An Easier and Safer Modernization Journey for Ingres and Database Applications

Actian’s Ingres NeXt Initiative Paves the Way for Transformation

Are you considering modernizing either your Ingres database or your “green screen” ABF or thick-client OpenROAD applications? If so, you may have read about modernization options like those from Gartner listed below. Gartner has ranked these from easiest (Encapsulate) to most difficult (Replace). The easier the approach, the lower the risk, but also the lower the business benefit both technically and operationally. The more difficult the approach, the greater the risk but the greater the reward.

Source: Gartner, 7 Options to Modernize Legacy Systems

Organizations need to modernize infrastructure to respond more quickly to market changes, keep up with the competition, and support digital transformation. If you’ve been wishing that you could move Ingres to the cloud and/or extend your database applications with a modern user interface and/or web and mobile access, that’s normal. At the same time, it’s also understandable if the effort and risks involved in modernization seem terrifying. According to a study by Hitachi Vantara, more than 50% of modernization projects fail.

But what if I told you that Actian’s Ingres NeXt Initiative can provide a safe and easy way to execute a high-value modernization project involving Ingres and your database applications? Let’s have a closer look at how we do this.

Modernizing Your Ingres Database

The Ingres NeXt Initiative provides four flexible options to meet your needs.

• On Premises (Linux, Windows, UNIX, VMS, virtualized or bare metal).
• Bring Your Own License (Your Infrastructure, Your Software, Self Managed).
• Platform as a Service (Actian Infrastructure, Your Software, Actian Managed).
• Database as a Service (Actian Infrastructure, Actian Software, Actian Managed).

On-Premises

Striking a balance between preservation and innovation with Ingres has led to continuation of our heritage UNIX and VMS platforms as well support for Linux and Windows. These are available on-premises as virtualized or bare-metal options.

Bring Your Own License

Bring-Your-Own License (BYOL) allows you to simply host and manage your Ingres database in the cloud. Container-based deployment delivers a more portable and resource-efficient way to virtualize the compute infrastructure. Because containers virtualize the operating system rather than the underlying hardware, applications require fewer virtual machines and operating systems to run them. Plus, containers are more lightweight than traditional virtualization schemes and make deployments more predictable, dependable, and repeatable.

Platform as a Service

Customers can use their existing licenses in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) option that completely rearchitects Ingres as a cloud-native solution hosted and managed by Actian. This is a big deal since a cloud-native approach delivers the full advantages of the cloud computing delivery model such as cloud scalability, cloud economics, portability, resource efficiency, improved resiliency and availability, and stronger security in the cloud.

The Ingres cloud-native solution will be a component of the Avalanche™ hybrid-cloud data warehouse, integration, and management platform and will be architected around a combination of containers and microservices that provide functions such as monitoring, alerts, maintenance, patching, metering, authentication (to name just a few). Microservices offer many benefits, but the major one is that, unlike a monolithic architecture, each component is deployed and scaled independently of other services.

Database as a Service

Database as a Service (DBaaS) provides the very same benefits as PaaS for new licensed purchased through Actian.

Safe and Easy Database Modernization

The best thing about BYOL, PaaS and DBaaS is that you a choice of Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or Amazon AWS without the risk and effort that’s typically associated with moving to the cloud. Actian has already done the heavy lifting. We ensure uniform operation at the SQL and business logic level across on-premises deployments on UNIX, VMS, Linux and Windows platforms and the cloud. We’ve fully tested the Ingres BYOL option and provide cloud license portability, ensuring a smooth cloud deployment. Visit the Actian Academy to learn more.

Modernizing Database Applications

As for modernizing your database applications?  That’s where OpenROAD comes in. OpenROAD is a database-centric, object-oriented, 4GL rapid application development (RAD) tool that lets you develop and deploy mission-critical, n-tier business applications on Windows, Linux and Unix connecting to databases such as Ingres, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Actian Zen, Actian X, and more via ODBC.

The Ingres NeXt Initiative provides four options to modernize your application infrastructure using OpenROAD:

ABF and Forms-Based Apps 

OpenROAD migration tools allow you to modernize “green screen” Ingres Applications-By-Forms (ABF) and form-based applications by converting them into OpenROAD frames as shown in Figure 3.  Modernized applications support cloud and on-premises databases.  

OpenROAD Fat Client 

OpenROAD thick-client applications can be transformed to browser-based equivalents without the cost, resource, effort, or risk associated with rewriting or replacing code. Developers can then extend these applications for web and mobile deployment, using HTML5 and JavaScript. Further, OpenROAD supports incremental application migration where modernized applications can run alongside unconverted applications.  

OpenROAD Server 

OpenROAD supports encapsulating and deploying business logic within the OpenROAD Server. Reuse of existing business logic avoids rewriting decades of business logic from scratch. A client, such as an HTML page with JavaScript, can connect to the OpenROAD Server via JSON-RPC with no additional libraries or plugins/add-ons.  

OpenROAD as a Service 

OpenROAD as a Service delivers an Actian hosted and managed OpenROAD Sever. Business logic is exposed as a web service that is available to web-deployed applications.  

Take the Next Step

Actian’s Ingres NeXt Initiative is designed to help you modernize and make the most of your existing and future investments in Ingres and OpenROAD. You can choose to modernize Ingres or your database applications. Or you can choose both with efforts that can occur concurrently or sequentially, depending on your needs. Register here to learn more about our Early Access Program.

About Teresa Wingfield

Teresa Wingfield is Director of Product Marketing at Actian where she is responsible for communicating the unique value that the Actian Data Platform delivers, including proven data integration, data management and data analytics. She brings a 20-year track record of increasing revenue and awareness for analytics, security, and cloud solutions. Prior to Actian, Teresa managed product marketing at industry-leading companies such as Cisco, McAfee, and VMware.