legacy hardware and software have successfully run global businesses. Virtualization and distributed Intel servers have tried to displace many of these systems through the years.”

Legacy systems can be defined in two ways:

Old or Antiquated
Build to Last

Built to Last, is the definition that speaks the truth in the IBM i ecosystem.

“A CIO in the hospitality industry told me that his mainframe “hadn’t gone down in over 30 years” — a phenomenal feat, given that the company’s mainframe processes hundreds of thousands of transactions each day.”

“Forty-four of the top 50 banks, healthcare organizations and government agencies, and all top 10 insurance companies use mainframes for mission-critical business. Mainframes also process 30 billion transactions a day and run 90% of all credit card transactions.”

As this article points out, legacy systems are not just mainframes. Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, you name it; if they have been around for 20 years, they can easily be considered legacy.

So, when is it time to upgrade your legacy system?

There are four scenarios where an upgrade to your legacy system is the best choice.

When the system is the best in class
When you have heavy custom code that is the “”secret sauce” for your business”
When it is cost prohibitive to change
When the system can integrate

Sound familiar?

Modernization Starts with the Business, and the Tech Follows

Bingo. Modernization does indeed start with the business.

“Businesses that can’t keep up with these evolving needs face long-term headwinds in terms of competitiveness. Implementing a modernization strategy is paramount for companies in these situations, but where do you start?”

The problem:

“Many IBM i shops now find themselves in a situation where it’s time to modernize. Their existing business processes were created to match the environments that existed when the businesses were created. If the companies didn’t gradually adapt to change that occurred over years, they may now find themselves quite far behind.”

Where does your company fall?

Digital

The priorities driving digital acceleration

“When it comes to digitalization, no company is a blank canvas — the world has experienced varied periods of disruption that have accelerated the adoption of new technologies across the board.”

Over the past few years, there have been a variety of fundamental forces driving digitization on a global scale:

Digital Security
Customer Experience
Platform Scalability
Remote Employee Access

For enterprises that rely on the IBM i “there is an increased awareness of the importance of virtual solutions, which is causing the acceleration of the digital revolution. It has been noted that while digital acceleration is a goal for many, this must be accompanied by a few core priorities when implementing a new digital platform. Companies must thus complete their digital acceleration journey with these priorities in mind to enhance the result and output for both companies and customers.”

Cloud

Migrating LPARs to the Cloud

“Where are you on your cloud journey? Have you just begun thinking about it? Are all of your systems currently running in the public cloud? Are you running a proof of concept or some test and development machines in the cloud? Have you decided against the cloud altogether and for now you are choosing to run your LPARs in your own data centers? Even when you are running your own machines in your own data centers, there can be advantages to thinking of your own environment as a private cloud.”

Development

An Introduction to Multithreading in Node.js

For those diving into the world of Node.js, this article explains, what multithreading is and how Node.js handles asynchronous operations.

Also discussed is Node.js worker-threads module to create and manage threads.

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