FIAT

Fiat Auto S.p.A. manufactures and markets automobiles, light commercial vehicles, and related products in Italy, Europe, South America, and Turkey.

The company is based in Torino, Italy. Fiat Auto S.p.A. operates as a subsidiary of Fiat S.p.A.

FIAT is one of the largest automotive manufacturer in Europe and in top ten producer worldwide. Fiat S.p.A. is part of automotive, publishing, finance, and metallurgy sector. The company is active as well in the sector of agricultural and construction equipment, commercial vehicles, motorcycles and aeronautics, components, metallurgical products, production systems, services, construction, information technology, publishing and communication, public services, delivering services in economics and financial fields. Fiat produce more than 2,000,000 vehicles per year.

Business Need

• Legacy discovery and assessment

• Pilot and production service enablement

• Migration and rehosting execution with enterprise service integration

• Service quality assurance and testing

• Ex-legacy applications optimization

HTWC Role

HTWC approach was focused to reduces the mainframe costs and legacy risks by migrating the applications off the mainframe and re-structuring it using all the modern software tools and capabilities from the set of our disposal.

• Supplier of the basic solution XFRAME , with which FIAT was enabled to emulate the environment Mainframe on the target platform

• Realization of the different phases of data migration and conversion of software objects

• Follow up on consulting client and support with testing performance bringing fast results and with great efficiency achieving elimination of all the anomalies or discrepancies within the host result

• Consulting FIAT in individualizing the size and configuration of the final target platform

• Assisting the client during the phases of cut-over and post cut-over of the each individual subsidiary putting it into production over time

Case

The project was followed up and performed with a detailed and planned process development that had permitted to distinguish all the regional offices into single sub project. FIAT has decided to make as a first step, from the overall rehosting project, modernizing all the applications cross regions in Europe from z/OS to UNIX. The process involved all the applications Cobol programs, online and batch, and EASYTRIEVE programs; all the EASYTRIEVE programs have been migrated into Cobol language.

The final cut over was performed in a time scheduled plan bring to realization each subsidiary at the time. Today the rehosted applications continue to exchange data with other applications, still running on Mainframe that allows each different regional application to run with its specific codepage.

Overview of the project methodology steps used in this case:

• Preliminary Assessment Study

• Application Asset Discovery and Analysis

• Application and Data Conversion (pilot and entire application portfolio)

• System and Application Integration

• Test Engineering

• Performance Testing

• Education and Training

• Switch-Over

Business Challenge and Requirements

HTWC team faced the following issues and overcoming complex situations:

• Very special security constraints for FIAT

• Migration from EASYTRIEVE to Cobol

• Integration between the rehosted applications and what is still running on mainframe

• Cooperation with IBM division, which is the main outsourcer for FIAT Information Technology.

Benefits and Out coming Factors

The benefits enjoyed by the client included:

We have enabled to the client to interfere into growth areas across Europe, providing an improvement within their day to day operations in each individual region using and enjoying the flexibility of XFRAME solution.

HTWC extensive knowledge of business processes from modernization, enabled the client to benefit and forecast a strong TCO - Total Cost of Ownership, like it was expected after a migration and rehosting of applications, to increase productivity and flexibility in IT development and operations, protecting long-term investment through application modernization.
HTWC completed the project in the time originally estimated. That has contribute to preserve and maintain very good result of collaboration with FIAT Auto team which is very satisfied on the follow up of the current development.