Addressing Today's Challenges in Application Development

Micro Focus
2012 Developer Conference
April 17, 2012

Addressing today’s challenges
in application development
Paul Herzlich, Principal Consultant
Creative Intellect Consulting Ltd

2

CIC: Who are we?
 Analyst research, advisory
and consulting firm

 Focus on Software
development, delivery and
lifecycle management

 Combined 90 years IT
industry and analyst
experience

 Authored many reports and
thought leading research

© Copyright 2012 Creative Intellect Consulting Ltd

On the road
From business imperatives to COBOL

4

Today’s App Dev context

Business Technology
Challenges Solutions
imperatives opportunities


5

Business imperatives

Systems of
engagement

Systems of
record


6

Technology opportunities
What we can
do to the
experience

How we
can do it

 For systems of record and engagement

 Clients and employees

7

Challenges


Addressing the
challenges
Enterprise IT modernization
and modernizing of IT

8

9

Solutions

Challenges

Technology
Business Technology Opportunity
Challenges Solutions
imperatives opportunities

Business
imperatives


10

Modernizations


11

Modernizations

Modernization
of IT
Modernization
Application
of Enterprise IT
and Service
Delivery

Competitiveness


12

Enterprise IT modernization
 Existing systems of record with new systems of
engagement
 Integrate, front-end

 Middleware
 Wrapping, ETL, services, objects

 Technical debt
 Refactoring

 Re-building
 Re-architecting
 Rewrite, convert, application software packages


13

Application delivery
modernization
 Diversify processes
 Get good at Agile and post-Agile

 Automate through the lifecycle
 Consolidate technologies
 Automate as much as possible (and appropriate)

 Check your sourcing
 Are new front-ends really part of core business?

 Break down the siloes
 ALM
 DevOps
 Development intelligence
 IT analytics


14

Applying technologies for
modernization

Delivery
Technologie Application
s Technologies

Modernization
of IT
Modernization
Application
of Enterprise IT
and Service
Delivery

Competitiveness


15

Applying mobile

Modernization
Technology Processes Skills Automation
contexts
•Enterprise IT •Integration w/ •Testing •Specialist skills •New test
•channels to existing •environments •Most automation
customers •Location •Integration enterprises •Emulation
•App Delivery awareness – testing subcontract to •Realistic
•connections new data specialists network testing
to IT staff dimension
•Cross-
compilation for
write once, run
many


16

Applying Cloud
 Variable: Cloud technology model IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

 Variable: Cloud deployment model for dev: Private, Public, Hybrid, Managed
Service

Modernization contexts Technology Processes Skills Automation

•Enterprise IT •Virtualization •Boundary between on- •Migration •Analytics and workload
•App Delivery •Specialised application premise and Cloud •Surplus skills in profiling of existing
platforms like Salesforce •Security testing platform/environment •Remote metering and
•Performance testing management? monitoring
•Handovers •Transfer to business •Preserving or improving
domain experts for ALM tooling
design and rel mgmt


17

Applying DevOps – bridging the
divide
 A large % of incidents are due to a failed change

 Aligning tools and processes at both sides of the interface

Modernization Processes
Technology Skills Automation
contexts
•App Delivery •Not a •Architecting •Some cross- •Integrate
•ALM technology for service over repositories
•ITSM issue levels between AD •Automate
•Points of and Ops, e.g. transitions
•Service
interaction testing
support
•Service •Enhance
delivery collaboration
•Integrate
governance


18

Applying Application
Lifecycle Management

Requirements Build Deliver Run

Management Management Management Management

Intelligence

Project, Program and Application Portfolio Management

Governance


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The COBOL
programmer
and the future
Where COBOL addresses the challenges


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COBOL has a lot going for it
Advantages Perceived limitations
 Billions of lines  Lost street cred in the 80’s
and has never regained it
 Existing skill base
 Knowledge of the business  Not best suited to new
 Knowledge of what works systems of engagement
in IT
 Tooling sits apart from
 Well-suited to systems of mainstream
record problems

 Readability

 Wide automation support


21

COBOL stacks up
Against For


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COBOL’s capabilities grow

Intrinsic
functions
User
functions

Also
Object
orientation recursion, compiler
directives, dynamic
tables, function
pointers, long literals

COBOL as a modern
language


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The COBOL programmer in
enterprise IT modernization
 Refactoring for reduction of technical debt

 Integration of SoR and SoE

 Extraction and reuse of business rules code for re-
build


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COBOL programmers in the
‘new’ mainstream
 Interoperability with other languages
 Heterogeneity of modern systems

 Shared toolsets = shared capabilities
 Frameworks
 VS and Eclipse

 Shared toolsets = shared skillsets

 Mainstream toolset integration ensures COBOL
development is ALM-able
 Necessary for modern IT management


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Conclusion
No end in sight


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The challenges and change
 The constant challenge is competitiveness

 New technologies provide new opportunities to meet the challenge

 Modernization is not only about modernizing Enterprise IT, but also modernizing
Application Delivery

 COBOL programmers have a central role wherever systems of record are
involved (which means virtually everywhere) in modernization

 Continued investment in COBOL skills is required
 New programmers
 Wider skills for existing programmers for integration with other technologies

 The COBOL programmer’s role can be even wider if you
 Make COBOL a fully fledged participant in modern heterogeneous systems
 Fit COBOL in with mainstream development processes


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