BT to move its mainframe applications to the cloud with Kyndryl

Telecommunications company BT is moving some of its legacy mainframe applications to the cloud and it has chosen infrastructure services provider Kyndryl to help with the process. The company said that it is targeting legacy apps that "cannot be shut down in the short term" such as the ones servicing its legacy copper business and consumer broadband products.

BT says that by migrating these applications to the cloud, it can operate its copper broadband infrastructure "in a modern way" and potentially save the company more than £17 million a year by 2026. According to BT the savings in cost will come from reduced maintenance, reduced hosting and energy costs, and increased life of infrastructure. The company intends to implement AIOPs for the management of the digitised mainframe applications.

All this is just one part of BT’s master plan to make £3 billion in cuts by the end of 2025. "We like thinking out of the box to solve complex problems – like how to move off mainframes given the prohibitive increase in legacy infrastructure cost – without rewriting decades-old applications," said BT Group's Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, Harmeen Mehta.

Mehta said part of their agreement with Kyndryl was that the IT provider would enable them to turn legacy mainframe code into modern digital apps and run them at a fraction of the cost.

Legacy applications that can’t be rewired to operate in the cloud will be cut. Moving these applications to the cloud will increase efficiency in the company because all systems will now be centrally managed through BT Group's service management platform. Other services within the company will now have easier access to data and capabilities offered by the mainframe applications.

The digital migration aligns with BT’s plan to retire legacy copper networks and move its customers to modern fiber services.

"Migrating from mainframes to cloud extends the usefulness and lifespan of these applications in a modern, microservices-led, cloud-centric way and helps unlock intelligent data insights," said Kyndryl's Global Practice Leader for Core Enterprise & zCloud, Petra Goude.