Strategy revitalises mainframe and provides greater flexibility to rationalise where functionality is best-hosted. Roll-out to 5000 users in next 12 months will deliver ROI in two years.
Rome 20 June 2007 — Speaking at the Gartner Application Integration & Web Services Summit in Rome yesterday, DAF Trucks, Europe’s third largest supplier of trucks, revealed that Data Direct Technologies Shadow z/Services is the key enabling component for integrating mainframe legacy systems into its service-oriented architecture (SOA). DAF selected Shadow z/Services to ease the transition from a totally mainframe environment, by providing real-time access to legacy systems from the evolving distributed server architecture and the B2B network of 1500 dealers.
The user case study was presented by Joost van den Dool, enterprise architect at DAF Trucks head office in Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
Shadow z/Services will be rolled out to some 5000 users to support dealers over the next twelve months, providing a return on investment in under two years. DAF Trucks was recommended to Shadow z/Services by Formula OpenSoft, an existing specialist supplier in solutions for legacy mainframe systems and DataDirect’s value added reseller in the Netherlands. Data Direct Technologies is an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS) and the leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration
DAF Trucks’ goal is to increase market share but without adding to the administrative burden of its dealers, through whom all trucks are sold. Shadow z/Services is helping DAF to make it easier and more cost-effective for dealers to work with them by providing better tools and access to mainframe data in real time, through its web portal.
DataDirect’s market-leading Shadow platform is unique in enabling mainframe assets to become full participants in modern SOAs by publishing data operations as SOAP-based web services and providing a transparent industry standard interface into all mainframe data repositories. Shadow is the industry’s only unified platform for integrating a wide range of mainframe data sources, applications, and screens with distributed systems using standards-based interfaces.
Currently DAF’s IT infrastructure is in transition to move from an almost exclusively mainframe environment – an IBM OS 390 with IDMS for the database and IDMS/DC for on-line transaction processing – to one where the mainframe co-exists with distributed servers running packages, such as SAP and Siebel, as well as custom-solutions built in .Net.
Recognising that part of the business logic will remain on the mainframe for the foreseeable future led to the search for an integration tool to maximise the strengths of the mixed, transitional environment. Determining the share of IT expenditure on re-platforming versus adding new business functionality is a constant issue and DAF expects that it will be some years before the mainframe is totally replaced.
In the past the mainframe and distributed systems couldn’t talk to each other. With Shadow z/Services, they can. Shadow enables DAF to be far more flexible in architecting its solutions and rationalising which functions will be hosted by which systems. For example, they can now choose to develop a user interface in .Net, but keep the existing logic on the mainframe and access it in real-time. The consequence of that is delivering real benefit to the business and doing things not possible before.
The first project to deliver tangible business benefit is the mainframe-centric claims processing application. DataDirect Shadow z/Services takes the existing mainframe logic and wraps it into a ready-to-use web service, allowing claims to be pre-assessed in the .Net user interface in real-time. As a result the lead time for claims processing has reduced from weeks to days. The accuracy and quality of claims has also improved with a consequent reduction in the amount of cost borne by DAF Trucks for warranty claims. Order updating is earmarked as the next dealer project, but DAF also plans to use Shadow z/Services to do more with the internal workflow and HR systems.
DAF has purchased an initial Shadow z/Services licence for 100 web services and trained a team of four developers in its use. Usually where the business logic on the mainframe can be separated, it is a quick and straightforward job to re-compile the Cobol sub-routine in z/Services. Where it is difficult to isolate the logic, DAF has started to take advantage of the screen scraping capability in z/Services. They also plan to use z/Services’ bi-directional updating capabilities in the future.
Shadow z/Services has revitalised the mainframe and transformed the way the business integrates with it. A significant measure of its contribution is that IT can say yes to the business need for real-time access to the mainframe, where in the past it had to say no.
About DataDirect Technologies
DataDirect Technologies is the unparalleled leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration. It is the software industry’s only comprehensive provider of software for connecting the world’s most critical business applications to data and services, running on any platform, using proven and emerging standards. Developers worldwide depend on DataDirect® products to connect their applications to an unparalleled range of data sources using standards-based interfaces such as ODBC, JDBCTM and ADO.NET, XQuery and SOAP. More than 300 leading independent software vendors and thousands of enterprises rely on DataDirect Technologies to simplify and streamline data connectivity for distributed systems and to reduce the complexity of mainframe integration. DataDirect Technologies is an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS). For more information, visit http://www.datadirect.com.
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