With 68% of child support enforcement (CSE) systems aging, most state companies are at the moment modernizing them or making ready to modernize. Greater than 20% of families and children are supported by these programs, and with the present constituents of those programs turning into extra client technology-centric, using antiquated expertise programs is archaic and unsustainable. At this level, households count on state companies to have a contemporary, environment friendly little one assist system.
The next are some elements driving these states to pursue modernization:
- Present programs are developed on mainframe-based programs utilizing an antiquated, scarcely accessible expertise stack.
- The unavailability of a talented workforce makes these programs costly to function, handle and improve.
- Youngster assist packages are specializing in pioneering a brand new, holistic and family-focused supply perspective to make households really feel included, listened to and empowered.
- Modernization will free caseworkers’ time to give attention to and collaborate with households, relatively than specializing in navigating an getting old system.
To meet these ever-increasing citizen expectations to eat state-provided little one assist companies, statewide little one assist programs want do the next:
- Empower households to get assist when, the place and the way they want it, together with digital and real-time communications.
- Present fast and clear companies to ease stress and frustration in occasions of want.
- Be intuitive, user-friendly and minimize down on handbook effort.
- Automate routine duties to unlock time to offer personalised companies and construct relationships with households.
- Empower caseworkers with on-line instruments to collaborate with colleagues and entry data repositories.
Present programs merely aren’t in a position to present the capabilities wanted to appreciate this family-centered strategy of service supply and should be modernized, instantly.
Each U.S. state is totally different
Core system necessities—reminiscent of new case initiation, offering location and institution companies, implementing orders, dealing with monetary transactions, and many others.—are mandated by the Office of Federal Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), making many state little one assist enforcement (CSE) programs comparable.
Regardless of this commonality, each little one assist group is exclusive, and every wants a tailor-made modernization strategy that helps its imaginative and prescient and understands the truth “on the bottom.” For instance, the core programs expertise panorama for every state might be a mainframe legacy system with various levels of maturity, portability, reliability and scalability.
States’ current funding in modernizing ancillary programs (e.g., improved doc administration capabilities, internet portals, cell purposes, information warehouses, enhanced location companies, and many others.) would possibly negate the necessity for modernization for these programs. This, together with the general maturity of CSEs, uninterrupted service necessities, state funds, timing, staffing, and different elements mandate a complete modernization strategy to tug in these investments.
IBM Consulting’s Accelerated Incremental Mainframe Modernization
Legacy purposes, whereas being the present crown jewels of states’ IT ecosystems, hinder enterprise agility and are costly and sophisticated, subsequently making any rebuild, refactor or integration makes an attempt dangerous.
IBM Consulting’s pioneering Accelerated Incremental Mainframe Modernization (AIMM) strategy focuses on legacy modernization with a lens of incremental transformation, relatively than simply translation. Our strategy focuses on enterprise information domain-centric initiatives that may ship worth within the quick time period and create a growth ecosystem conducive to incremental optimization—as a substitute of a dangerous big-bang software and infrastructure replace.
As highlighted within the graphic under, AIMM’s strategy focuses on beginning with a enterprise and expertise map alongside the client-specific IT ecosystems, as a substitute of solely a code conversion.
This helps us create a shopper journey with the co-existence of legacy and incrementally migrated performance to the brand new digital core, finally strangulating and sunsetting the legacy platforms.
The strategy leverages IBM’s zOS connectors, permitting us to shift the main target from software to information, transfer mainframe information in mainframe format into cloud storage (with close to real-time, bidirectional information sync), and leverage new and fashionable cloud information administration companies. With its confirmed instruments and processes, AIMM meets shoppers the place they’re within the legacy modernization journey, analyzing (auto-scan) legacy code, extracting enterprise guidelines, changing it to fashionable language, deploying it to any cloud, and managing expertise for transformational enterprise outcomes. In the end, this helps states to appreciate their enterprise targets and ship worth quicker.
The next are a number of the industry-leading methodologies, instruments and belongings utilized by AIMM:
- IBM Garage brings collectively {industry} greatest practices, technical experience and data, shopper collaboration and partnership, cloud service suppliers, and the IBM Consulting groups to ship accelerated outcomes.
- IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator (ICCA) recommends shopper journeys with out deep engineering data, protecting execution and modernization steps that take a workload from a supply to a cloud vacation spot.
- IBM Asset Evaluation Renovation Catalyst (AARC) robotically extracts the principles from the COBOL software supply code and generates a data mannequin, which is then deployed right into a guidelines engine like IBM Operational Decision Manager, Pega, and many others.
- IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) permits companies to answer real-time information by making use of automated choices, enabling enterprise customers to develop and preserve operational programs resolution logic.
- IBM’s open-source automated workflows present cross-cloud, AI-powered software program designed to speed up software modernization with pre-integrated information, automation and safety capabilities, enabling enterprise and IT groups to construct and modernize purposes quicker.
Why IBM Consulting and AWS?
IBM is a Premier Consulting Associate for AWS, with 19,000+ AWS licensed professionals throughout the globe, 16 service validations and 15 AWS competencies—turning into the quickest World GSI to safe extra AWS competencies and certifications amongst High-16 AWS Premier GSI’s inside 18 months. At re:Invent 2022, IBM Consulting was awarded the World Innovation Associate of the 12 months and the GSI Associate of the 12 months for Latin America, cementing shopper and AWS belief in IBM Consulting as a trusted accomplice of alternative, in terms of AWS.
AWS has the largest cloud infrastructure companies vendor market share worldwide, averaging round 33% as of This fall 2022. AWS supplies AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, a versatile, pay-as-you-go pricing mannequin, reliability, FedRAMP compliance and suppleness of compute. This makes AWS a fantastic alternative for federal and state companies seeking to obtain operational efficiencies and innovate on demand to advance their mission throughout the nation.
As extra states are discovering new methods to leverage mainframes as a part of their modernization technique with hybrid cloud, IBM is main the best way and working with state and local governments throughout varied sectors, serving to ship extra responsive companies, digitize their operations, and advance fairness and entry.
For example, IBM Consulting labored with the Division of Youngsters and Households of a U.S. state to modernize their extremely complicated legacy software programs—comprised of 200 databases and 72 software modules right into a strategic enterprise AWS cloud platform, leading to 200M strains of Java code.
Leveraging IBM Garage Method for cloud, IBM Consulting groups executed a confirmed factory-based strategy (course of, expertise, instruments) to do the next:
- Ship throughput and consistency in migration and rationalization.
- Standardize on a core set of platforms, infrastructure and instruments throughout environments—spanning a number of companies and repair suppliers.
- Empower finish customers with self-service catalog administration.
This resulted in a 50% discount in annual working prices, bettering software response time by 3.5x, benefiting end-user expertise, and shifting the state to a “pay-as-you-go” mannequin for a decreased upfront dedication.
In 2022, IBM Consulting leveraged AIMM and labored with one other main U.S. metropolis company serving 19M residents. They led the modernization and migration of 29 user-facing purposes, creating standardized DevOps, expertise, and quality-assurance processes whereas modernizing and migrating three legacy purposes to AWS by Q1 2023.
The IBM and AWS partnership can speed up your CSE modernization journey
For a state contemplating modernizing the legacy mainframe system, IBM recommends the mixture of a number of of the next patterns:
- Migration to AWS with no/minimal code modifications with middleware emulator.
- Migration to AWS with refactoring (auto-refactoring of code to Java/.Web).
- Rearchitecting and modernizing with new channels of knowledge supply (leveraging microservices).
- Information migration to the cloud for analytics and insights.
For all these patterns, enterprise useful equivalence is important, as detailed under.
Leveraging these patterns and our intensive AWS expertise, IBM Consulting has solidified these patterns as accelerators to assist shoppers seeking to migrate to AWS. Under is a high-level schematic.
At AWS re:Invent 2022, IBM shared five hybrid application modernization patterns, full with reference architectures for DevOps/API Life cycles, demos and making the IBM Z Cloud Modernization stack accessible on AWS Market. As well as, we’ve developed reference architectures for deploying IBM Mainframe z/OS on AWS with IBM ZD&T, an AWS native development environment reference architecture for modernizing z/OS purposes, and a flexible, integrated application modernization and IT automation platform, enabling states to speed up software modernization, obtain IT automation, scale back danger of software modifications, create and deploy safe APIs, and scale back the necessity for specialised expertise.
For code refactoring—along with home-grown instruments and third-party instruments—IBM is coaching its assets on AWS Blue Age (a latest AWS acquisition) and specializing in simplifying and optimizing the modernization journey by automating the vast majority of the code-refactoring course of.
This strategy has yielded rapid advantages for our shoppers, together with offering higher ROI, frontloading the financial savings to energy modernization by way of reinvestment, and offering a gradual ramp up for states’ human workforce—crucial for constructing the talents vital for working a mission-critical workload.
Be taught extra
States and their little one assist enforcement programs want a expertise accomplice that’s dedicated to listening and understanding the truth of the place the state is on the modernization journey. They want a accomplice that can work in tandem with a state to tailor an strategy that helps its imaginative and prescient, constraints and current investments.
IBM brings deep child-support {industry} data, modern applied sciences and experience on AWS by way of a singular mixture of IBM Consulting, software program and as-a-service capabilities. From idea to scale, our end-to-end options and confirmed strategies assist little one assist companies modernize their purposes and infrastructure with velocity and consistency, so states can keep forward of the curve.
IBM is proud to be a trusted accomplice of alternative for a lot of states and is keen to assist modernize assist programs designed to take care of the welfare of our most prized asset—our households.
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