Your partner for modernising your IT

Company-wide digitalisation strategies, agile development of excellent software or integrated transformation for the cloud: ARS Computer and Consulting is the perfect partner for any company wanting to modernise their IT.

Our customers come from a whole range of sectors. They are private and state-owned insurance companies, the German pension insurance institute, or IT service providers from national or state administrations. They’re in logistics, industry or banking. But whatever their sector and size, they share the same great challenge of our time: They need to transform their IT along the entire value chain, reducing costs while increasing efficiency and profits, and steering the whole organisation towards digitalisation and the flexibility of a hybrid multi-cloud. In short, it’s about ensuring your company is fit for the future and working at full power.

A ticking time bomb, which, if you don’t defuse it quickly, will sooner or later explode, endangering the existence of your company and its staff. Now is the time to become a hero and be one of the first to solve these unavoidable challenges.

Become a legacy hero!

Draw on three turbo powers to overcome the fiddly and complex challenges of legacy transformations in a smart, focused and sustainable way.

Turbo power 1:
eXplain with PKS – the illuminator

The biggest problem with legacy transformations is that you often no longer know what exactly those mature software monoliths contain. And even worse, which bits belong together.

The power of eXplain, the software analysis tool from PKS, helps you avoid this risk. eXplain illuminates mature source code – whether Cobol, PL/1, Natural or Assembler – and brings the truth to light. Technical, functional and qualitative analyses quickly tell you not only where the problems lie, but also identify the good qualities and hidden gems in your legacy systems.

Turbo power 2:
Create with ARS – the designer

To properly apply the insights you gain from eXplain with PKS, you’ll need implementation experts at your side. As designers of the digital transformation of your legacy systems, we draft, design and realise software systems that are pragmatic, cost efficient and intelligently thought-out for customers with mature mainframe applications – something we’ve been doing for over 30 years.

And as we do it, we unleash our turbo power in the following four areas, depending on your needs:

Planning & design

Taking into account your short- and long-term goals, we work with you to develop a target architecture that is fit for the future. After helping you select the most suitable technology and platforms, we create a step-by-step plan to achieve the transformation.

Realization & implementation

This includes both software and infrastructure components. We provide support with requirements engineering, project management, architecture, implementation, quality assurance, provision and maintenance of the target platforms. Whether on-prem, private, public, hybrid or multi-cloud, here, too, we focus on efficiency and stability through extensive automation, monitoring and professionalism in operation.

Knowledge transfer

We use a whole range of knowledge-transfer measures to empower you and your staff, keeping you closely involved with the transformation. As well as relating to technological and functional questions, this especially impacts aspects of the cultural transformation that often accompanies the digital one. We feel that this is the only way to ensure that the planned transformation is cost effective, on schedule and successful.

Turbo power 3:
Navigate using the synergy between ARS and PKS – your dependable crew

What’s very important is that you remain the captain. We stand in the background, providing dependable assistance at the tiller and in the engine room – or to supplement your internal team. Together, we’ll steer your ship safely to each project goal.

Our process for modernising legacy applications:

‘Train the Hero’ training

In our compact seminar, you will come into contact with the three turbo powers for the first time and learn what’s really important in legacy transformations. At the same time, you will begin to discover which main drivers are really relevant in your situation. We will present the opportunities and the risk/benefit ratios of the ‘6 Rs’ and help you prioritise them based on your use case. Rehost, replatform, refactor, retire, retain, repurchase. Our training runs for 6 hours and is solution-neutral. You’ll find out everything you need to know to help you navigate the vast ocean of options and select the ones that work for your situation and goals. There’s one thing we place great value on – that the training ends with a specific next step leading directly to implementation. This ensures that you’re no longer paralysed by the range of options. Instead, you can step forward boldly, with a preliminary decision to start an internal dialogue.

Analysis and target vision

Once our turbo powers have helped you gain the knowledge you need in the first step, we'll dive right into your applications, technology stacks and team structures. We'll work with tool-supported procedures and experts from our teams to get straight to the crux of the matter. Based on insights from our analysis, we'll then work with your team to take the given constraints into account and create the optimum vision for your requirements.

Implementation of measures

During implementation, we'll support and help you in the way that suits you best. We have analysis experts, software architects, coders, concept designers and testers, not to mention sparring partners for management and strategic consulting. So you can close precisely those gaps that have previously prevented you from working on your legacy transformation at full speed and with maximum success.

Do you want to find out how the legacy transformation hero can accelerate the digital transformation of your business model? Read our current whitepaper:

Download our Legacy Hero Whitepaper free of charge

IT modernisation is becoming more and more important, especially today. Just as a company transforms over years and decades, its software and system landscape also undergo changes. At the same time, what users require from software has changed fundamentally over the last few years. It’s not wise to put this off until tomorrow. Benefiting from existing software and systems for as long as possible as part of a transformation strategy, while maintaining flexibility for current challenges and goals is an art form. And one we’ve been helping our customers with for many years.

Stefan Schäffer Managing Director, ARS Computer und Consulting GmbH

We shape today’s IT

For over 30 years, we’ve not only been developing software for our customers, but also advising and supporting them as they modernise their application and operational IT landscape. ARS doesn’t just bring expertise from numerous software development projects to the table. We’ve also worked closely with customers as they successfully implement their IT modernisation and/or cloud transformation.

Service portfolio at a glance:

Our strength lies in our integrated approach

IT modernisation is often part of a digitalisation strategy. The goals of such a transformation are set very high. On the way, you repeatedly come across problems that can only be solved be modernisation. If applications are written in old programming languages and internal specialists are few and far between, or if your IT department doesn’t have sufficient capacity to implement complex modernisations in the required timeframe, it makes sense to draw on external support.

Choosing the ‘right’ technology is important, but if you don’t focus on related aspects, you may end up being disappointed by the results. For good technology to work, it needs to be part of a well though-out architecture. If both of these are to thrive, it’s important for people and organisations to have a joint vision, plus a good dose of enthusiasm, skill and passion. So it’s extremely important to keep developing methods, processes and culture in your company, not just in IT.

A modernisation project will only be a success if it’s implemented iteratively and in manageable steps, with continual measuring of both risks and successes. We advise our customers on modernisation scenarios and strategies and provide all-round support. We also understand our customers’ legacy systems and technologies, whether IBM mainframe, the AS/400 world, middleware from the 1990s or Java that’s seen better days. Creative. Innovative. Qualitative.