Case study

Revolutionizing Applications with Rocket® COBOL 

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) faced aging systems that hindered flexibility and efficiency while serving 20M-plus UK citizens. Through modernization with Rocket® Visual COBOL®, they achieved remarkable results. Here’s how Rocket® COBOL made it happen.

Challenge

DWP’s outdated application suite couldn’t keep up with rising demands and legislative changes. Slow nightly batch processing and limited development cycles impacted efficiency and citizen services.

Solution

Using Rocket Visual COBOL and Rocket COBOL Server, DWP was able to migrate 25M-plus lines of code to AWS® without service interruptions. Automated testing and phased re-platforming ensured a seamless transition.

Results

Batch processing speeds improved by 60%, manual intervention dropped by 96%, and over 800 releases were deployed in one year. DWP saved $200M in Net Present Value through modernization efforts.

Leveraging Rocket® Visual COBOL®, we created a CI/CD and container pipeline approach in AWS to give us rapid deployment capability. Instead of two major releases each year, over the last 12 months we have deployed 800 times.”

Mark Bell Virtual Machine Environment - Replacement Program Deputy Director Department for Work and Pensions

Company

Industry: Government

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is the largest public service agency in the UK, serving over 20 million citizens annually.

Challenge

DWP’s heritage systems faced growing demands, with slow processing and limited development flexibility affecting services.

DWP’s systems, reliant on decades-old technology, could not keep pace with increased workloads or legislative changes. Bottlenecks in processing and infrequent application updates prevented the agency from delivering optimal services to citizens. As a result, many users experienced delays and frustrations when accessing essential services.

 

Solution

DWP implemented a phased modernization strategy using Rocket Visual COBOL and Rocket COBOL Server, hosted on Amazon Web Services® (AWS®).

DWP collaborated with Rocket Software to re-platform existing systems to a modern infrastructure. Automated testing ensured accuracy during migration, while batch processing speeds significantly improved. This transformation enabled greater efficiency and scalability for future operations.

Results

Modernization efforts led to significant efficiency gains, cost savings, and improved scalability for DWP's systems.

Batch jobs became 60% faster, manual intervention dropped by 96%, and over 800 software releases were deployed in one year. The transformation generated $200M in Net Present Value while future-proofing DWP’s infrastructure.

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