Astadia Teams Up with Micro Focus and Microsoft to Deploy “FASTPaaS” to the Cloud

Boston, MA—Further empowering customers to more effectively modernize their mainframe infrastructures, Astadia today announced a key agreement with Micro Focus and Microsoft. The partnership creates a new joint offering to deliver a more effective transition of legacy applications and elements to flexible, scalable cloud-based infrastructures on Microsoft Azure.

As part of the collaboration, customers can migrate mainframe assets via a joint Astadia and Micro Focus offering, FASTPaaS – a comprehensive suite of products and core methodologies designed to transform COBOL applications for next-generation digital infrastructures. The solution is designed to transition core infrastructure elements directly to Microsoft Azure, the award-winning open, flexible and enterprise-grade cloud computing platform.

"Astadia is committed to helping customers tap into the power of mainframe and legacy environments in this newly digital world. That's why we're so focused on building the best partnerships that drive the mainframe modernization journeys," said Steve Steuart, Chief Technology Officer at Astadia. "Micro Focus has built a successful track-record with clients globally to keep critical systems alive, all while preparing for the next wave of modernization on premier offerings like Microsoft Azure. This new joint offering is a win for our customers worldwide – allowing them to accelerate the pathway to cloud more effectively than ever before."

The shift from proprietary, mainframe-based infrastructures to flexible cloud computing models provides customers with significant opportunities to save time and money. In fact, a recent survey of senior IT decision-makers indicates that 94 percent are actively considering moving off mainframes, and 77 percent believe their organizations should have already initiated migration initiatives. Another report notes industry leaders expect a dramatic rise in the importance of physical vs. digital infrastructures – with nearly 60 percent of businesses counting on the latter by 2023. The path towards modernization is just as dramatic in the government sector. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security reported a $1.6 billion cost savings from infrastructure modernization efforts – including a significant reduction in labor required to maintain legacy systems and software.

Based on a proven methodology, government agencies are already actively utilizing the FASTPaaS methodology to advance legacy environments via a "cloud-smart" approach.

"Customers understand the importance of cloud technology, but often aren't sure how to get there. Mainframe environments just weren't designed to deliver the flexibility and scalability critical to competing in this newly digital and mobile world," said Chris Livesey, Senior Vice President, Modernization at Micro Focus. "This agreement with industry leaders like Astadia and Microsoft will go a long way towards enabling this modernization shift, while not losing sight of the core technology that runs the business."

The Astadia mainframe modernization offering is backed by decades of experience and hundreds of successful migrations – helping customers to unlock infrastructure potential currently blocked by mainframe platforms. Astadia's approach is based on three core steps, including: Mainframe Assessment, Mainframe Modernization and Application Modernization.

The comprehensive process begins with full assessment of legacy technology, processes and resources to build a detailed journey map. During the next phase, a modernization program is activated - migrating core infrastructure and application elements to leading cloud platforms, such as Microsoft Azure. Once applications are independent from the mainframe, Astadia works on ongoing optimization through refactoring and rewriting – alongside CI/CD and Automated Testing.

"Astadia has been migrating mainframes for the past 25 years. FASTPaaS is their latest framework for rapidly deploying mainframe-based applications to the Cloud. With FASTPaaS, you will benefit from 25 years of expertise, and a proven methodology, for deploying your mainframe based applications on Azure," said Bob Ellsworth, Director Mainframe Transformation, Microsoft.

To learn more about modernizing mainframe environments with Astadia, or the new FastPaaS Program in conjunction with Micro Focus, please visit www.astadia.com or https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/home. Readers can explore all that Microsoft Azure has to offer at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/.

Astadia is a global premier technology consulting firm with a focus on mainframe migrations that has benefited hundreds of clients, converted millions of lines of COBOL, and helped maximize the impact and minimize the risks of today’s blended enterprise and cloud IT ecosystem. Astadia has a bench of deeply experienced solution engineers, best-in-class modernization tools, and the processes and methodology optimized for our mainframe modernization specialty. Microsoft, a strategic technology partner for Astadia, recently honored the company with the “Top Performer” award for Mainframe to AZURE Modernization.

For more information about Astadia, please visit www.astadia.com and follow Astadia.

Micro Focus helps organizations run and transform their business through four core areas of digital transformation: Enterprise DevOps, Hybrid IT Management, Predictive Analytics and Security, Risk & Governance. Driven by customer-centric innovation, our software provides the critical tools they need to build, operate, secure, and analyze the enterprise. By design, these tools bridge the gap between existing and emerging technologies—enabling faster innovation, with less risk, in the race to digital transformation.

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