Google Cloud Launches First-of-Its-Kind Service to Simplify Mainframe Modernization for Customers in Financial Services, Retail, Healthcare and Other Industries

New solution, Dual Run for Google Cloud, removes common risks and roadblocks preventing enterprises from moving off legacy infrastructure to a more reliable, secure, and innovative cloud environment

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Google Cloud today announced Dual Run, a mainframe modernization solution that dramatically simplifies and reduces risk of enterprises' migrations of legacy mainframe systems to the cloud.

Many enterprise organizations still utilize mainframe systems to support their core business workloads, requiring significant maintenance costs and limiting opportunities for scale, innovation, and cost-savings. In fact, more than 44 of the top 50 banks and 23 of the top 25 largest U.S. retailers still use mainframes to run their businesses. Dual Run for Google Cloud introduces a set of new capabilities that eliminate the most common risks and concerns associated with mainframe modernization projects, unblocking the path for global businesses and public sector organizations to run their most critical workloads and applications in a modern, highly performant, and more secure cloud environment.

A large challenge with mainframe systems is the tight coupling of data to the application layer. Companies would have to stop an application for some period of time in order to move it, modernize it or transform it. Dual Run enables parallel processing, meaning customers can simultaneously run workloads on their existing mainframes and on Google Cloud, allowing them to perform real-time testing and quickly gather data on performance and stability with no disruption to their businesses. Once satisfied with the functional performance equivalence of the two systems, the new Google Cloud environment can then be made the customers' system-of-record, while existing mainframe systems can operate as a backup as needed.

Critically, Dual Run allows organizations in highly-regulated industries, such as banking, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and public sector to more easily satisfy the needs of regulators by demonstrating compliance with privacy, security, and data residency requirements. Google Cloud teams have optimized the service for industries including banking, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and public sector. Together with its ecosystem of industry and services partners, Google Cloud will deliver migration playbooks specifically for these use cases.

"Modernizing legacy IT infrastructure represents a significant stepping stone into the cloud era for many enterprises," said Sachin Gupta, VP and GM, Infrastructure, Google Cloud. "By moving mainframe systems to the cloud, organizations have an opportunity to better utilize their data, implement stronger cybersecurity protections, and build a foundation for their digital transformations that will drive their future growth. Dual Run simplifies this process and reduces any associated risks."

Dual Run is built on top of unique technology developed by Banco Santander, one of the largest banks in the world, with 157 million customers in ten core markets in Europe and the Americas. According to Banco Santander Global CIO David Chaos, this technology has already been proven to be effective in the highly regulated financial services industry, and Santander has begun utilizing Dual Run to bring data and workloads onto Google Cloud's trusted infrastructure.

Google Cloud's ecosystem of industry, technology, and services partners will play a critical role in helping customers adopt and implement the new service. The technology tightly integrates with Micro Focus' widely-adopted enterprise IT modernization platform, which are available on the Google Cloud Marketplace.

Trusted, trained services providers—including Accenture, Capgemini, DXC Technology, Kyndryl, and Micro Focus—and thousands of certified experts will provide critical services to help businesses build modernization roadmaps, implement custom deployments of Dual Run, and accelerate their cloud agendas and digital transformations.

Dual Run is in Preview globally and interested customers should get in touch with their Google Cloud account representative. Learn more about Dual Run by visiting our Mainframe Modernization solution webpage.

Supporting quotes:

• "Regulated industries - already facing complex governance rules - often rely on legacy mainframe servers, which can be a daunting obstacle in transforming to a digital core that is flexible and supports business growth. Dual Run introduces a more predictable platform for internal, external and governing stakeholders to verify the equivalency of the new GCP-based system. This helps companies to accelerate the modernization of legacy infrastructure and reduce costs by moving to a cloud environment. And across all industries, Dual Run can also help address the scarcity of skills needed to modernize and maintain a company's mainframe-based digital core." - Hauke Heier, Head of Google Cloud Practice in Europe, Accenture
  
  
• "Our long-standing strategic partnership with Google Cloud is the perfect union to help our clients move off legacy mainframe technology to a more reliable, secure, and innovative cloud environment with Google Cloud. Together, we have built a strong framework for enterprises to mitigate risk, reduce TCO, drive innovation at scale, and achieve operational efficiencies. We are very excited to collaborate with Google Cloud and support our client portfolio across the banking, insurance, capital markets and other industries to help them build a future-ready business for tomorrow.'' - Ravi Khokhar, Head of Cloud Financial Services, Capgemini
  
  
• "Dual Run represents a new approach for our customers to migrate their complex mainframe workloads to the cloud in a risk-adverse manner. DXC Technology is one of the largest mainframe services providers in the world, working with large, global companies to run and transform their mission-critical systems, and we're excited to work with Google Cloud to help organizations bring legacy mainframe systems into modern, innovation-friendly cloud environments." - Vinod Bagal, President, Cloud and Infrastructure Services, DXC Technology
  
  
• "Kyndryl and Google Cloud understand the complexities of modernizing applications running on the mainframe. Through our partnership, we enable customers to accelerate their transformation journey with Kyndryl's in-depth knowledge and expertise running the world's most complex, mission-critical systems that are enabled by Google Cloud's technology. We also will work together to help modernize applications on the mainframe, enhance applications through integration with cloud capabilities, and use Google Dual Run to manage the risk of moving applications to the cloud." - Petra Goude, Global Practice Leader for Core Enterprise & zCloud at Kyndryl
  
  
• "Mainframe modernization has a number of key success factors that need to be achieved in order for the project to be completely successful including ensuring the new environment produces consistent results and limiting the impact of the migration period on customers. Dual Run addresses these concerns by mitigating potential risks and providing an avenue to operate normally during the migration. We are honored that Micro Focus' mainframe application modernization technology is tightly integrated with Dual Run." - Neil Fowler, General Manager and VP of the Application Modernization and Connectivity business at Micro Focus.

Google Cloud accelerates every organizations' ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

SOURCE Google Cloud