Building the Case for Application Maintenance Insourcing

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    Relativity Technologies, which sells the Modernization Workbench, software that assesses the efficiency of your code against industry standards and metrics, is making an interesting case study from Forrester available on its Web site.


    The report, by Phil Murphy and others, recounts how a global logistics firm (UPS? FedEx? Somebody else?) used an "application mining tool" (actually tools) to cut down on annualized application maintenance — to the tune of millions of dollars.


    Whereas the firm was outsourcing much of its ADM work, use of the software analysis tools led one IT manager to build a strong case for insourcing. The company started with an impact analysis to identify the whereabouts of all of the bits and pieces of applications. Then it built a searchable repository of COBOL source code artifacts and added client/server apps to the repository as well. That analysis led to major changes in how the work was handled within that group.


    Excited to share his success, he pushed other IT managers at the company to adopt his processes. Not surprisingly, that didn’t go over so well. So the IT manager put together an application center of excellence to broaden use of his adopted tools and processes. Three years later, the CoE has many successes to point to.


    The white paper — unlike a lot of them that I read — unfolds like a thriller: Will our hero prevail? Will the code be optimized? Will those other IT managers receive their comeuppance? Sorry. I don’t want to divulge the ending.


    You can download your own copy of "Logistics Firm Corrals App Maintenance Costs" here.