Fresche Legacy Selected by Union des artistes to Provide Application Support Services for Legacy Financial System

MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwired - Dec. 19, 2013) - Fresche Legacy, a leading IT management company providing services and solutions to understand, maintain, modernize and transform legacy applications, today announced a long-term consulting engagement with Quebec-based Union des artistes (UDA) to provide application support services. Now celebrating its 76^th year, UDA supports thousands of artists with contract negotiations and career management solutions. UDA's mandate has grown to the point where it is involved in over 250,000 separate contracts per year throughout the Quebec and Canadian artistic landscape. Supporting the contracts, negotiations, policies, finances and memberships at UDA is an IT team headed by Denis Masson, who understands the need to effectively maintain UDA's technology while planning for its modernization.

Mr. Masson was hired to lead the IT team at UDA with a specific mandate: improve efficiency by introducing innovative, modern and mainstream technologies to better support UDA and its members. One of the main challenges was to eliminate an aging IBM PowerHouse system that manages all financial aspects at UDA. He realized, however, that it wouldn't be easy or inexpensive to replace the system, and that a thorough assessment and long-term plan was the best approach. The first step, however, was to ensure the viability of the aging system for the foreseeable future.

A search for IBM PowerHouse experts quickly lead Mr. Masson to Fresche Legacy. Fresche analyzed the system, provided an evaluation of its future capacity to fulfill its functions, developed a plan for upgrades and delivered an estimate for ongoing support. "We knew we needed some outside assistance," says Mr. Masson. "Our IT team is relatively small, but its mandate is significant. UDA's membership is large, and it manages every aspect of hundreds of thousands of contract negotiations involving a wide range of disciplines and numerous producers and artists. Our membership grows by about 500 every year, with an increase in contracts much larger than that. Much of our technology is legacy, and needs to be upgraded, consolidated or eliminated."

"From the moment Fresche arrived, I knew we made the right choice," continued Mr. Masson. "It was as though they already knew my system. Professional, knowledgeable and with deep expertise for an aging technology, they assessed the system, documented its features for their own support team and made initial recommendations for upgrading it. Then they described exactly how they would provide application support to supplement the UDA team. In fact, during the analysis and even before signing the support agreement, Fresche consultants made several changes to the existing system to resolve lingering issues and improve performance. For the first time in a long time, we have outside help who truly understands our system, and a partner who has the expertise to help build a plan for the future."

Fresche Legacy's Vice President of Support Services, Maria Anzini, stressed the importance of the initial analysis and the need for long-range planning. "There is no one-size-fits-all solution for legacy systems. Some companies need support and maintenance services; others need a gradual transition. For some companies, migration is a good option, while others are best suited to a "rip and replace" strategy or even conversion to modern languages. The key is the assessment. Our assessments provide a highly precise mapping of business function to application object to data: what you have, what you're actually using, and what needs modernizing. We also take into account the client's current and future business goals, resources, costs, dependencies, and competing projects. We believe that companies need to first analyze the total environment and then develop a comprehensive, business-aligned strategy," she said. "Once the strategy and associated plan is in place, we can handle as much of the project as the client wants. And with our disciplined and unique legacy management and transformation approach, we can guarantee the success of each project. It's all part of our promise to add value to our customers' business. We don't just say it - we back it up with 100% customer referenceability."

About Fresche Legacy

As experts in application management, Fresche Legacy (formerly Speedware) provides services and solutions to analyze, maintain, modernize, and transform legacy applications. Since 1976, Fresche has helped companies improve financial performance, increase market competitiveness, remove risk and add value by making them more agile, flexible and efficient. Specializing in application management, support and transformation services for the IBM i (AS/400), IBM mainframe, and HP e3000 systems, Fresche provides a single point of responsibility from concept to maintenance, and guarantees the results.

I.T. can make you smile.

To find out how, please visit: www.freschelegacy.com