In this case study, Business Value Exchange investigates how the Italian Ministry of Instruction, University and Research made the move away from legacy systems and toward newer systems and applications, in collaboration with HP Enterprise Services.

1. Saving Money
and Modernising
Systems for MIUR
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2. Business Value Exchange presents HP Enterprise Services case studies
Governments across the world are
trying to keep pace with modern
technology and changes in our
relationship to public information,
while simultaneously attempting to
reduce costs in the longer term.
In this case study, Business Value Exchange
investigates how the Italian Ministry of
Instruction, University and Research (MIUR)
made the move away from legacy systems and
towards newer systems and applications, in
collaboration with HP Enterprise Services.
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3. The challenge
Business Value Exchange presents HP Enterprise Services case studies
Faced with dramatic budget cuts and a complex
legacy app landscape, MIUR needed to radically
overhaul and modernise its existing system.
MIUR is a large government body
responsible for information, HR and
budgets for the Italian education
system. It manages nearly three
quarters of a million teachers, a
quarter of a million administration
staff, 40,000 schools and a yearly
budget of €47.3 billion. But, like many
government departments globally,
MIUR has faced drastic reductions in
its budget over the last few years.
The challenge:
Cut maintenance costs
“80 percent of our
budget was being spent
on maintenance and
only 20 percent on
evolving the systems
and making them
better. In addition, we
were facing dramatic
budget cuts that would
serve to put more
pressure on delivering
the applications we
needed.”
– Paolo de Santis Director of
Applications and Security at MIUR
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4. Business Value Exchange presents HP Enterprise Services case studies
A complicated legacy
As is often the case in big
organisations, MIUR’s existing IT
infrastructure was a sprawling mess
of legacy applications; confusing,
costly and difficult to manage.
Not only that, but the people with
the skills to manage and maintain
many older applications, written
in unfashionable programming
languages, are becoming
increasingly hard to find and
difficult to recruit. Take the apps for
HR and administrative processes as
an example: they were built in the
early 1990s in CICS/COBOL/DB2.
Another major barrier caused by the
legacy system was the difficulty of
interoperating with the systems of
other departments within the Italian
government. This made it hard to
work with other administrations, as
many applications in the existing
system were custom written.
Legacy systems were getting in the
way of policies too. They made it
difficult to go ahead with plans to
devolve more responsibility for the
management of eduction to Italy’s
regional administrations.
Modernising these systems was a
challenging task. In total, 19,000
different programs needed to be
overhauled, consisting of more than
20 million lines of code. On top of
that, the online system was made up
of 7,750 programs, written in three
different mainframe languages.
The challenge:
Make legacy applications more responsive and flexible
The scale of the task:
19,000 programs
20,000,000 lines of code
7,750 online programs
x 3 different mainframe
languages
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5. The solution
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HP Enterprise Services was brought in to
modernise the legacy software architecture,
upgrade apps to match industry standards,
increase automation for regular tasks and
ensure interoperability with other Italian
government administrations.
To start with, a full assessment
of the existing applications was
performed and a roadmap for
modernisation was put together,
along with an overall strategy
for transformation.
Based on this, a solution for MIUR
was devised, based on Linux and
Oracle technologies, along with
Application Modernisation Services
from HP. Mainframe architecture was
also removed from its data centre.
HP solutions used by MIUR:
Application Development
Services
Application Modernisation
Services
Data Centre Modernisation
Services
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6. Application overhaul
With many of the existing
applications custom written
in COBOL, there was a need
to standardise them, so as to
allow easier maintenance and
management and allow them to
interact with more modern systems.
This involved a range of solutions,
from replacing applications with
modern equivalents to entire
rewrites of existing software.
Modernising an entire government
department’s applications and
architecture is no small task. Out
of the 19,000 applications, 7,900
were scrapped because they were
obsolete or they were replaced with
equivalent Oracle programs. The
other 11,100 were migrated and
transformed into an up-to-date
form, to enable them to be better
managed or interoperate with more
modern systems.
Finally, 7,550 online programs,
supporting 2,230 screens in three
different mainframe languages,
needed to be altered: 67% were
translated to Java, while 33% needed to
be entirely rewritten in the language.
Business Value Exchange presents HP Enterprise Services case studies
The solution:
Replace, migrate and rewrite existing applications
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7. Business Value Exchange presents HP Enterprise Services case studies
“HP has helped transform the Ministry’s
application portfolio entirely. Where we
once had an incredibly complex, inflexible
collection of thousands of legacy applications
that cost a fortune to maintain and support,
we now have a simple, streamlined and
modernised set of applications that has
reduced costs significantly while boosting
productivity.” – Paolo de Santis
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8. The advantages of simplicity
The project was a resounding success.
MIUR achieved return on investment
in just 18 months. In the first two
years, the department saved €15
million - €6.8 million in the first
year and €8.2 million in the second
year. These cost reductions helped to
protect jobs at MIUR.
These savings came about as a result
of extensive changes to the existing
system, including a 33% reduction
in the application portfolio, which
made management far simpler. The
outcome was more than worth it: a
38% reduction in development costs,
compared to the old environment. Not
only that, but savings from licencing
alone came to €12 million.
The project was also delivered on time
and to budget and 90% of the final
functionality was delivered to users
within 24 months. This was especially
good news, given the amount of
change management needed to help
bring the organisation on to the new
systems. Users responded well to
the change: productivity for daily
operations was estimated to have
doubled as a result.
MIUR saved a lot of money, but it also
gave the ministry the tools it needed to
deploy better services for end-users.
Teachers, parents and pupils can now
access portals that enable them to
engage even more with the learning
experience, in ways that are open and
accessible, as well as interactive.
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9. Business Value Exchange presents HP Enterprise Services case studies
“Reducing costs was the single most important
driver behind this project. In this respect, HP did
not disappoint. The first year saw the Ministry
realise savings of €6.8m and we are on course to
make further savings of €8.2m in year two.
“By our calculations, the return on investment
was met within 18 months, which is a stunning
achievement.” – Paolo de Santis
The solution:
Standardise and simplify the environment 9

10. Business Value Exchange presents HP Enterprise Services case studies
Our new case study series looks at the real benefits
that organisations have gained from modernising
their IT systems - not just estimates and predictions.
Accurate planning and careful risk assessment
need real data, not guesswork.
Your organisation can benefit from the example of others. That’s why we’ve
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