Business Automation Workflow is the successor of IBM Cloud Orchestrator (ICO) for infrastructure automation

IBM Cloud Orchestrator (ICO)

A product that integrates the capabilities of several IBM solutions and can achieve the following:

• Automates the complete delivery of IT services on Private Cloud.
• Allows integration with IBM Cloud, Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure.

IBM Cloud Orchestrator components:

• IBM Business Process Manager
• OpenStack

ICO sunset was last year and there is no IBM support to this product anymore.

Business Automation Workflow (BAW)

Has integration capabilities to integrate via REST with VMware, F5, Cisco APIC or any other network device.  We recommend side by side migration from ICO to BAW.

High level of migration steps

1. ICO environment analysis

We recommend understanding the toolkits dependency and process application.  IBM Deployment Accelerator can be used in this step (Overview - IBM Deployment Accelerator for Business Automation Workflow (IDA) Docs (sdc-china.github.io))

2. Build the new BAW environment

Create a BAW traditional environment on another machine which contains workflow center (Dev) and make sure that all network flows are open with all required devices.

3. Migration preparation

We recommend investigating all ICO built-in toolkits and check if it can be replaced by out of the box features in BAW then start planning the migration approach.

There are 2 ways to consider:

1. Migrate each process application to BAW then fix the artifacts
2. Remove all dependency from all toolkits and process applications then start by migrating toolkits. Fix errors in toolkits, make all code changes, and fix dependency. After toolkit completion, migrate the process applications and apply the same steps like in toolkits.

First option is recommended when there is not a lot of levels in the dependency toolkit tree but if there are more than 5 toolkits and there is complex dependency, option 2 is recommended.

The example shows 20 toolkits with 7 levels of dependency so the best way to migrate by following option 2.

4. Code migration

Import the code in the BAW workflow center and make sure there is a code synchronization between ICO and BAW environment so you should freeze any code on ICO and is delivered to BAW environment.

5. Regression testing
6. Sunset of ICO environment

Ask for help from the experts

No matter if you already have an obvious view of what you want and need to do or not – It is always a good idea to ask the experts! So, check with IBM Expert Labs who offer a range of services around migration. They’ll help you work on your migration strategy, prevent technical pitfalls, and have the deep product knowledge to conduct the technical work on your environments if you like. So, reach out to your IBM representative and ask for a BAW modernization workshop.