IBM® Rational® enterprise modernization solutions for IBM i can help you:
Achieve rapid and cost-effective execution of strategies to reuse proven business applications in more flexible architectures, supporting the latest middleware and server innovation
Drive greater business agility and IT productivity by leveraging existing domain knowledge and new talent
Improve collaboration, efficiency, and governance across global software teams with a common team infrastructure, reducing project costs and risks
Achieving a modern enterprise starts with identifying where you most need to initially focus. Whether you want to understand RPG applications, to accelerate delivery of new IBM i applications on Power Systems, or to automate software delivery lifecycle, IBM has services, software, hardware, and financing to help. Review the core needs below to understand your next steps.
| Needs | IBM can help | How to get started? |
|---|---|---|
| I need to reduce my annual IT budget. | IBM software helps you understand your entire application portfolio and gather important metrics such as risk, cost, and value of the RPG applications in your portfolio. You can use this information to evaluate and make smarter investment choices when it comes to deciding which applications you need to modernize, consolidate, migrate, or replace. |
If you need to recover lost knowledge of your enterprise applications and to enable your IT staff to discover, analyze, and transform your application portfolio to achieve better alignment with your business goals, then learn more about our application portfolio management offerings. Discover and understand RPG applications with Rational Developer for i and X-Analysis Learn more about Rational Developer for i. |
| I need to extend my green-screen applications to new customers and markets without changing underlying application code. | IBM software helps you achieve fast ROI by extending green-screen applications to the Web or to an SOA. This approach doesn’t require any change to underlying business processes. You can realize immediate payback in terms of reduced end user training and improved IT staff productivity. |
If you need to Web- or service-enable your 5250 green screens and to access them from rich user interfaces, Web browsers, portals, mobile devices, or Web services clients, then learn more about our user interface modernization offerings. What customers are saying about Rational Host Access Transformation Services and enterprise modernization Learn more about Rational Host Access Transformation Services. |
| I need to integrate my AS/400®, iSeries®, and System i® applications to improve business process visibility, to reduce integration costs, and to simplify architectural complexity. | IBM software helps you reduce application development time by reusing proven RPG applications in modern architectures, such as SOA and Web 2.0. The solution helps shorten development cycles and reduce integration costs by extracting value from existing IBM i applications, making them accessible as Web services within an SOA. |
If you need to integrate your existing RPG business logic in new SOA and Web 2.0 applications, you need to leverage a modern, Eclipse-based development environment. Modern IDEs enhance developer productivity and are more attractive to new developers who want to build and deploy new multiplatform applications for IBM i. Article: A look behind the scenes of EGL Rich UI Learn more about Rational Developer for i and Rational Developer for SOA Construction. |
| I need to improve developer productivity and to leverage my programming resources across all platforms. | IBM software helps your IT staff use a common development environment across multiple platforms and languages. Common tooling enhances developer productivity by enabling new and existing IT staff to deliver multiplatform applications without becoming technology experts. |
Start with our Eclipse-based IDE for Enterprise Generation Language (EGL). EGL enables developers of almost any background to create applications and services for deployment to the Java™ platform and to traditional IBM i environments without requiring them to learn the technical intricacies of the targeted platforms. White paper: Simplifying innovation with IBM Rational Business Developer - an executive overview (PDF, 265KB) EGL vs. .Net - productivity study (PDF, 601KB) Learn more about Rational Business Developer. |
| I need an alternative to RPG and a flexible platform for core business applications moving forward. | IBM software automates migration of RPG applications to an open, modular, and integrated development platform. You can leverage new and existing skills to develop and deploy the migrated applications to lower cost platforms and technologies. You can lower your application maintenance costs and improve developer productivity. |
IBM Rational Migration Extension for IBM i delivers an automated way to leverage and reuse business-critical RPG applications and to transform them into the IBM Rational Software Development Platform, specifically IBM Rational Business Developer featuring EGL technology. Extending the value of RPG applications on the IBM System i platform. (PDF, 318KB) Learn more about IBM Rational Migration Extension for IBM i (PDF, 18KB) |
| I need my IBM i and distributed software teams to collaborate and work like one team. | IBM software helps improve collaboration across team silos, enable real-time communication across geographically dispersed teams regardless of their development environment, and communicate with key stakeholders across disparate software teams to track and manage work items and resources across all projects to ensure on time and on budget delivery. |
If you are looking for a unified software delivery platform that allows your IBM i and distributed development teams to collaborate on building multiplatform applications, to establish a common project repository on IBM i, to take advantage of Power Systems and all the benefits that come with it, then learn more about our latest collaborative software delivery offerings for IBM i. Gaining productivity with Rational Team Concert for i podcast Learn more about Rational Team Concert™ for i. |
| I need to increase system capacity and performance without hardware upgrades. | IBM software helps exploit the latest compilation technology to optimize your hardware investments. You can gain capacity, achieve higher throughput without additional hardware upgrades, and reduce the TCO of your IT infrastructure. |
You can maximize application performance without code changes with WebSphere® Development Studio for System i V6R1, which offers significant enhancements to the IBM i5/OS® host Integrated Language Environment (ILE) compilers. Learn more about WebSphere® Development Studio for System i V6R1. |
| I need to reduce the amount of time and resources it takes to test our enterprise applications that span multiple platforms. | IBM software helps improve application quality throughout the software lifecycle to reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction. You can coordinate end-to-end quality across all tools and platforms and establish regression and automated testing procedures to validate application functionality, scalability, and security. |
If you need a common process to plan, track, and manage your quality process across the software lifecycle; to automate functional testing of your green screen applications; to verify whether or not your application can scale and perform under heavy user loads; or to identify vulnerabilities, privacy issues, quality exposures, and standards non-compliance, then learn more about our latest quality management solutions. Software testing and quality management |
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