LegaSuite

Rocket LegaSuite is a set of application modernisation tools used to re-purpose mainframe and midrange applications as user-friendly front-ends and web services/APIs.

It features web and mobile user interface and web API tools, and is used by hundreds of companies and government organisations to facilitate access to mission-critical systems and their integration with other critical systems.

Good governance of IT spend implies avoidance of waste and re-use of legacy applications in modernised web-based and mobile systems achieves this—companies can avoid a costly (and risky) ‘rip and replace’ rewrite or migration of their existing, and working, platforms by taking advantage of innovative emerging web and mobile technologies.

Nevertheless, application modernisation isn’t purely a technology issue. Cultural change usually has to be managed and knowledge transfer initiatives will be needed to bring management and technical support up to speed on the modernised platform. Here, Rocket Software’s experience, skills-transfer consultancy and educational resources, as an integral part of the LegaSuite solution, will be a key part of achieving effective, rather than just cosmetic, modernisation.

Rocket Software operates globally (its global HQ is in the USA, and it has a European HQ in the Netherlands and APAC HQ in Australia) and LegaSuite benefits from this. LegaSuite is sold directly to customers and has ISV and partner channels, including a place as one of seven solutions in Fujitsu’s legacy modernisation practice.

LegaSuite is sold to large customers with mission-critical legacy applicatons that must be integrated with modern service-oriented (SOA) platforms or extended to web and/or mobile clients.

EVERTEC, for example, is a leading provider of transaction and financial application processing, business process outsourcing, and information technology consulting in the USA, Caribbean Basin and Latin America. It has over 1,750 professionals supporting anything from portable payment devices to sophisticated mainframe systems and its data centre executes over 1.1 billion transactions yearly, and operates a network of over 5,000 automated teller machines and over 133,000 point-of-sale payment terminals. It uses LegaSuite for rapid deployment of SOA interfaces to mainframe systems for, for example, core banking services, thus maximising the value obtained from its investment in existing applications.

Frontline Homeowners Insurance, as another example, operates in the southeast United States. It operates through a large network of agents who use its custom-built web portal as a key part of Frontline’s business operations. It uses LegaSuite Integration technology to support seamless integration of Frontline’s Java web application with its IBM i claims and policy administration system.

LegaSuite fits best into Rocket’s Mobile Solution area; it can provide a user interface on iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices from mainframe and midrange solutions. It uses the latest standards such as HTML5 and REST APIs.

Its most important feature, however, is that it can act as an API hub, handling the back-end integration between presentation-layer mobile user interfaces/applications and back-end legacy systems.

LegaSuite supports modernisation and extension of most existing mainframe (typically IBM System z), midrange (typically IBM i), UNIX, and Windows applications. It supports a wider range of source platforms than many other modernisation tools, including, for example, OpenVMS and several different varieties of UNIX/Linux (HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, z/Linux, Red Hat, SUSE).

Rocket Software has a global presence, with 24×7 phone support available for LegaSuite, as well as email and online support. However, its customer portal for technical support, while effective, is becoming a little old-fashioned. It is beginning to build an online support community, using collaboration software to encourage support and communication amongst its customers, in addition to direct support from Rocket Software, but this is in its early stages. It does currently have a community on LinkedIn and plays an active part in the IBM development community: in 2014 it was a premier sponsor of IBM’s Pulse and IBMInsight conferences.

Rocket Software has a global professional services organisation of “rocketeers”, with deep domain expertise from Rocket R&D labs. If a company, for example, has lost the mainframe IMS database and CICS transaction processing expertise associated with building a mission-critical legacy system, Rocket Software would be able to replace it.

Rocket Software provides rich educational resources with a breadth of introductory webinars, in-depth training, and career-enhancing certification programs for its solutions, including LegaSuite.