The sustenance engineering of business critical legacy information systems places huge demand on IT department resources. Legacy systems are uniquely complex as these systems frequently lack basic documentation and other in-house maintenance resources. With rapid changes in technology and business, the availability of application maintenance resources is very limited but the demand for these resources is constantly increasing.

Most legacy systems are based on the traditional system development model that separates the various programs from data structures (Copybook). This separation of programs/data creates a intricate relationships, which places significant challenge in application maintenance and enhancements. It is essential to fully understand the relationship between all the source objects of the application to accurately identify source of a program bug.

These complex relationships are also a critical factor while introducing any changes to the legacy systems. These changes immediately impact on other components of the application objects.

Hence the challenge is to improve sustenance engineering productivity at a reasonable cost to meet the growing need for maintenance, enhancements and integration while ensuring legacy asset investment protection.

Intertec's IARS/SMS (Advanced Renewal Solution- Streamlined Maintenance Solution) is a comprehensive solution utilizing a suite of tools and process that provide for automation of application maintenance.

IARS/SMS provides a full service maintenance solution, from the initial inventory, detailed application analysis stage through to programming, testing, code revamping, IV&V and QA functions. The result is an accurate and comprehensive solution for enterprise-wide sustenance engineering activities.