AXA Belgium Uses Compuware TopazTO MODERNIZE MAINFRAME DEVELOPMENT

CASE STUDY

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As a large insurance and banking organization, AXA Belgium is empowering

brokers to support a customer-first strategy. This often means employing

cloud-based applications to provide digital access to critical services and

seamless integration with the brokers. But on the back end, most of its

revenue-driving business still runs on the mainframe, making the platform

critical to customer-facing innovation.

That’s why mainframe leader Stephane Steurs, part of the Engineering

Excellence Team, sees AXA Belgium leveraging “more and more services”

on the mainframe—but not without modernizing and accelerating

mainframe development to manage growing workloads while offsetting

diminishing expertise.

To help overcome these challenges, AXA Belgium’s mainframe developers

need access to modern tools that both support more efficient processes—

with the goal of implementing DevOps—and close the skills gap between

retiring mainframe developers and next-gen programmers just out of college.

AXA Belgium’s mainframe developers need access to modern tools that both support more efficient processes … and close the skills gap.

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From ‘Expressed’ Modernization …The team had been using Micro Focus Mainframe Express, which at one time Stephane was satisfied with. However, as its name indicates, it only expresses, or emulates, mainframe sources and resources for development and debugging on a Windows network access server, rather than providing direct access to a mainframe program running on mainframe regions.

“The infrastructure to put our development on distributed servers was quite huge,” Stephane said. It required:

• Full replication of AXA Belgium’s mainframe sources and resources onto Windows

• Dual builds on the mainframe and Windows to produce a mainframe workload and PC EXE file

• Dual promotions of what was produced in the mainframe and Windows environments

• Keeping both environments 100 percent in sync, which was the toughest part

Programs debugged with Mainframe Express in Windows wouldn’t necessarily be compatible with executions on the mainframe. Some z/OS routines had to be completely rewritten for Windows to accommodate different system times between mainframe and distributed.

As these issues became progressively cumbersome, it was clear Mainframe Express couldn’t guarantee perfect synchronization between the mainframe and Windows worlds with the quality, velocity and efficiency required to support AXA Belgium’s digital transformation towards scaled enterprise solutions in an agile environment where feature and product teams are using shorter and shorter delivery cycles.

“The infrastructure to put our development on distributed servers was quite huge.”

– Stephane Steurs Engineering Excellence Team AXA Belgium

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“Topaz is helping the mainframe team close the skills gap”

… To Real TransformationOverall, Mainframe Express had become too complex to maintain. It was at this point Stephane and his team decided to seek new solutions with Compuware.

Topaz Workbench

Compuware Topaz Workbench provided AXA Belgium’s developers with a modern mainframe development environment. “As an Eclipse-based agile mainframe development, testing and data management platform, Topaz is helping the mainframe team close the skills gap between retiring mainframe developers and next-gen programmers,” Stephane said.

Xpediter

AXA Belgium’s mainframe developers also began debugging with Compuware Xpediter through Topaz Workbench. Having used Xpediter in the ‘90s, albeit through a TSO interface, Stephane discovered a much more advanced and modern Eclipse-based debugging solution providing a familiar, intuitive look and feel through Topaz Workbench. After testing the solution, “the product allowed for an intuitive adoption by the devs,” he said.

File-AID

While AXA Belgium was already using Compuware File-AID for file and data management, its next-gen developers are now using it through Topaz Workbench as well. While experienced developers still tend to use File-AID in the “green screen,” this “interface asymmetry” between the two generations of developers is an expected byproduct of entrenched cultural practices undergoing a gradual shift as AXA Belgium modernizes mainframe development and moves towards DevOps.

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… To Real Elegant Simplicity“Once I discovered Topaz Workbench, it took me around two days to configure Eclipse and debug a whole IMS application using Xpediter, with all mainframe components having been installed by our Mainframe System Team, and to start the product validation,” Stephane said.

He was able to conduct all necessary configurations of the tools and leverage them with the same level of feature functionality his team had used with Mainframe Express. However, there was one major difference between AXA Belgium’s former tool and Xpediter through Topaz Workbench that helped Stephane make the right decision.

“With Compuware’s solution, I was not debugging a program on a virtual machine to emulate the mainframe behavior. I was debugging a mainframe program, running on IMS regions, through an Eclipse interface,” Stephane said.

“Topaz Workbench greatly simplified our deployment and build processes. Great job; great tool!”

… To Real First-rate Customer Experience  Stephane appreciated the excellent support AXA Belgium received from Compuware, especially when they discovered a constraint on AXA Belgium’s end—not a bug— in the behavior of Xpediter within the context of their debugging process.

After a discussion, he and his team set up a call with technical experts from Compuware to explain their concerns. Compuware helped them develop a solution in less than an hour.

“The solution was what we needed, an option in Xpediter so that you don’t have to commit once you leave your debugging session. It’s working as expected,” Stephane said, giving special thanks to the Compuware team that helped AXA Belgium solve their problem and properly configure Topaz.

“With Compuware’s solution ... I was debugging a mainframe program, running on IMS regions, through an Eclipse interface.”

– Stephane Steurs Engineering Excellence Team AXA Belgium

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– Stephane Steurs, Engineering Excellence Team, AXA Belgium