UniGroup Bases Application Upgrade Strategy on IBM System Z

The parent of United Van Lines and Mayflower Transit, UniGroup is one of the largest privately owned transportation companies in the U.S. As part of a plan to modernize legacy COBOL-based applications, they had to choose between a centralized mainframe architecture and a distributed systems architecture to serve as the foundation for a new IT infrastructure and development environment. UniGroup elected to upgrade their IBM System z mainframe environment to build a dynamic infrastructure that would support the application upgrade. The company leveraged IBM System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) technology to reduce hardware and software acquisition costs and to improve application performance. A powerful mix of IBM software products facilitates integration and data sharing, which helps keep operational costs down.