With servicing and replacement of old VAX hardware becoming increasingly difficult, this information services company could not continue to risk a proprietary application library built up over 20 years.

Background:

ProQuest Alison, a division of the US-based ProQuest Company, is a leading provider of information services that improve the management of automotive dealer and distribution networks. The company had always been an advanced user of technology and adopted VMS as its central operating system from early on. Over the course of two decades ProQuest built up and enhanced its library to provide some of the best information management and franchise performance measurement applications in the industry. 

The problem:

ProQuest Alison was finding it increasingly difficult to service its aging VAX hardware, and the risks posed by potential parts failures continued to escalate. However, its perfectly tailored applications, built on the rich VMS operating system, could not all run properly on the more modern technology available. The company therefore decided to replace those programmes that could be transferred without too much loss of detail while keeping the critical in-house applications intact on an emulated system.

The result:

With Swiftmigrate’s help, ProQuest Alison was an early adopter of migrated systems, purchasing the UK’s first cluster and running five top end VAX replacements to become the country’s largest user in terms of number of systems and user community. The migrated system not only eliminated the risks associated with continued VAX use, but made office moves substantially easier – after two moves in seven years staff quite happily report that moving five Proliants is substantially easier than a large VAX cluster and all associated accoutrement.