How to change mainframe apps into microservices, modernizing mainframe applications with Fouad Hamdi

In this episode, Coté is joined by Fouad Hamdi, to discuss a project he worked on to modernize of a 30-year-old mainframe app. Fouad provides a comprehensive breakdown of how he and his team at VMware Tanzu Labs approached this task, migrating a system relied on by over 3 million users from a mainframe infrastructure to a microservices architecture.

Read the original blog post they discuss here.

Fouad and Coté delve into the initial goals for mainframe modernization, the constraints, and past attempts at modernization that shaped the path they took. Fouad shares how they managed to migrate safely and at a rapid pace, all while maintaining the existing system's functionality.

Listen as Fouad walks us through how the team  leveraged the power of event storming workshops and Domain Driven Design (DDD) to understand the business domain and identify key areas for modernization. They discuss the challenges of working with older technologies like COBOL, and the strategies they used to bring business knowledge to a new generation of developers.

They also explore how the team navigated complex issues such as coexistence between the old and new systems, and how they incrementally built the new system to avoid any disruption of service. Fouad shares invaluable insights into the importance of context in these modernization efforts, and the lessons they learned along the way.

Whether you're a software engineer, an architect, or a business leader looking to modernize your own systems, this episode is filled with practical advice and lessons learned from modernizing a mainframe application. Tune in to learn from Fouad's experience and to understand how you can apply these lessons to your own mainframe modernization journey.