Electricity firm completes Windows migration

The electricity provider reduced application operating costs by 70 per cent

Guernsey Electricity has completed a mainframe migration project that is expected to generate savings of around £120,000 each year, equivalent to 10 per cent of its annual IT budget.

According to the utilities provider, the move to a Windows-based environment will reduce the need for scarce mainframe skills and decrease application operating costs by 70 per cent.

Challenges encountered during the migration included the changeover of the firm’s core customer information system Midas – developed in-house in ICL ApplicationMaster and Cobol – on to the new platform.

The application, used daily by 150 employees, was moved to the new environment without any change to user functionality with tools supplied by Micro Focus along with consultancy and software tools from Blue Phoenix.

Operational benefits after the project include improved batch performance, reduction in run times by 50 per cent, as well as greater flexibility.

“The cost savings yielded by this project have freed-up additional IT budget which can now be used to improve other areas of our IT systems,” said David Elliston, IT services manager at Guernsey Electricity.