The National Research Council (CNR) is Italy’s largest public research body. With 86 institutes, it provides research services and manages approximately 10,000 employees using centralized IT services.
The research organization faced mounting pressure due to proprietary hardware and rising licensing costs, which increased management expenses year over year. Upgrading demanded specialized expertise that was increasingly hard to find, and an expiring outsourcing contract added operational risk. With payroll regulations changing almost monthly, CNR needed a modern, cost-effective platform that could migrate safely, without interrupting critical payroll operations.
CHALLENGE
Finding skilled personnel to manage frequent regulatory updates while maintaining seamless payroll operations and controlling costs.
GFT Technologies, CNR’s IT services provider, partnered with Rocket Software to move CNR's payroll application onto a modern, open Linux® infrastructure. GFT used Rocket® Enterprise Server to emulate the previous hardware environment, ensuring a seamless transition, and built a custom automatic JCL converter to translate highly specific heritage components into a standard format. The teams also relied on the Rocket Software Debugger for efficient, line-by-line issue resolution, speeding up problem determination throughout the migration.
