Enterprise IT has always been subject to constant changes, not only since the corona pandemic. Sometimes there were constant periods of time, especially in the early years of IT. Then the technological changes came in increasingly shorter intervals, and today enterprise IT is facing radical changes. The challenges are manifold: to keep an eye on technological developments while developing new and more flexible work concepts for employees.

Many companies started with electronic data processing in the mid 60s. The first areas of application were the personnel system, financial and asset accounting, and production control. The operating systems on the IBM mainframe were OS/360 and DOS/360 (DOS/VSE) with IMS or DLI as database. Loyalty to these environments was maintained and the technological changes in the following decades were followed. Companies eventually switched from the smaller VSE operating system to OS/390 and all relevant company data is stored on the mainframe. IT changed in the mid 1990s. New platforms gained in importance. Platforms, some of which were brought into the company by the individual departments. New technologies - related to databases, applications, programming languages, and operating systems - were used. It became more and more important to combine the many different systems and technologies in a jointly operating company orchestra.

The strategic data that was held and managed on the mainframe was also needed on the other platforms. Complex file transfers were next to be carried out to transfer the data from the mainframe to the new systems.

BOS offers the solution tcACCESS to access the mainframe data using SQL statements from open systems, from their applications and with new programming languages. The tcACCESS solution corresponds more to the concept of a real-time enterprise than the traditional file transfer solutions, because the data transferred here was never up-to-date.

The importance of open systems (Linux, Unix and Windows - LUW) became more and more important. Applications on these systems became more relevant and the company data was no longer just on the mainframe at home. Data had to be synchronized in real time and bidirectional. tcVISION became the strategic synchronization solution for all available IBM mainframe operating systems and a wide range of database systems on the LUW platforms. Secure, transaction-oriented and bidirectional replication is the result of using tcVISION.

Companies with a mainframe architecture also have to deal with another challenge: the loss of mainframe know-how. tcVISION compensates the lack of expert skills. The implementation of a replication of mainframe data into other systems can be implemented in a short time without mainframe skills. A large number of satisfied customers can confirm this.

The use of cloud architectures, data lakes, and streaming technologies are a must for modern enterprise IT. Due to the changing working conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, cloud platforms in particular are becoming increasingly important. They mean more independence from people, locations, and systems, they support agility, and offer high scalability.

Cloud technology is also necessary to overcome existing IT gaps, and to decouple legacy data and legacy systems in order to eliminate IT dependencies.

Our solution tcVISION plays an important role. It is a repository based transformation platform that provides efficient data exchange in real time between different data sources and data targets on the mainframe or LUW-based platforms. A high degree of user-friendliness and technical flexibility, the elimination of programming effort for data exchange, a high level of transparency for all data exchange processes through comprehensive monitoring and logging of all data movements, proven procedures for restarting replications after incidents, and the assurance of referential integration through the transaction-bound transfer of data are some of the key points of our solution.

The enterprise IT of the future will continue to change. The Internet of Things (IOT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and unlimited computing power offer companies a wide range of new possibilities.

New database systems will appear. They will be built for specific tasks. Future IT will have to decide on a compromise between the expected performance of the new databases and the well-known usability and suitability for general use of traditional SQL-based databases.

Streaming data and the immediate analysis of this data will continue to be of great importance.

BOS sees this as one of its major new tasks. The goal is to use our development flexibility to ensure that tcVISION remains an indispensable solution for the transparent fusion, integration, and coexistence of the mainframe.