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How Legacy Hardware Migration Solved Critical M&A Challenges: A Global Product Manufacturer’s Success Story

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    Overview iconHow Legacy Hardware Migration Solved Critical M&A Challenges?

    Transform M&A challenges into a competitive advantage through the migration of legacy hardware, while preserving critical applications. A global manufacturer with 60,000+ products successfully migrated their outdated COBOL workloads to AWS within 6 weeks. They seamlessly streamlined acquisitions with zero downtime, eliminated costly data centers, and improved efficiency, agility, and scalability.

    Using the Stromasys Charon PAR emulation solution and AWS CloudEndure, they preserved existing applications, such as HP-UX and MPE, while gaining cloud scalability and agility. With this legacy hardware migration strategy, they were able to smooth their M&A integrations while making significant operational savings, which they found to be more cost-efficient than rewriting. (Optional if it looks content heavy, remove the highlighted section).

    Article icon Articles

    Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) promise business growth and market expansion, but their core value derives from the integration of modern technologies. At the same time, the outdated legacy infrastructure poses numerous challenges, including operational risks, unplanned downtime, and costly maintenance.

    A recent industry research report has stated that more than 70% of M&A deals fail to create value, with technology integration challenges being the primary reason. For organizations planning legacy hardware migration, eliminate this challenge and ensure business continuity, improve efficiency, and secure sensitive information during M&A technology integration.

    But what happens when your most critical business application becomes your most significant obstacle to hindering potential growth? It became a pressing issue for one of the world’s largest product manufacturers, which has over 60,000 products used in homes and businesses, during a crucial merger and acquisition (M&A) transaction.

    In this blog, we will explore how this global product manufacturing company transformed its infrastructure by legacy application migration to the cloud without any risky rewriting of applications.

    How is Legacy Hardware Hindering Business Growth?

    Relying on legacy hardware during mergers and acquisitions (M&A) events exposes the business to several risks. Some of these risks include:

    • Rising maintenance expenses are often caused by obsolete hardware, which is prone to frequent system failures.
    • High risk of data loss during transition due to poor security infrastructure.
    • Integration challenges result in low productivity.
    • Businesses are missing out on potential opportunities due to poor efficiency, which impacts the ROI.
    • Businesses that still use COBOL workloads or other outdated, vendor-dependent platforms, such as HP-UX or PA-RISC, are at high risk during mergers and acquisitions.
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    Real-World Example: Global Manufacturer Facing Challenges Due to Legacy Systems During Merger & Acquisition

    Here is an example of a global manufacturer with over 60,000 products used worldwide. During its M&A activities, its critical applications, running on aging legacy PA-RISC systems, were overwhelmed with complex custom scripts, COBOL workloads—an outdated language—and acquired vendor software.

    Here are some challenges during M&A activities:

    Legacy Systems Challenges During M&A Activities
    • Risk of Loss: There was a high chance of losing the critical applications that were previously operating PA-RISC systems. It will impact scheduling, inventory, and shipping, ultimately affecting overall business efficiency.
    • Complexity: Integrating the new business environment with the acquired legacy applications poses compatibility and integration challenges.
    • Business Continuity: Undergoing M&A doesn’t mean that operations should come to a halt. Business continuity is a mandatory objective, which means even a minute of downtime would result in significant financial loss; therefore, a flawless migration strategy is required to ensure seamless operations without any disruptions.

    Resolving Legacy Challenge During M&A Activities: Ensuring Business Continuity with Cloud Migration

    To address the challenges hindering the manufacturing organization’s M&A activities, they opted for cloud migration to move the PA-RISC workloads, which included HP-UX and MPE, to the AWS cloud platform using CloudEndure. They partnered with Stromasys and LCI for a seamless transition with minimal disruptions.

    Here is why AWS CloudEndure stands out:

    • Rehosting Application Workloads: Using a lift-and-shift migration approach, moving the legacy applications, including HP-UX and MPE, using the Charon PAR emulator, to the AWS cloud environment efficiently.
    • Emulation and Compatibility: Charon PAR mimicked a similar environment to the legacy PA-RISC hardware on the new AWS cloud platform, ensuring applications continue to run post-migration.
    • Hands-On Expert Guidance: Stromasys and LCI delivered comprehensive support for installation, configuration, and cutover, transforming complex processes into controlled execution with minimal risks.

    With a highly complex, multi-national company with manufacturing sites all over the United States, many of the customer’s systems and data centers were not only costing them precious time with integrations but also costing them significantly each year to maintain. In today’s world of instantaneous information, they needed a solution that allowed them to integrate more quickly and be more efficient and responsive in business operations.

    -Jeff Stothart, LCI Director of Technical Services

    What Essential Steps Were Taken to Transform Legacy PA-RISC Infrastructure to AWS Through Cloud Migration?

    Here are the steps taken to seamlessly migrate PA-RISC workloads with AWS CloudEndure and Stromasys Charon PAR emulator:

    Steps Were Taken to Transform Legacy PA-RISC Infrastructure to AWS

    Assess the Size of AWS Resources

    Analyse the appropriate EC2 instances and storage capacities for legacy workloads that are to be migrated from on-premises PA-RISC hardware to AWS.

    Installation and Configuration of Agents

    Setting up replication agents on the source system that seamlessly allows data transfer. This procedure involves installing CloudEndure agents on existing Linux servers and configuring them to interact seamlessly with the AWS environment.

    Software Compatibility

    All software and workloads to be migrated should align with the emulation specifics. The Stromasys team then verifies the proper functioning of all the legacy PA-RISC applications, custom scripts, and vendor software in the new environment.

    Data Replication

    Initiating the CloudEndure process to create an exact mirror of the production data in AWS. It is a real-time, continuous data replication process that enables seamless business operations.

    Coordinated Cutover

    • To move the operations to AWS, the power is down. It is a critical phase that requires precise timing to minimize any operational disruption.
    • Coordination of license generation, followed by network reconfiguration for the new AWS environment, and then rebooting the systems to bring them online.

    Validation and Optimization

    Test applications on AWS and monitor the operation for stability and performance. This is to assess how legacy applications (HP-UX and MPE) are performing in the new AWS environment and whether they require modifications or optimization to improve efficiency.

    Business Value Achieved with Legacy PA-RISC Transformation to AWS

    The results of migrating legacy systems to AWS with Charon PAR:

    Business Value Achieved with Legacy PA-RISC Transformation to AWS

    • Cost Optimization: This migrating legacy systems to cloud not only eliminated hardware maintenance costs but also saved significantly on operational expenses.
    • Streamlined M&A Integration: A consolidated and scalable cloud infrastructure seamlessly enhanced integration responsiveness and speed.
    • Enhanced Security and Agility: The AWS cloud platform offers a robust security infrastructure with advanced measures for better data protection. They also provide enhanced scalability as compared to the aging physical on-premises infrastructure.
    • Zero Downtime: Ensured business continuity without any disruptions, resulting in customer satisfaction.

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    Selecting the Right Partners for Legacy Migration Success

    Migrating legacy hardware is a complex and challenging process. It requires experts with experience in transforming outdated infrastructure without disrupting operations. Stromasys offers emulation and virtualization solutions for modernizing obsolete systems, including Sun SPARC, Alpha servers, DEC VAX, PA-RISC, and PDP-11. They provide solutions for both on-premises and cloud environments.

    Its flagship Charon emulation solutions mimic the environment of the legacy hardware on the modern platform. It uses a lift-and-shift migration strategy to move the legacy applications to a new server. This cutting-edge technology preserves the legacy while ensuring innovation. It minimizes maintenance and operational costs of the business while enhancing efficiency, scalability, security, agility, and compatibility with modern technologies.

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    To explore more about the Charon Emulation Solution from Stromasys, contact our legacy experts.

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    Final Thoughts

    Legacy hardware migration is no longer optional. Businesses seek agility, continuity, and innovation. With the right migration strategy and partners, companies can preserve their legacy applications while driving digital transformation and streamlining complex integration for successful M&A activities.

    By choosing to migrate legacy systems to the cloud with solutions like AWS CloudEndure, organizations ensure business continuity. This transition enables seamless M&A technology integration, eliminates risks, and reduces costs associated with maintaining outdated infrastructure.

    Don’t let aging systems hold back your potential business opportunities. With the right migration strategies, you can seamlessly transform your business infrastructure to ensure continuity.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    The process of moving legacy applications and workloads from an outdated system to a new modern platform to ensure business continuity is known as legacy migration. It improves efficiency, scalability, agility, and security while minimizing costs.

    About Author

    Sanjana Yadav

    Sanjana Yadav

    Sanjana Yadav is a versatile content writer with a strong passion for exploring trending technologies and digital trends. Driven by curiosity for industry innovations, she specializes in transforming complex concepts into engaging and compelling narratives that drive results and help brands connect with their audiences and achieve their business objectives.

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