In-Depth

Industry News

• 04/01/2000

DragonFly Server is a new product offering from Tyson Systems Inc., whose primary claim to fame is its difference from other "Mainframe Web Servers." The product, according to the company, does not require any expensive, intermediate or supporting tiers. The server does not use any of the screen scraping strategies advertised by other vendors, under the guise of front-ending or porting to existing applications.

In contrast, DragonFly server is a native MVS Mainframe Web Server and allows one to directly extract mainframe data. This means that it can present data stored on the mainframe directly to a common browser on your intranet, Virtual Private Network (VPN), extranet or the Internet. DragonFly presents the information in HTML, XML, Java objects and graphics formats.

The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) allows development staff to write Web applications without having to learn or rely on UNIX or object-oriented languages. In fact, COBOL, Pl/1, C, C++ and even mainframe Assembler can be used to create content for one of the common browsers. Legacy application code can also be reused to implement this interface with minor customization. In addition, legacy data can be supplemented with all the usual accoutrements you would expect to see in a Web application, such as Java scripts, charts, graphics and Java applets.

DragonFly Server also includes a feature that allows the host to retrieve data from the Web. This data, for example, can be selected from Web pages that contain stock quotes, news items in which a company or product name is mentioned, or other relevant search and access business information.

In turn, the mainframe can make the captured information available to display devices, such as a company message board. Communication links in production processes could also be established with, and linked, to associated business partners.

IBM’s Customer Interface Control System (CICS) presents data only to familiar 3270 terminals and terminal emulators. The emulators must be purchased and licensed for each PC workstation. In contrast, the DragonFly Server presents data directly to standard Web browsers (such as Explorer or Netscape Navigator) at no software cost. Significant savings can be accrued by eliminating the expense of purchasing interface software for these client workstation add-ons. Some shops could even forego the cost of licensing CICS and System Network Architecture (SNA) gateway servers by moving an increasing number of business functions to the DragonFly Server.

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Resonate Inc., a provider of Internet Services Management (ISM) solutions, and Whale Communications, an application shuttle technology company, have formed an agreement in which Resonate’s technology will be integrated within Whale’s e-Gap security system, to provide a redundant, scalable e-business solution.

The integration is intended to provide immediate availability and high-performance capabilities among multiple e-Gap units. Each individual e-Gap unit acts as a channel for transporting data between end users and the back office. Resonate’s technology divides requests and transactions between multiple, parallel e-Gap units to handle a large number of transactions. If one e-Gap unit fails, then another e-Gap unit will automatically take on its workload.

The e-Gap system ensures that data and transactions are securely shuttled between the outside world and an organization’s back office databases, thus eliminating the need to open a hole in the organization’s firewall. e-Gap enables organizations to provide online applications without exposing their internal systems to external network vulnerabilities.

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This month, IDC debuted a new Application Service Provider (ASP) conference in San Francisco titled "IDC’s AppSourcing Forum." The conference is intended to provide industry analysis and forecasting, offer advice from customers on the qualities they look for in ASPs and support a venue for actionable advice from ASP experts.

"The ASP market is forming at warp speed. It’s exceeding 90 percent compound annual growth and will approach $5 billion in 2003," says Clare Gillan, IDC’s Group Vice President of Applications and Information Access Research. "These numbers are staggering, considering the many outstanding issues pertaining to business models and quality of service, and that ASP partnerships are still being defined – and, in many cases, redefined."

Conference sponsors include Citrix, EMC, Eggrock Partners, EPiCON, IBM, Oracle Business OnLine and Progress Software.

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According to preliminary results from an outsourcing study conducted by Cutter Consortium, 73 percent of companies outsource some part of their IT services. When asked which aspects of IT are outsourced, the top five areas were:

Application Development: 52%

Hardware Maintenance: 47%

Training: 45%

Web Design: 40%

Application Maintenance: 35%

Fifty percent of the companies surveyed are currently outsourcing more than they did a year ago. The top two reasons for the outsourcing increase were satisfaction with a previous outsourcing experience (21 percent) and scarcity of qualified personnel (20 percent).

Michael Mah, a Senior Consultant on Cutter Consortium’s Sourcing Advisory Service says, "Companies want to reduce costs on legacy maintenance and redeploy assets to new applications development to enter new markets. Many companies are looking to access skills by buying them instead of ‘growing them organically.’"

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McDATA Corporation, a SAN infrastructure company, and Hitachi Data Systems have entered into a worldwide reseller agreement.

Under the agreement, Hitachi Data Systems will resell McDATA’s ED-5000 Director under the McDATA brand with its Freedom Storage 7700E and 5800 subsystems. The ED-5000 Director is immediately available through Hitachi Data Systems’ worldwide sales organization. The combination of Hitachi Freedom Storage products and McDATA’s ED-5000 Director will provide Hitachi customers with a fail-safe, 24x7 SAN architecture.

The ED-5000 Director offers 32-port, any-to-any dynamic switching with 100 MB/second full-duplex performance per port; industry-standard Class 2 and 3 Fibre Channel technology; and 24x7 availability with hardware redundancy of major critical components and internal data path protection, call-home capabilities and non-disruptive maintenance, firmware loads and upgrades for mission-critical applications.

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The ARC Advisory Group’s Eighth Annual E-Business Manufacturing Forum will be held June 26 and 27 in Boston. The forum brings together top executives and decision-makers from leading manufacturing companies and e-business solution providers. Among the issues that will be discussed are B2B portals and marketplaces and e-fulfillment, e-procurement and e-business integration strategies. Founded in 1986, ARC Advisory Group provides strategic planning and technology assessment services to manufacturing companies, utilities, and global logistics providers.