The Sun Journal Web edition 3 presents a series on increasing bottom line results while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). The first article in the series, by Steve Campbell, analyzes the needs of IT executives who must do much more with far less. He presents Sun technologies and services that address needs of mainframe customers who are rehosting applications in the SolarisTM Operating Environment (Solaris OE). He then discusses a case study of a Tunisian bank that rehosted its applications.

Gartner states TCO consists of the costs incurred throughout the life cycle of an asset, including acquisition, deployment, operation, support and retirement. The costs are direct (budgeted), such as labor and hardware, and indirect (unbudgeted), meaning the the efficiency of the IT organization in delivering expected services to end users.

Campbell recommends a balanced approach to reducing TCO that involves a combination of system, service and operating environments in such a way as to avoid a negative effect, by evaluating the risks involved in cost-reducing opportunities, such as decreasing service below acceptable operating levels.

To combat the costs, Campbell recommends rehosting applications on UNIXR systems and rewriting the application with new tools. He presents different software from Sun, including SunTM Mainframe Transaction Processing Software that enables existing application code, data files and staff knowledge to be transferred to the Solaris OE. SunTM Mainframe Batch Manager Software is a batch-job execution system modeled on mainframe batch logic, containing most of the features of the mainframe environment. The Sun Professional ServicesSM Program can perform feasibility studies and TCO assessments.

Campbell cites the Standish Group's estimate that 80 percent of enterprise data resides in legacy systems. Enterprises can replace their applications with packaged software or rewrite applications with new tools but both can have productivity costs. Rehosting has lower risks than either of these choices. The case study Campbell presents on Banque Internationale Arabe de Tunisie (BIAT) shows this to be true.

BIAT is the largest private Tunisian bank, and needed to provide better and faster service to its customers to retain market share. Their legacy mainframe system lacked flexibility. BIAT chose a Sun EnterpriseTM 10000 Server to rehost 3,000 programs, 2,500 files and 6,500 batch jobs. They also used Sun Mainframe Transaction Processor Software and Oracle, on the Sun server.

Rehosting on a UNIX system saved them money and made them more competitive. Campbell concludes the first article in the series with "The increased pressure to deliver results to the bottom line is forcing IT managers to look for safe and efficient ways to cut spending. According to Standish research, the payback that companies can realize by rehosting mainframe applications in the Solaris OE is 'stunning and the risk extremely manageable.'" Future issues in this series of articles from the Sun Journal will focus on reducing TCO through infrastructure consolidation and reference architectures.

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