IT migration:Trading old for new
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Mr. Wijmenga is a self-confessed IT man through and through: “I’ve been here for 30 years. First as a technician and then for the last 13 years as a CTO. I enjoy diving into old systems and bringing them up to date. Each client presents a unique scenario from which to implement a modern IT system. For me, and for our team, it’s great to see our customers migrate to a new system, which requires less maintenance and less hardware.”
“Passion for the job is a good start,” Mr. Wijmenga remarks, “But in an ever more crowded market, we have had to emphasize what makes our company different.” For the CTO, the defining of this identity has thrown up two key attributes: “We offer automation and expertise. Emphasising that offering has been warmly received by our customers.” Expertise is fairly simple to explain, notes the CTO: “We were founded in 1979, which makes us about as old as the IT sector as a whole. For the first twenty years, the firm primarily provided the very mainframes that are now called ‘legacy’ systems. Many of our employees from these days are still here, myself included. It’s rare to find specialists like us, who are trained in old COBOL systems, but are also experts in
“How did we get here? Automation, and as a result deploying our specialists to advise on how to keep the customer’s business in excellent shape throughout.” Romke WijmengaCEO
For the CTO, the expertise of their workforce, which numbers 65 globally, has been the prime driver of growth. However, their ability to automate many of the migration processes has in many ways facilitated that: “Legacy migration has been around for 20 years now. Many of the smaller firms have either decided to begin from scratch with new systems, or they have completed a fairly simple migration process. Where Asysco is now coming into its own is with larger companies. Firms whose systems run from 1500 MIPS (million instructions per second) onwards have really become our main clientele. We often encounter systems so large they require modular migration methods, which are only practical with some element of automation. Vitally, this frees up our experts to engage with the customer and ensure his business continues to thrive during the process. This makes us particularly useful to larger firms who need these systems to stay coordinated.
“These two strategic points pave the way going forward, concludes the CTO, ”spending less time on repetitive technical tasks, we can deploy our team members to understand what the business really needs from an IT system, and how the migration process can be managed to keep the business running.” Mr. Wijmenga ends by saying: “‘Legacy’ systems are still responsible for 85% of global financial transactions. So there’s a huge market out there. Our ability to automate migration projects, and share expertise with our customer, is what will help us make the most of the demand.”