Montreal, Canada – December 13, 2012. Fresche Legacy and Champlain Regional College have joined forces to bridge the widening knowledge gap in legacy technology by offering a market-leading program in legacy management. While Java and .NET are mainstream and taught in most schools, legacy technology is still used to run most mission-critical systems in business, government and educational institutions.
Fresche Legacy has been helping companies manage legacy environments for decades. Legacy systems are older, lack agility and cost millions of dollars to maintain and manage. Servicing and modernizing them is a very real pain for most organizations, and one that’s not likely to go away in the near future.
Champlain Regional College’s Saint-Lambert campus, just south of Montreal, offers pre-university and full career programs in a wide variety of disciplines, including Computer Science and Mathematics. Champlain is ahead of its time in offering this fully accredited legacy management course to students. Program instructor Robert Bierman recognizes the business challenges that companies face and encourages and fosters programs where graduates will be best positioned for employment because of the added knowledge they bring.
Fresche Legacy provides Champlain students and staff with access to its own IBM i (AS/400) machine and delivers theoretical and hands-on instruction in legacy computing technology. Following graduation, Champlain students will have a distinct advantage when they enter the workforce and find that older technology is still very much present and needs to work tightly with more modern technology.
Maria Anzini, Vice President of Human Resources and Support at Fresche, knows how difficult it can be to find staff with the appropriate skills for today’s market: “It’s all about training people so that they are fully knowledgeable about the legacy technology that they will encounter in the real world. With Champlain College, we are investing in today’s youth to safeguard and extend the lifecycle of our customers’ applications as well as ensure that those applications can ultimately be transformed to reduce costs and improve business performance. Fresche Legacy is proud to be associated with a school that truly understands the reality of today’s IT environment and is working diligently to make sure that vital gaps are filled.”
Fresche President and CEO, Andy Kulakowski, has driven the company to develop strategies to optimize and modernize legacy technology portfolios, but recognizes that often, older technology simply needs skilled hands to maintain it. “To a certain extent, Fresche thinks of itself as the retirement home for COBOL and RPG. So we’re very pleased to be associated with Champlain College to offer this course. Our ultimate goal is to help customers modernize, but that can take time, so we also need graduates with the skills to help our customers with their current legacy technology. And students with legacy IT skills can often count on higher salaries and more opportunities when they graduate. There are lots of Java programmers today, but not many who also have a solid grasp of RPG, the dominant iSeries language.”
At Fresche Legacy our goal is to ensure our customers’ businesses run better by making their IT run better. And we don’t just say it; we back it up with our 100% customer referenceability. Many Fresche Legacy customers are impressed with our technical knowledge, complete service offering and proven experience with RPG and the IBM i environment. Fresche Legacy’s network of satisfied customers is a growing confirmation that Fresche is the right choice to bring real business value to legacy systems. Fresche Legacy, formerly Speedware, is one of North America’s leading providers of end-to-end legacy management and IT modernization solutions. We are experts in application transformation and application support services for IBM midrange and mainframe systems, including the IBM i (AS/400) platform.
That’s what we do. That’s Fresche Legacy.
About Fresche Legacy
Fresche Legacy (formerly Speedware) modernizes legacy applications and manages legacy environments. With more than 35 years in the industry, and a client list of top Fortune 500 companies, Fresche Legacy helps companies align IT with key business goals to increase financial performance, improve market competitiveness, remove risk and add value. We re-host, re-write and re-architect business-critical applications where needed, plus we have the knowledge and experience to plan, manage and support the entire process. We handle the full lifecycle of your project from concept to maintenance, and with our disciplined and unique five-step methodology, we ensure success on every project.
About Champlain Regional College
The Saint-Lambert campus on Montreal’s south shore is the largest member of Champlain Regional College’s four facilities. Opened in 1972, it was a much-needed college presence in the area, offering programs in the arts and sciences. The Saint‑ Lambert campus has established a sound reputation in established programs and in addition to the regular day program, offers an extensive selection of continuing education courses.
For more information about Champlain Regional College, visit https://www.champlainonline.com/champlainweb/.
For more information:
Press contacts:
Marcel Sarrasin
VP, Marketing and Business Development, Fresche Solutions
Tel: +1 250.655.1882 ext: 114
Cell:+1 250.857.5023
Email: marcel.sarrasin@freschesolutions.com
Christine McDowell
Senior Marketing Director, Fresche Solutions
Tel: +1 514.747.7007 ext: 8851
Cell:+1 514.220.1309
Email: Christine.Mcdowell@freschesolutions.com
