Company Name: Express Newspapers

Industry: Media

Headquarters: London, UK

Founded: 1900

Number of Employees: 800

URL: www.express.co.uk

Year of Migration: 2003

Lines of Code: 250,000 Cobol

Mainframe: Clearpath NX 5800

Migrated to: HP Proliant ML570

Challenge

Express Newspapers is one of the publishing arms of Northern and Shell Media. When they decided to move offices in 2003, the company decided that moving and/or upgrading their existing mainframe was not a viable option. The company needed to find a business solution to support its Pre-Press Control system, a critical application that must be available 24x7x365. Without it, Express Newspapers would be unable to get the news to its 3.4 million customers, and its printing presses would grind to a halt.

Solution

Express Newspapers contracted MSS to conduct a migration using Micro Focus Studio and Micro Focus Server. The application was migrated from proprietary Unisys hardware and software, Cobol74 and a hierarchical database system, to a 2 CPU HP Proliant ML570 G2 Server running Microsoft Windows with Microsoft SQL Server for data access. MSS technology was implemented as middleware and Micro Focus Studio and Server provided a high level of reuse of the existing Cobol business logic.

Results

The migration was completed in 14 months, ensuring that the new system was up and running in time for the office move. In the meantime, as we were able to automate much of the migration process, normal operation and development within the IT department continued without interruption. Express Newspapers eliminated mainframe costs, improved system performance and freed up IT staff to focus on other projects.

Quote

“With a relatively small investment we now have seen a reduction of IT Operational expenditure of at least £700,000 per annum, are now not locked in to a single, proprietary supplier and have opened a world of possibilities to enhance the systems further”.

Steve Draper, IT Director, Express Newspapers

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