VSI Application Services – How Can We Help?
Following on from the recent webinar in which we briefly introduced VSI Application Services, I thought it might be worth providing a little more information by way of a short blog post. Looking at it very simply, VSI Application Services are a set of services designed to help you get the most out of your OpenVMS application environments, and while the primary aim is to provide services to help you move your OpenVMS applications to VSI OpenVMS x86-64, the overall scope of the services portfolio is much more general than that, ranging from workshops and small consulting engagements to investigate and advise on various modernisation options, through to assistance with major modernisation initiatives (such as porting to x86-64), and application maintenance and support, where we take over the task of looking after your application code. In short, if it’s anything to do with maintaining and enhancing your OpenVMS application environment, we are here to help, and we’d love to hear from you!
To elaborate somewhat, it is perhaps useful to consider a few scenarios and examples of some recent projects. During the webinar, I mentioned an in-flight project where we are working with a customer to port their OpenVMS Integrity-based applications to OpenVMS x86-64. From an application perspective, the code itself is well-written and could be readily ported with only minor changes to some code and build scripts, however, the situation was complicated by the fact that the application interacts with an external Sybase database. Neither the Sybase client nor server have been supported on OpenVMS for many years, and in the Integrity environment the customer had been using a binary-translated version of the OpenVMS Alpha Sybase client API. While perhaps not ideal, this solution had served them well, but clearly, this solution could not be taken across to OpenVMS x86-64, and an alternative means of interacting Sybase was required. Based on previous experience with such situations and leveraging work of earlier engagements, we were able with relatively little effort (and with almost no changes to application code) to replace the Sybase client components with the open-source FreeTDS API (https://www.freetds.org/) to facilitate communication with the Sybase database, and a previously developed embedded SQL pre-processor was provided to enable the compilation of the customers’ embedded SQL code. To minimise risk, the FreeTDS solution has been thoroughly tested in the Integrity environment, rather than introducing it as something new as part of the OpenVMS x86-64 porting process. VSI will of course provide support for the new software components.
The above scenario helps serve to illustrate several key points that are of relevance to VSI Application Services. Probably the first point to note is that there is obviously a detailed project plan associated with the work, which has been developed and agreed with the customer, and the first step to creating this plan is to perform what we typically refer to as “discovery”, where we take a fairly high-level look at the overall OpenVMS environment to gain an initial understanding of the scope of the project and to identify any obvious issues. At the end of this initial discovery phase, it will typically be possible to provide some idea of the time and effort for the project and to propose a high-level solution, or to identify any aspects that need further investigation before any sensible estimates can be given. The next steps in the process then depend very much on what has been found during this initial discovery phase. For example, for the project in question, the interface with Sybase is an obvious complication for which a solution had to be identified, tested, and agreed before the project-proper could be started.
Given the age, scale, and complexity of many OpenVMS application environments, the need to identify (and potentially craft) alternative solutions for some application components is not an uncommon occurrence, be it in the context of porting your applications to VSI OpenVMS x86-64, to replace an unsupported technology with a fully supported solution, or to introduce new software technologies to better address business requirements or to reduce license costs. For example (and to be sure to use a few current buzzwords), you might be moving to a microservices or an event-driven architecture across the enterprise, looking to interact with cloud services and data sources, or simply wanting to replace proprietary software products with open-standards-based open-source solutions. All these things and more are possible, and the identification, design, and implementation of such solutions form an integral part of the VSI Application Services offering, be it as part of a larger programme of work (such as a migration to x86-64) or as part of a more general modernization or integration initiative. For example, in terms of replacement solutions, we have recently been working with a number of customers on replacement options for the Qlik (Attunity) suite of products, which are no longer supported on OpenVMS, and with another group of customers to identify alternative (and arguably more modern) message queueing solutions to replace Oracle MessageQ (which will not be available for OpenVMS x86-64), including the development of a solution based on the RabbitMQ (or LavinMQ) message broker that can in some cases provide a near-drop-in replacement for MessageQ with minimal changes to existing application code.
You will notice in the above text that I have used the word “solution” quite a lot. This is not because I cannot think of an alternative word, but because it is important to appreciate that VSI Application Services is about providing you with solutions and not just products. OpenVMS continues to drive numerous business-critical systems across multiple industries and business sectors, ranging from nuclear power plants and manufacturing to financial services and healthcare. You will have invested decades of time and very considerable funding into the development and ongoing maintenance of these applications to meet very specific business needs and to drive business advantage. Accordingly, it makes sense to retain and modernize these applications, if at all possible, and we want to help you achieve this goal.
Over the next few months, I'll explore some of the topics discussed in this post in more detail, looking at some solutions to specific technical problems, as well as discussing more general topics such as modernisation, and application maintenance and support. And if you are considering migrating your OpenVMS environment to OpenVMS x86-64 but need help, or are perhaps unsure where to start, please be sure to complete this pre-migration assessment questionnaire as thoroughly as possible, and we will get in touch with you to discuss further!
Director of Application Services
