Bank of Montreal's Remarkable Three-Month Journey to Modernize Back-Office Applications
Technical Project Lead, Bank of Montreal
Rating: 5 out of 5
"We rate SoftwareMining 5 out of 5 for the exemplary conversion and exceptional support we received."
Technical Project Lead, Bank of Montreal
January 20th 2010
A prominent COBOL/DB2 to Java batch application conversion for one of Canada's leading banks. This particular application, integrated with DB2, was among the bank's last few applications still reliant on the IBM Mainframe. The ever-evolving nature of the bank's business requirements necessitated frequent updates, emphasizing the importance of readability and maintainability of the translated code.
Bank of Montreal, standing tall among the top quartet of Canadian banks, recognized the urgent need to upgrade its outdated back-office applications. Originating from the 1990s, these COBOL/DB2-based applications, primarily designed for batch processing, underwent frequent modifications to align with dynamic business necessities. Being among the last few applications still operating on the IBM mainframe, the bank felt the pressing need for a transition to Java, seeking SoftwareMining's expertise for the conversion. The pivotal success criteria for this project revolved around producing Java code that would be intuitively understandable and maintainable even by developers with limited exposure.
Adopting the Solution
Employing SoftwareMining's COBOL to Java conversion services, Bank of Montreal's team could focus on testing, maintaining, and enhancing the newly transformed application. Notably, during the translation process, as the COBOL programs witnessed regular updates, each change was swiftly re-translated into Java. By actively involving the bank's Java development personnel across build, maintenance, deployment, and testing phases, they could effectively leverage the insights and expertise of the legacy COBOL staff during Java testing, creating a harmonized transition.
