Replacing BW5 within a multinational corporation

At WeAreFrank! we continuously help organizations become less dependent on closed-source integration platforms such as Mulesoft, WSO2, Adeptia, BizTalk and Tibco. We recently completed a major project at a multinational company that involved replacing Tibco BW5 with our open-source Frank!Framework at three different business units.

We will describe the cases and our approach, so you will have a good idea how to successfully replace a closed-source integration platform with zero downtime in less than a year. Also, based on these three projects, we describe what choices you can make to use the migration directly, to make the infrastructure more stable or more up-to-date

Three projects, each with its own objective

Three different business units with several thousand users each used Tibco BW5 in their own way. The first business unit only had the need to replace the current integration framework. We call this an “as is” migration. The infrastructure on its own was in good order, so the objective was to keep it the same for the most part. Besides the fact that Tibco BW5 was becoming less and less supported, the migration also resulted in a cost saving of a million euros. The urgency to migrate was definitely there. 

Within just nine months, we replaced over 100 Tibco components with the Frank!Framework, while maintaining the same functionality across thousands of integrations. This was accomplished with zero downtime, ensuring business operations continued without interruption.

Using the migration for improving data structure

At the second business unit, there was a desire to change things. We used the migration to redesign the data structure and components, which made the infrastructure much more stable. We also used the migration to phase out some applications.

This business unit has now been running stably on the Frank!Framework for five years. The whole thing can be maintained by just 1.5 FTE. 

Using the migration for modernizing 

For the third business unit, the main need was to modernize. In addition to replacing Tibco BW5, we made sure that the infrastructure became Cloud ready. For example, the old Salesforce integrations were still working with SOAP. We migrated these integrations to REST. Meanwhile, we made sure that existing SOAP and JMS integrations were fully available and could still be used, just like the modern REST environment. This approach allowed legacy applications to remain integrated, while the rest of the infrastructure was fully modernized after the migration.

After Tibco was phased out, we trained employees in our Frank!Academy. Unlike the old situation, maintenance and management is now done in-house.

Our approach

Throughout the dozens of migrations we perform each year, we always use the same, time-tested approach, dividing a project into five phases:

1. Research and gathering information
2. Analysis and impact assessment
3. Project startup
4. Factory approach
5. Aftercare and training

Something that is unique for Tibco migrations is that we can make a source code analysis with our Tibco BW Analyzer during the Analysis and impact assessment phase. With this we map out the existing infrastructure in a fully automated way. 
This part of the project also involves designing the improved structure and figuring out the modernizations, as we described in project two and three.

After we have made all the preparations in the Project startup phase, collected the necessary data and installed tooling, in the Factory approach phase we will replace integrations on a large scale and set them up in a new CI/CD environment. A large part of the integrations will be set up automatically, while some will be handled by our team. You also have the option to have your own team take on this task, either partially or entirely, or to involve a Frank!Partner.

With our unique Proof of Migration Tool, we can automatically test 95 percent of the integrations. This allows us to guarantee that all functionality will continue to work exactly as it did prior to the migration.

We consider project completion just as important as the first four phases of the project. During this phase, employees are trained through our Frank!Academy. This way, for example, the people who previously worked with Tibco can be trained in using the Frank!Framework.

Conclusion

WeAreFrank! is the only company in the world that can quickly and systematically transition a live production environment from Tibco BW. We also have extensive experience with other well-known integration platforms.