Visual COBOL helps City of Miami modernize and half its IT costs

How modernization made the difference for City of Miami

50% cost reduction in IT operations

Improved uptime and disaster recovery

Flexible system and faster response

Improves current and future emergency services

About City of MiamiINDUSTRY: State and Local Government

CORE APPLICATIONS: Fire Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system

COUNTRY: USA

Recognized worldwide as an

international hub, the City of Miami is

the largest municipality in Miami-Dade

County, with a population of around

400,000 that swells to over a million

on working days.

The City of Miami Fire Rescue

Department provides rapid emergency

response and other services to save

lives and protect property.

The department relied upon an

emergency fire and medical dispatch

system which was state-of-the-art,

20 years ago.

Challenge: update a 20-year old CAD systemThe City of Miami’s Fire Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)

mainframe-based system was stretched by the demands of

an increasing population, and was no longer able to integrate

smoothly with new systems and functionality. It also became

increasingly difficult and costly to maintain.

To move off the mainframe, the City of Miami had to decide

between re-hosting or re-writing all 80 applications and

180,000 lines of code to a modern platform.

The re-write would have taken between two and three years

with an estimated cost more than double that of re-hosting

the applications on a new platform. The chosen modernization

route enabled City of Miami to safely re-host this business

critical system in six months at a fraction of the cost.

Re-hosting to a modern, flexible platform

The application re-host improved current

processes and performance, and will also

enable City of Miami to improve future

emergency services, including automatic

vehicle location, global positioning and

emergency dispatch systems.

The City’s proprietary Unisys COBOL code was

converted to Micro Focus COBOL in order to

run on a Microsoft Windows environment.

This reduced the City of Miami’s IT costs by over

50%, saving at least $900,000 per year.

Re-host has enabled the City to eliminate

scheduled downtime for maintenance (up to four

hours per month previously), improve disaster

recovery by eliminating the single point of failure,

and update the system more quickly to meet

changing needs.

ORIGINAL PLATFORM: Unisys mainframe

APPLICATION RE-HOST TECHNOLOGY: Micro Focus Studio Enterprise Edition, Micro Focus Server Enterprise Edition

APPLICATION RE-HOST PARTNER: Astadia

Successful partnership

“The bottom line is that we do a better job of saving lives because we re-hosted our core COBOL applications from the mainframe a to distributed environment. The re-host project led by Astadia and Micro Focus enables us to not only improve our current processes and performance, but will be used in the future for emergency services.”

Kevin Burns, Information Systems ManagerCity of Miami Fire Rescue Department

“The partnership we have with Micro Focus is a clear example of how we are continually looking to improve efficiencies for our customers. The success realized at the City of Miami is a testament to the relationship Astadia has with Micro Focus.”

Steve Ziff President, Astadia

Start a new era of innovation

Discover how Micro Focus application re-hosting can help you modernize your apps at lower cost here.

Read the complete City of Miami success story in the case study.

See how other companies are modernizing their COBOL applications.