Customer Solution Case Study
/ / ISV Develops Operating System Service to Provide Seamless Access to Legacy Systems
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Software
Customer Profile
A leader in universal host access and integration—with 40 years of software expertise—AttachmateWRQ helps customers maximize existing IT investments while advancing long-term business strategies.
Business Situation
Most companies have legacy systems that maintain important, but difficult to access, data. AttachmateWRQ wanted to provide a solution that enabled customers to garner the full value of legacy systems.
Solution
AttachmateWRQ’s Verastream product encapsulates transactions that are typically executed on legacy systems and exposes them through an API, Web service, or Web application.
Benefits
n Time savings for developers
n Reduced costs for customers
n Increased efficiencies for customers / “The automatic generation of .NET components saves as much as 90 percent of the time it would otherwise take a customer to develop these components from scratch.”
Eric Varness, Director of Product Management, AttachmateWRQ
As technology has advanced, most companies have acquired multiple applications to meet changing business requirements. Often, the applications run on disparate systems that cannot connect or communicate with each other. AttachmateWRQ, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, recognized the need for a reliable way to connect and integrate the critical functionality residing on legacy systems with the rest of the enterprise. AttachmateWRQ developed Verastream host integration server, which runs as a service on Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 and provides a single platform for reusing legacy logic and data in Web applications, customer relationship management applications, and portals. Using Windows Server 2003 along with the Microsoft .NET Framework, AttachmateWRQ is realizing internal benefits while building integration solutions that yield valuable benefits for its customers.
Situation
AttachmateWRQ, one of the largest privately-held software companies in the United States, serves more than 40,000 customers, with 16 million users, in 51 countries/regions worldwide. The company develops software that reflects a simple philosophy: The fastest way to get results is to build on what you have. Inspired by that concept, AttachmateWRQ pioneered PC-to-host software when PCs began changing the world of business in the early 1980s. Building on that expertise, the company began offering host access over networks, and eventually over the Web. Recently, AttachmateWRQ has launched breakthrough tools for integrating legacy functionality with Web applications, customer relationship management (CRM) applications, and portals.
According to Eric Varness, Director of Product Management with AttachmateWRQ, “Approximately 80 percent of core business applications that are in use today still reside on legacy systems—mainframe, UNIX, AS/400, Unisys, OpenVMS, or HP.” In many cases, these applications were intended to be used by a person interacting with the programs in real time. And because they were developed with the assumption that they would be used by an actual person, the programs were not built to interact with other applications or to provide programmatic access. For many companies, the inability to combine different applications into a functional operating unit results in workflow inefficiencies. At the same time, the cost to completely replace entire systems is often prohibitive.
The following examples illustrate situations typically encountered by AttachmateWRQ’s customers.
A contact center representative answering a customer inquiry requires immediate access to information such as the customer’s personal information, past sales information, open purchase orders, and inventory status. This information is located on different, unsynchronized systems. No comprehensive overview of the critical information is available—the employee must consult several different windows on the desktop in order to retrieve the needed information. Furthermore, this same process might have to be repeated if the correct information can’t be found or if the customer has additional inquiries. As a result, customer service calls are often lengthy and unsatisfactory, which contributes to job dissatisfaction and high turnover at the call center and undermines customer satisfaction.
Self-service applications available to customers over the Internet provide another common example. Customers may want to access personal records from a bank, state agency, or healthcare system; however, this information is likely stored in multiple back-end systems at different locations and perhaps owned by different organizations. In order to deliver real customer self-service the information must be accessible through a single, user-friendly Web interface. Because of where this information is located, the type of application or system it resides in must remain transparent to the customer or end-user.
Solution
To help companies overcome these and similar application integration problems, AttachmateWRQ began building software for accessing the environments and systems they know best. For 25 years, AttachmateWRQ’s focus has been on legacy systems that include IBM Mainframe, AS/400, Unisys, OpenVMS, UNIX, and HP platforms. AttachmateWRQ’s Verastream product is built on the Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, which is part of Windows Server System™ integrated server software. Verastream also uses the Microsoft .NET Framework, an integral component of the Windows® operating system that provides a programming model and runtime for Web services, Web applications, and smart client applications.
Although there is often no easy way for other programs to interact with most legacy systems, AttachmateWRQ’s Verastream provides a middle-tier server environment that sits between the legacy host and contemporary, Web-based applications. A host integration tool, Verastream encapsulates transactions that are typically executed on legacy systems and encapsulates the transactions as a reusable .NET component or .NET Web service. In this way, Verastream allows users to navigate through the host application, yet it is noninvasive to that application.
“Verastream ‘acts’ like a real-time user, keystrokes are sent to the application, and Verastream is able to capture the data and push it out through .NET Framework APIs,” notes Varness.
Windows Server 2003 provides the autogeneration of Web services to present an application that displays legacy data encapsulated by Verastream. Verastream doesn't require developers to make any changes to the host platform, nor does it install any software on the host platform.
Because the Microsoft .NET Framework provides a range of tools for application interfaces, it enables AttachmateWRQ’s developers to use either .NET Framework class libraries or Web services to create custom interfaces. The Framework even includes some basic Microsoft ASP.NET–based Web applications that are immediately functional—developers using Verastream can either use these applications as a basis, or modify them to suit their needs.
AttachmateWRQ uses Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004, also part of Windows Server System, when deploying the Verastream product. BizTalk Server adapters extend BizTalk Server to enable simple installation, effective integration of existing customer systems, and deployment.
Benefits
Using Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and components of Microsoft Windows Server System, AttachmateWRQ is realizing internal benefits while building agile, universal, host-access integration solutions that yield valuable benefits for its customers. Customers find that deploying Verastream solutions on the Microsoft software is quick and easy as well as cost effective. In addition, the Verastream approach is non-invasive, as it does not require any additional installation of software on the legacy system or changes to the legacy applications.
Increased Developer Productivity
Because Verastream works seamlessly with the Framework technologies, developers can use Windows Server to generate the .NET Framework class library components and Web services, which in turn helps reduce the development cycle. A simple right-click can generate a project that moves all the components to the development stage.
“Working within the .NET Framework has really given AttachmateWRQ a competitive advantage,” says Varness. “The automatic generation of .NET Framework components saves as much as 90 percent of the time it would otherwise take a customer to develop these components from scratch.”
Developers also save time because they are able to rapidly develop new Web-based applications that include business logic and data from legacy systems. This rapid development is possible even if developers have little or no knowledge of how the legacy systems were developed and even though the legacy systems may not provide any typical API access. Verastream insulates the developer from such complexities. In addition, because of the reliability of the Windows Server 2003 operating system, developers can feel confident that the systems are secure.
Reduced Process Cycles and IT Costs for Customers
The Verastream product provides numerous options for customization. Companies can identify tasks that require users to perform repeated steps to obtain data from legacy systems. AttachmateWRQ developers can use the .NET Framework class libraries and Web services to automate those tasks and produce the needed data in a usable format.
A single call in a call center can require a representative to access and move between four or more systems. Verastream reduces the number of windows that employees need to open and view in response to such calls and, therefore, reduce employee cycle times. Because such processes can be repeated multiple times throughout the course of a day by different employees, the savings are significant.
Also, this process simplification can provide substantial savings in training costs. To keep current employees trained on multiple legacy systems is expensive. And call centers tend to have high turnover among employees, resulting in the constant need for training. By creating a single system through which to access data and providing that data in a consolidated format, Verastream helps companies dramatically reduce training expenses.
Finally, AttachmateWRQ customers often realize IT cost reductions because Verastream with Windows Server 2003 enables them to continue to take advantage of valuable legacy systems. They avoid the cost of developing new systems, and those funds can be put to use elsewhere.
Increased Customer Efficiency
AttachmateWRQ customers find it easier to access important data with Verastream. Business end users, customers, and partners benefit from modern and efficient access to legacy systems that were once difficult to use.
The example above describes how call center employees are hindered by having to access multiple systems and windows. With a custom interface, these employees can access the necessary data easily and quickly. As a result, call center employees can reduce call times, increase productivity, and improve customer satisfaction.
In a highly competitive market, companies need to secure a market advantage to remain successful. To do so, they must increase efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. AttachmateWRQ wanted to provide a robust product that connects legacy systems and makes information usable and easy to attain for the people who need it. With Verastream and Windows Server 2003, it has done exactly that.
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System integrated server infrastructure software is designed to support end-to-end solutions built on the Windows Server operating system. Windows Server System creates an infrastructure based on integrated innovation, Microsoft's holistic approach to building products and solutions that are intrinsically designed to work together and interact seamlessly with other data and applications across your IT environment. This helps you reduce the costs of ongoing operations, deliver a more secure and reliable IT infrastructure, and drive valuable new capabilities for the future growth of your business.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem