A Conversion Case Study on Tara Mines

Tara Mines Digs Up Savings and Improves Functionality with m2o

When lead and zinc mining company Tara Mines was faced with migrating its main Business System the company needed to find a solution that would provide a supported platform and comparable or improved efficiency. m2o's i2c was selected and the result was a two year ROI and significant performance improvements.

Tara produces 2.6 million tonnes of ore annually

Based in County Meath, Ireland, Tara Mines is the largest lead and zinc mining company in Europe. It is run by the Swedish mining and smelting group, Boliden, and currently produces 2.6 million tonnes of ore annually. It is highly reliant on its IT systems, which account for its business systems, its industrial process control systems and its mine design applications. Tara is credited as being one of the most environmentally responsible mines in Europe and adheres to a strict environmental protection policy. It began production in 1977.

Low risk and smooth deployment a priority

Tara Mines realised in 2003 that it was going to have to undertake a major IT programme after CA revealed that it was going to drop support for the platform that it was running its main business application on. With over 30 years of data and business logic in the system, this posed quite a challenge. Gerry Harte, Head of IT, explains; "The fact that the CA decided to drop the product meant that we had no choice but to find another alternative. It was imperative that we found a solution that would ensure low risk and smooth deployment, whilst maintaining all the data amassed over the past 30 years."

"We were sitting on a time bomb," notes Harte. "However, we only had a handful of options. We could have implemented an ERP system, but it wasn't easy to find a product that would provide the functionality we had."

Improved functionality a key requirement

One of the principle requisites of the project was that, when the new system was up and running, there was comparable or improved functionality. An automated conversion was also key as Tara Mines did not have the resources to run a manual migration.

Project did no disrupt normal tasks

The project to move away from CA Ideal commenced in April 2004 and in August 2005, Tara Mines had successfully converted one million lines of CA-IDEAL to Micro Focus COBOL and thousands of CA-DATACOM files to ORACLE. During the process, Tara Mines were trained by m2o to use the i2c conversion tool and completed the project with three staff who also continued with their normal tasks.

A more flexible environment

Since the system went live in August 2005, Tara Mines has been impressed with the results. "It's been running very well since August," continues Harte. "Our environment is more flexible and any queries we have can be responded to much more quickly, meaning that we are able to break new ground. The application itself is identical, except that the user interface is now in colour, which is easier to view."

Significant saving made on IT outlay

Tara Mines has also seen a 200% improvement in both online and batch performance. Additionally, there has been a significant cost saving aspect, even though the project was not originally undertaken with this in mind. "The project took place out of necessity," continues Harte. "However, it was certainly a welcome surprise to see that were able to make significant savings on out IT outlay as a result. Conservative estimates predict a return our investment in 2008."

Partnership key to project success

"Overall, we are very pleased with the way the project went," says Harte. "We could not have had better partners than m2o and moving forward, we are in a much superior position to where we were before, as a result of this project." The importance of the partnership is also emphasized by Huw Price of m2o: "The Tara team were great," he says, "quick to adapt to the new tools and easy to work with. This made the project fun as well as a great success."

System efficiency boosts inquiries

Now that the systems are up and running and in an open environment, Tara Mines is able to implement an invoice scanning system - a project that has been in the pipeline for a substantial amount of time. Also, the news of the efficiency of the system is spreading and enquiries are building up. In addition, a long-term goal has been having the capability to run applications over an intranet, which will now be possible.

Expert Data Management

m2o specialises in transforming legacy systems, and in particular automated conversions from CA-IDEAL to open languages such as COBOL and Java, and automated migrations from CA-DATACOM to open databases such as Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server. Many years of experience in this field mean m2o has a wealth of technical expertise and experience at its disposal, complemented by a comprehensive toolkit. m2o brings a level of automation, platform cover and accuracy to the conversion process that is unmatched by any other product or service available today.