
Case Study
Tel Aviv Stock Exchange 
migrates critical mainframe 
Objective
Eliminate the risk of legacy mainframe 
environment operations while avoiding 
dependence on mainframe specialists 
and reducing costs
Approach
Leverage HPE Data Center Platform 
Consulting ser vices to eiciently and 
safely migrate mainframe apps to 
distributed server infrastructure
IT Matters
• Migrating to standards-based solutions 
drives cost reductions
• Shifting to open systems servers 
eliminates the need for hard-to-find 
mainframe specialists
• Standardized Linux environment 
streamlines development, QA, and 
operations
Business Matters
• Migration and transformation was 
completed on time with no downtime or 
disruption
• Management expects to continue to 
meet cost reduction and TCO objectives 
for the migration
• TASE expects a full return on 
investment for its migration within less 
than three years
applications with HPE
Redefines its environment by implementing a 
low-risk, high-return mainframe migration
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange needed to 
migrate its mission-critical applications from 
an IBM mainframe environment and turned to 
HPE Data Center Platform Consulting services 
to help plan and implement a platform 
migration strategy from its older, proprietary 
systems. With HPE Data Center Platform 
Consulting, the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange was 
also able to bring industry-leading availability, 
increased performance, and uncompromising 
client choice to support all of its IT needs.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) is the 
only stock exchange in Israel. It oers a “onestop shop” that includes trading in equities, 
bonds, and derivatives. TASE has 25 members 
including Israeli and international banks and 
brokers, and TASE is trading in 1,900 equities 
and bonds and 2,500 derivatives series. 
Its daily turnover in the equities market is 
approximately 1.5 billion Israeli shekels, which 
is about $400 million 
 

Case study 
Tel Aviv Stock  
Exchange
“It was very important for us to find one supplier that could provide a full 
integration project, including the hardware, the operating system, and the 
migration project itself. We approached HPE because we were familiar with 
HPE’s capabilities and could get the benefits of HPE’s expertise at dierent 
steps in the project.”
– Eldad Herstig, Senior Vice President, CIO, & Head of Operations for the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange
Industry 
Financial
Page 2
Migrating existing 
infrastructure
The TASE Information Technology and 
Operations Department develops and 
operates all the organization’s businesscritical systems, including trading, clearing 
and settlement, and risk management. The 
goal of the department is to achieve nonstop trading and invest in remaining at the 
forefront of technology. The importance that 
TASE places on IT is evident in the size of the 
department, which comprises some 60% of 
exchange employees.
“About two years ago we started looking at 
migrating our IBM mainframe applications 
to another environment,” says Eldad Herstig, 
Senior Vice President, CIO, & Head of 
Operations for the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. 
“Our main reason to implement our migration 
project was to reduce the risk related to 
continuing working with the mainframe in 
dierent areas. As a non-stop operation, 
it’s very hard to migrate critical systems 
while managing the risks of avoiding system 
failures. In order to do so, you have to have 
the right partner to ensure you complete all 
the relevant tests to reduce the risks.”
Maintaining the legacy mainframe was 
expensive, and the limited availability 
of mainframe experts in its mainframe 
operating system in Israel was constraining 
the flexibility of its IT infrastructure. The 
mainframe environment was running over 
10,000 programs written in Natural and over 
120 programs written in COBOL, with over 
2,000 batch processes activated in specific 
mainframe partitions by JCL. The mainframe 
environment was supporting development, 
quality assurance, testing, and production 
environments, and mission-critical back 
oice applications such as those supporting 
clearing and settlement were on a mainframe 
running the VM and VSE operating systems. 
TASE also deployed the Adabas database 
management system on a mainframe. 
TASE sought to eliminate the risks inherent 
with legacy environment operations while 
limiting its reliance of mainframe programs 
and operations specialists, which were 
becoming increasingly harder to find. 
Management needed to reduce the costs 
of maintaining the legacy applications while 
avoiding downtime or any disruption to 
operations. TASE also sought to standardize 
hardware and software deployment to drive 
down costs and increase IT agility.
 

Case study 
Tel Aviv Stock  
Exchange
Industry 
Financial
Page 3
Customer at a glance
Services
• HPE Data Center Platform Consulting 
Services
Hardware
• HPE ProLiant DL 380 Gen8 Servers
By migrating its applications and moving to 
a new platform, TASE could select the right 
platforms for the right workloads at the right 
price, while consolidating its IT environment 
and adopting newer technologies and 
increasing IT security. But migrating the core 
platforms and moving crucial applications 
can be a complex and potentially disruptive 
undertaking, so TASE selected HPE 
services to help the organization develop IT 
strategies that minimize risk and maximize IT 
investments so it could achieve its migration 
goals safely and eiciently. 
“It was very important for us to find one 
supplier that could provide a full integration 
project, including the hardware, the operating 
system, and the migration project itself,” 
explains Herstig. “We approached Hewlett 
Packard Enterprise (HPE) because we were 
familiar with HPE’s capabilities and could get 
the benefits of HPE’s expertise at dierent 
steps in the project.”
HPE had previously helped TASE move 
to a new datacenter, and oered a holistic, 
adaptive approach that enables smooth 
mainframe migrations and simplifies the 
migration process. HPE also oered proven 
experience and a track record in migrating 
critical mainframe applications, as well a lowrisk, high-value approach to migration. 
By partnering with HPE, TASE has been 
able to ensure business continuity without 
disruption. This has allowed TASE to 
implement application migration while 
avoiding the need to make changes to the 
business logic. Legacy applications were 
migrated to HPE ProLiant DL 380 Gen8 
Servers running Linux, and all Adabas 
databases and programs written in Natural 
were migrated to Linux. HPE oversaw the 
rewriting of COBOL programs into the C 
language, and all JCL was rewritten to run as 
scripts. 
HPE conducted extensive parallel testing 
of mainframe-based and server-based 
applications to ensure that there would 
be no discrepancies while running various 
production workloads over time, and 
conducted extensive test case development, 
execution, and automation to ensure the 
quality and consistency of the new IT 
environment before cutting over in early 
2016. After only 20 months, the project 
was successfully completed and HPE 
educated and trained TASE development 
and operational sta on the use of new 
development tools and Linux. 
All of the organization’s mission-critical 
systems are now running on Linux, and IT is 
now able to increase security, mitigate risks, 
and streamline operations and management 
by supporting the same environment for 
trading and back oice applications. The 
dependency on mainframe specialists 
is eliminated, allowing TASE to increase 
operational agility. This transformation was 
completed on time and within budget, and 
management expects to continue to meet 
cost reduction and TCO objectives for the 
migration.
Herstig concludes, “I’m very happy and 
satisfied with HPE and the way they ran the 
integration project, and I recommend HPE 
to other organizations involved in such a 
complex migration project.” This migration 
supports TASE’s open system standards 
strategy, and TASE expects a full return on 
investment for its migration within less than 
three years.
Learn more at
hpe.com/services/platformconsulting 
hpe.com/info/migratemainframe 
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errors or omissions contained herein. 
4AA6-5485ENW, May 2016