Pagesjaunes, an industry leader

PagesJaunes is the French leader in local advertising and infor-mation on the Internet, in mobile and print media. It belongs toPagesJaunes Groupe that employs over 4,500 people in France,Spain, Luxembourg and Austria, including 2,100 sales advisors sup-porting 715,000 local and national advertising customers.

Providing services in the delivery of content, media, and adverti-sing, PagesJaunes Groupe is an industry leader, with the 6th hi-ghest revenues in the world in internet-based advertising. In 2010,PagesJaunes Groupe generated over €537 million in revenue onthe Internet, representing 47.8% of its total revenue.

Pagesjaunes software applications

PagesJaunes relies on a set of applications which are designed tomaintain, reference and manipulate enormous quantities of data.This information is accessible through printed directories andthrough online web portals. The PagesJaunes’ software applica-tion provides extensive querying, and mapping functionalities,and is available from desktop and mobile devices.

Prior to the migration to open systems, and Open Source, withCOBOL-IT, an old but still significant part of PagesJaunes’ legacyapplication consisted of a CICS based online transaction monitorcomponent, and a batch component. Mainframe data sourcesincluded VSAM and DB2. PagesJaunes had a web portal connec-ted to the legacy COBOL in a service-oriented architecture. A de-velopment team of 10 developers enhanced and maintained theapplication using IBM/MVS development tools.

COBOL-IT - 231, rue Saint-Honoré - 75001 Paris - FRANCE

PagesJaunes has moved from IBMMainframe to Open Source withCOBOL-IT Software and SODIFRANCEProject HigHligHts

industry:Internet and Directory Advertising

Application:Online Transactional Processing, withlarge Batch component

coBol-it solutions:COBOL-IT Compiler Suite Enterprise Ed.COBOL-IT Developer Studio

Previous environment:IBM Mainframe / MVS (z/OS) JCL / DB2 / VSAM

New environment:Sparc Enterprise M5000 ServerSun Solaris 10 / Oracle Pro*COBOLOracle 10g Database / JBOSSSyncsort

Previous coBol:IBM COBOL

integrator:SODIFRANCE

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“Thanks to SODIFRANCE and COBOL-IT, our transition from an MVS/DB2 platform was completed successfully in ad-

vance of a hard contractual deadline. With the completion of our DataCenter Consolidation Project, Pages-

Jaunes will achieve savings of more than €1M/year, without any disturbance in service in two critical areas of our

back-office! ”, said Fabrice Fontaine, Director of the Solution Center, PagesJaunes.

PagesJaunes, (the French Yellow Pages), undertook a projectwith the goal of achieving significant cost savings on both thehardware and software level, while enhancing their ability to ex-pand Java-based development oriented towards the deliveryof Web Services. The COBOL-IT Compiler Suite helped themachieve both goals. The project was completed on time, in lessthan a year.

COBOL-IT - 231, rue Saint-Honoré - 75001 Paris - FRANCE

Pressures to move to open systems

The operation of PagesJaunes’ legacy system in an MVS/DB2 en-vironment was expensive, with price increases scheduled with thenext contract renewal. Additionally, PagesJaunes was anticipa-ting difficulties running the new web applications they requiredwith their MVS/DB2 connectors. Budgetary constraints madechanges mandatory, and contractual issues created a harddeadline. If the project was not completed prior to the contrac-tual deadline, price increases would be unavoidable.

PagesJaunes undertook a project which included both a data-center consolidation, and a migration from MVS/DB2/VSAM toSun Solaris 10 using an Oracle 10g database.

the decision to use coBol-it

Due to the hard contractual deadlines, minimizing risk was para-mount. As a consequence, the option to rewrite the COBOL por-tion of the application in Java was not realistic. PagesJaunesconcluded that they needed a COBOL compiler. The COBOLcompiler needed to be available on the host Solaris platform,and highly compatible with their existing COBOL compiler. TheCOBOL compiler also needed to meet their interoperability, per-formance, and budgetary requirements.

COBOL-IT was judged to be the superior choice. The OpenSource model promised immediate and future cost savings.COBOL-IT’s COBOL compiler proved to be compatible with theMVS compiler, and it performed very well in performance bench-marks. Interoperability with the component parts of the solution,which included the JBOSS Application Server, Syncsort, and Ora-cle Pro*COBOL was confirmed. COBOL-IT technical services werevery responsive in the evaluation phase.

soDiFrANce and coBol-it successfully achieve Pages-

jaunes’ goals

SODIFRANCE is a leader in Automated System Integration, with anoutstanding record in helping large corporate clients reducecosts through enterprise application modernization.

In one year, respecting the contractual deadlines, SODIFRANCEsuccessfully migrated over 800 COBOL source files, and over 500JCL scripts. In addition, SODFRANCE also migrated over 30 VSAMfiles, and 130 DB2 tables to Oracle. Rigorous “byte-by-byte” testswere applied by the migration team to demonstrate the success-ful completion of the project. All issues were analyzed carefullyand addressed.

The Developer Studio®, COBOL-IT’s Eclipse-based developmentenvironment, provides remote compiling and debugging capabi-lities, and has to be very effective. PagesJaunes cited a noticea-ble improvement in programmer productivity.

On the transactional side of the application, performance impro-vements were recorded, with response times improving by a fac-tor of 3 to 5 times in some cases.

A few small functional differences between MVS COBOL andCOBOL-IT were identified, and these were resolved very quicklyand efficiently during the project with the assistance of COBOL-ITtechnical staff.

Pages Jaunes is seeing an 80% savings in IT production costs. ROIfor the project is projected for 18 months, after which the solutionwill continue to operate at less than half of the former cost. Thesolution provides equivalent functionality and vastly superior ca-pabilities for the planned development of internet portals andjava-based interfaces to back-end services written in COBOL-IT.No business disruption was incurred, and the project was comple-ted on time.

coBol-it, the highest value, lowest risk solution on the

market

“COBOL-IT has a stellar record of success in migrations operating

under time-sensitive timelines” said Stephane Croce, CEO ofCOBOL-IT. “The COBOL-IT suite of software products provides high

value and high performance. Combined with our responsive

technical service team, the COBOL-IT solution is engineered to

lower risk, reduce costs, and contribute to the success of industry

leaders, such as PagesJaunes.”

challenge/solution/customer Benefit matrix

The COBOL-IT solution is engineered to lowerrisk, reduce costs, and contribute to the suc-

cess of industry leaders, such as PagesJaunes.

For more information about COBOL-IT, and our products

and services, please visit www.cobol-it.com

We have Distributors and Technical Hubs worldwide.

For a complete listing, check our website:

http://www.cobol-it.com/contact.php

Phone: +33 1 75 43 05 50Fax: +33 1 75 43 05 16

E-mail: info@cobol-it.comWeb: www.cobol-it.com

coBol-it231, rue Saint Honoré 75001 Paris - France

coNtAct iNForMAtioN

Challenge Solution CustomerBenefits

Operating costs projectedto rise to unacceptablyhigh levels.

Migrate PagesJaunessoftware applicationsfrom IBM Mainframerunning MVS, COBOL,VSAM and DB2 to SparcM5000 Server runningSolaris 10, COBOL-ITandOracle 10g.

Divide by over 5 time thecost of operations

New development beingcarried out in Java andCOBOL.

Transfer development toCOBOL-IT’s Eclipse-based Developer Studio.

Improvements inprogrammer productivity.

Meet a hard deadlineimposed by existingcontracts.

Minimize risk by choo-sing the SODIFRANCEmigration methodologyand the ISO-standardCOBOL-IT Compiler.

Avoid the need to nego-tiate contract prolonga-tions, with the successfulcompletion of the projectin less than 1 year.

Replicate all functiona-lity, with equivalent orbetter performance.

Automate the migration,with parallel developmentof every function, and va-lidating every byte of dataprocessed by the COBOLapplication.

Limit migration risks.

Limit development freezeperiod.

Replay the automatedmigration 3 times witheach of 3 applicationsoftware releases.

Limit the developmentfreeze period to 3months.