The Challenge
To migrate a mission critical application developed in Forté 3.0.M2 with complex workflow mechanism, Forté Daemon architecture, several batch processes and Informix, Sybase & DB2 for the database. This application was also interfaced with IBM MQ Series and integrated with several other non-Forté applications. The target J2EE environment was IBM AIX Server, Windows 2000 and IBM Web Sphere with the same database. The challenge was also to have a seamless transition of this application without any difference in the functionality, performance of the application and disruption to the client’s business processes.

The Solution
The client decided to migrate sequentially several of their large mission critical applications developed in the Forté environment to J2EE, which are accessed by over 35,000 users in 800 different locations. To start with, Goldstone was engaged to migrate one of these Forté applications using our Proprietary Migration Tools and Methodology.

Goldstone followed its proven onsite-offshore business model in conjunction with its automated migration tools for ‘Best Value’ to the client in terms of costs and time to market. A small team from the client was involved in the execution of the project for complete knowledge transfer. After the initial assessment of the application, Goldstone provided a proof of concept program for the customer to understand the behavior of the transformed system performing similar tasks in a different environment.

Goldstone’s tool based approach proved very useful for migration of existing Daemon framework in Forté, Forté Daemons, Workflow and batch processes from Forté into the J2EE environment. Some of these processes also integrate with external enterprise information Systems.

To mitigate risks pertaining to avoidance of any service down time during the migration process, Goldstone adopted a non-linear timeline approach for deliverables achieved through overlap in development stages, enabling rapid deployment of the migrated application for the client. Goldstone’s quality assurance methods ensured deliverables devoid of logical errors, functional deficiencies and performance errors. The migrated application was run parallel with the existing application, which helped the client to compare and contrast the migrated application with the existing Forté application.