Enterprises with a large remote user community or plans for Web-based trading services can garner significant benefits through a Virtual Private Network. By allowing companies to securely sahre sensitive information, a VPN service pays for itself in more than encryption.
How can a business make sure that their e-commerce site is always providing around-the-clock uptime to the customer? The key is to deploy the proper Internet Traffic Management appliance behind the infrastructure, one that includes both high availability and load balancing capabilities.
Everyone in the IT business knows that it takes a substantial amount of daily, resource consuming effort just to keep systems up and running to avoid business disruptions. The shortage of trained IT professionals is equally vexing for professional service organizations (PSOs). New solutions in integrated project management software are able to creatively and strategically address the resource challenges facing PSOs today.
The primary IT challenge faced by Sharp Electronics' Services Division in Europe was to improve the end-to-end delivery time for parts needed by its retailers and business partners. The solution was an extranet-style approach to allowing customers direct access to Sharp's parts order-entry system. The result reduced not only delivery time, but lowered costs as well.
The SIAC now identifies exact operational functions of the COBOL programs running in its S/390 environment. Using InCert Examiner, SIAC gains the understanding needed to test the "right stuff" and eliminate the uncertainty of guesswork.
Delivering the application systems that allow companies to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities e-business offers is a formidable challenge. It requires not just the construction of new systems using new technology, but the integration of the new systems with a wide variety of incompatible legacy systems. The e-Business Integration Solutions approach, which combines Integration Patterns and Integration Brokers, allows IT to deliver e-business-ready systems today.
As MIPS and storage levels continue to grow, hardware upgrades have become commonplace. IT professionals say that increased use of application performance management tools cut IT costs and save money. Such proactive practices lead to better service levels, reduced customer complaints and increased customer satisfaction.
The greatest area of concern for an enterprise’s IT department is whether their proposed Web-based sales channel will effectively interface with the legacy or modern resource planning systems. In a world where interoperability standards are honored mostly in the breach, the key to implementing an enterprise-based application is flexibility.
Whether the product has been S/390, AS/400 or RS/6000, working in concert across key product lines has not been IBM's strong suit. However, today there's harmony across the divisions and partners are singing a new song.
This roadmap of the technical and non-technical activities involved in assessing porting new applications onto OS/390 represents some "lessons learned" in managing over 20 ports to OS/390, through both technical and non-technical activities.