A major banking group relies on its core banking systems to deliver seamless, reliable services to millions of customers, but legacy IMS databases and applications were creating operational challenges. Partnering with a global technology consultancy, MooodyCow's Nikhil George led a critical programme to modernise these systems, migrating IMS databases to DB2, eliminating unnecessary alerts, and optimising memory utilisation, delivering faster systems, reduced risk, and significant cost savings.
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A major banking group relies on its core banking systems to deliver seamless, reliable services to millions of customers. However, legacy IMS databases and applications were creating operational challenges, from disruptive alerts over bank holidays and long weekends, to high memory usage that affected performance, and the complexity of outdated systems that slowed innovation.
Partnering with a global technology consultancy, Nikhil George led a critical programme to modernise these systems.
By analysing issues, designing solutions, and executing migrations from IMS to DB2, he eliminated unnecessary alerts, optimised memory utilisation and decommissioned legacy applications.
The result: faster, more reliable systems, reduced operational risk, significant cost savings, and a foundation that enables the client to innovate with confidence.
The client's legacy IMS databases and applications were critical to daily operations but faced a number of operational challenges:
Bank holiday and long weekend alerts: database alerts frequently triggered on bank holidays and extended weekends, disrupting monitoring processes and requiring manual intervention.
High memory utilisation: certain database segments and regions experienced higher memory usage, impacting performance and efficiency.
Legacy migration pressures: the organisation was looking to migrate IMS databases to DB2 and decommission legacy applications to reduce complexity, improve performance, and unlock cost savings.
The overarching goal was to streamline operations, reduce operational risks, improve performance, and modernise the organisation's core database infrastructure.
Nikhil George played a central role in delivering this transformation, leveraging extensive experience in legacy mainframe systems and high-stakes database migrations.
Key contributions included:
Impact analysis and solution design: conducting detailed assessments of production issues, identifying root causes, and proposing solutions for memory optimisation, alert suppression, and migration challenges.
Technical leadership: leading estimation, technical design, development, scheduling, deployment, and pre- and post-production activities to ensure every critical step met the organisation's high standards.
Legacy application and database migration: overseeing the migration of IMS databases to DB2 using proven methodologies honed over previous engagements with major banks and credit card providers.
Production issue resolution: managing daily production issues to ensure smooth operations across critical applications during the transition period.
Advanced mainframe expertise: applying deep knowledge of the mainframe tech stack, including VSAM, REXX, COBOL, JCL, IMS DB, IMS DC, CICS, Fast Path, BMS tools, DB2, TWS and CA7, to deliver reliable, high-performance solutions tailored to the client's environment.
Outcome: The results of Nikhil's work were tangible, measurable and transformative. Disruptive alerts were eliminated: bank holiday and long weekend alerts on over 55 databases were stopped across all regions, reducing manual interventions and operational risk.
Performance and efficiency improved, as memory utilisation was optimised, enabling faster data fetching and updates and improving overall application performance. Cost savings and simplification followed, as decommissioning legacy IMS applications and databases reduced mainframe storage costs, saving millions of pounds, and simplified the infrastructure, making it easier to introduce new features.
Customer experience was enhanced, as optimised systems enabled faster payments and more reliable service for customers. Operational reliability also improved, as reducing complexity and improving system performance made ongoing maintenance and future enhancements simpler and less risky.
The client has consistently praised Nikhil's contributions. Feedback highlighted his expertise in IMS-to-DB2 migration, memory optimisation, TWS scheduling, and the resolution of alerts on bank holidays and long weekends. His work was recognised for improving performance, reducing operational risk, and enabling cost savings, while keeping critical banking applications running smoothly.
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