Yhella, short for Pension Calculation System (yhteinen eläkkeenlaskenta in Finnish) is a system which Arek uses to calculate all Finnish work pensions. It has already started to develop in the mid-1990s.
The system has been running on Arek’s mainframe computer from the beginning, but as digitalization progresses and customer needs grow, its performance requirements increase. In this changing situation, Arek started thinking about updating the system to be suitable for cloud environment.
” It’s such a massive system that it couldn’t be reformed just like that,” says Anttila. ”To ensure that digital services can be provided with high quality in the future, we needed a transition solution that would ensure the reliability of services and withstand time before the actual system renewal.”
The actual system renewal will be fully completed in 2028. The goal is to have a completely new pension calculation system in use by then. The purpose of the transition period is to guarantee a reliable service, so that the increased use of customers’ digital services can be achieved without concerns about performance adequacy.
22 million lines of code to convert
Arek’s mainframe computer is programmed in Cobol, so at the very beginning of the conversion project, it was necessary to determine how it could be converted to Java.
There were an astonishing 22 million lines of Cobol code to convert. It’s an impressive number. The first step was to make sure that we had the technology to carry out the renewal. Heirloom Computing had a product that would make the project successful,” explains Anttila.
A wide range of other partners was also needed.
”Accenture came on board as the executing party. They took Heirloom’s technology, tested it meticulously, and ensured that it converted correctly to Java. TietoEvry and Google ensured with their technologies that the system ran reliably in Arek’s own cloud environment.”
There was a lot of testing to be done during the project. Along the way, it was necessary to verify both the correctness of the results and the good performance of the system. The entire project took about a year. According to Anttila, the end result was a clear improvement and increased scalability.
”The tested solution offered much more capacity for simultaneous traffic and was able to handle peak loads during visitor spikes significantly better than the previous one. The daily record for calculation calls was up to 100,000, while the normal load was 20,000–30,000 per day. Compared to before, the performance is now four to eight times larger for processing events without the end user seeing any problems
In addition to a more flexible and scalable runtime environment, there were also cost savings, as the load on Arek’s mainframe computer was reduced by about 40–50 percent by moving the heaviest system to the cloud, according to Anttila.
The system has been in production for over two years now, and it has already reached a stable stage. No problems have occurred.
”All small challenges were quickly fixed. After the project, no other adjustments were made except for processor core threading, i.e., hyperthreading, because it was identified that the system uses only one processor core at a time. One virtualization layer was disabled, and even more performance was gained with threading,” notes Anttila.
Risks are avoided with good groundwork
”This is truly an exceptionally large and successful project, unique in Finland’s scale. Such projects have not been seen many times elsewhere in the world either,” says Anttila.
For those considering a similar project, Anttila recommends investing in good groundwork to keep risks low.
”First, you need to think about what can and should be moved to the cloud with this type of transition architecture solution. It is essential to recognize that the system is large and critical enough to achieve the necessary savings. It is also important to understand the system’s dependencies. The more dependencies there are, the more difficult the transfer will be.”
Anttila emphasizes that the cloud transition requires certain capabilities from its implementers.
”It is important to ensure that those who have worked on mainframe development understand the cloud, as it requires learning, and the expertise is not necessarily ready right away.”
According to Anttila, combining old and new technology and understanding the diverse whole has increased the entire Arek team’s expertise as lessons have been shared with everyone.
”The project showed how beautifully technologies from different eras can work and communicate with each other. It is amazing how much can be achieved. At the same time, we have learned to understand the possibilities offered by cloud environments.”
Anttila recommends the transition architecture solution to anyone seeking increased performance and cost savings but not yet ready to invest in new development.
”It is a good solution from a business perspective, providing extra time and generating savings so that there is room to invest in actual renewal later. The project pays for itself in about two years – after that, cost savings are already being generated.”