John Hancock modernizes Mainframe to Azure and enhances the customer experience

Mainframe to Azure: Untangling hierarchical complexity

John Hancock’s legacy applications for managing and processing their insurance business were built using a complex array of over 20 technologies, including Information Management System (IMS), COBOL, Telon, Assembler, and DB2. These highly transactional systems comprised 3.2 million lines of code, serving 200,000 insurance customers and 1,000 back-office users. The migration of these applications to the cloud was a significant undertaking, which included the transfer of 1TB of data. 

John Hancock prioritized minimizing risk and ensuring uninterrupted customer service during this transition. To leverage cloud-native services, these applications needed to be modernized from a monolithic structure to a distributed microservices-based architecture. The batch nature of the workload meant the system experienced peak activity during specific hours and days, requiring the on-premises system to be provisioned for peak performance.

Maintaining these applications on legacy platforms was challenging from both a technical skills and technology perspective. Modernization enabled John Hancock to foster innovation, introduce new functionality at a faster rate, and focus on their core business goals. The new solution can also scale effortlessly to match their business growth and evolving needs.

“This migration is a testament to our innovative spirit, marking several firsts: Mainframe to AKS, containerization of Mainframe Front End, LDAP Authentication for MF Online apps, RACF rules to Microsoft Entra ID conversion, container orchestration with KEDA, and Raincode Compilers. The team has set the blueprint for future Mainframe migrations,” says Ravisankar Nair, Digital Transformation Lead at John Hancock.

A relational solution: Azure SQL Managed Instance

Given the intricacy of their system, John Hancock conducted a comprehensive assessment to identify the critical requirements for any target database that could handle the inherent complexity of the existing system infrastructure. These requirements included scalability, high availability, disaster recovery, migration efficiency, and management by Microsoft. Considering all these factors, Azure SQL Managed Instance was selected for its salient capabilities such as license-free standby replicas, geo-replication, database monitoring, automatic tuning, and versionless SQL.

Additionally, Azure SQL Managed Instance has the capability to host IMSql—a solution from Raincode that can rehost the entire IMS subsystem on SQL Server. With this capability, existing code and data were migrated to Azure with minimal changes. Azure SQL Managed Instance served as both the Transaction Manager and the underlying database. The IMS hierarchical structure is retained through primary and foreign key relationships between SQL tables.

Data migration with zero transformation

The data remains in EBCDIC format on Azure SQL, eliminating the need for data conversion. This approach practically eliminates any scope for data corruption and ensures that data integrity is maintained. Each segment in an IMS DBD is translated into a table on SQL with the complete IMS segment data represented in EBCDIC. 

Containerization of a batch workload

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) with KEDA was deployed to migrate IMS programs from the on-premises application to containers, running them as fully managed Kubernetes service with AKS. This deployment manages microservices architecture for their modernized system. AKS is implemented with Azure DevOps to facilitate continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD). Kubernetes Event-driven Autoscaling (KEDA), a single-purpose and lightweight component, was used to simplify application autoscaling. It applies event-driven autoscaling to adjust application scale efficiently, meeting demand in a sustainable and cost-efficient manner including the ability to scale-to-zero when necessary.

Azure DevOps provides automated deployment and scheduled pipelines at specific times. As applications are modernized into microservices and containerized, it paves the way for flexible deployment strategies. The CI/CD approach helps to modernize and expand portfolios continuously by focusing more on business requirements. 

Azure SQL Managed Instance is part of the Azure SQL service portfolio. It is a managed, highly secure, always up-to-date SQL instance in the cloud which has enabled this deployment to scale continuously. It ensures that the latest security updates and high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) measures are always in place.

Microsoft Entra ID (previously Azure AD) is the next evolution of cloud identity and cloud access management solutions and was used by John Hancock to maintain the authentication and authorization that was handled by their Mainframe. To accomplish this safely and effectively, RACF identities from the mainframe were converted to Azure identities and loaded into Microsoft Entra.

Transformation and agility

By decoupling from their on-premises infrastructure, John Hancock has retired their system dependencies and transitioned to a cloud native-solution using AKS and Azure SQL. This shift has enabled the John Hancock team to increase their focus on core business priorities and build new functionalities, thereby increasing the business’s ROI. 

Additionally, any new functionalities that are built can fully utilize cloud-native technologies without relying on IMS. This is possible because IMSql provides SQL Indexed views that can be utilized to read and write EBCDIC data as relational data. This capability effectively makes the database transparent to relational data access, enabling the system to function as a relational data store.

“This migration, though small, was complex due to the variety of technologies involved. The team tackled numerous challenges, including Cobol, DB2, and VSAM, as well as more difficult ones like IMS DB/DC, Assembler, PL/1, Focus, Telon, Ezletter, Eztrieve, and XICS. With this successful migration, we've proven it can be done,” says Vinod K. George, Lead Technical Program Manager at John Hancock.

Business benefits and next steps

Through this migration, John Hancock was able to optimize costs while reducing Total Cost Ownership (TCO) by almost 90%. The increased efficiency allows for reinvestment to enhance the experience for customers and end users. John Hancock continues to prioritize operational excellence and efficiency by moving monolithic workloads to Cloud Native infrastructure. The Raincode transformation will be one of the paths they choose for this journey.

About Manulife  

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. With global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, it provides financial advice and insurance, operating as Manulife across Canada, Asia, and Europe, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States. Through Manulife Wealth & Asset Management, it offers global investment, financial advice, and retirement plan services to individuals, institutions, and retirement plan members worldwide. At the end of 2023, it had more than 38,000 employees, over 98,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving over 35 million customers. It trades as ‘MFC’ on the Toronto, New York, and the Philippine stock exchanges, and under ‘945’ in Hong Kong.  
 
Not all offerings are available in all jurisdictions. For additional information, please visit manulife.com. 

About John Hancock 

John Hancock is a unit of Manulife Financial Corporation, a leading international financial services provider that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better by providing financial advice, insurance, and wealth and asset management solutions. Manulife Financial Corporation trades as MFC on the TSX, NYSE, and PSE, and under 945 on the SEHK. Manulife can be found at manulife.com. 

One of the largest life insurers in the United States, John Hancock supports more than ten million Americans with a broad range of financial products, including life insurance and annuities.  John Hancock also supports US investors by bringing leading investment capabilities and retirement planning and administration expertise to individuals and institutions. Additional information about John Hancock may be found at johnhancock.com.