Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks

December 1, 2000

By Joshua Dean

hen personal computers became common in the 1990s, many said it was the death knell for mainframes. They pointed to the rapidly increasing power of the PC and its ability to foster productivity and efficiency. Moreover, PCs had one thing mainframes have never had: a graphical user interface. This makes the PC easy to use because programs and files are displayed with graphics. Mainframes are cumbersome because their user environment is character-based. "The Web gives agencies the opportunity to apply an interface that is more intuitive to mainframe applications," Morris says. "With the Web, workers don't have to go through character-based fields. Plus, we can take a step further and do reengineering on the back-end systems. We can aggregate five screens into a single Web page."

Those who predicted the demise of the mainframe ignored at least one truth: Mainframe systems hold virtually all of the government's data. The Year 2000 crisis forced agencies to pay attention to their aging mainframe systems and reinvest in them.

"Government agencies were forced to deal with Y2K whether they liked it or not," says Bill Smithson, group vice president for information technology at Matcom Corp., an Alexandria, Va., systems integrator. Agencies were forced to recognize the value and importance of their mainframe-based systems, Smithson says.

"Y2K struck a major chord," says Rob Morris, director of product marketing for Jacada Ltd., a software company that creates Web user interfaces for mainframes. "People very selectively picked systems that were critical to their business and [could cure the Y2K bug]. They were left with the bread and butter of their organization."

These mission-critical, mainframe systems are now being brought up to date with the power of the World Wide Web. In fact, the Web has the power to solve many of the common complaints about mainframes. Typically, complaints are that these systems are difficult to navigate and that mainframe programmers are in short supply. Also, mainframes tend to be proprietary, isolating information and preventing it from being used by other systems.

"Now the question is to how to take mainframes to the next level, how to leverage existing functionality and connect them to the Internet as soon as possible," Morris says.

A New Look for Legacy Systems

"The mainframe certainly isn't dead," says Rich Fuqua, e-business executive for enterprise servers at IBM Corp., which builds many of the government's mainframes. "We have been helping customers realize the value of what they already have," Fuqua says. The government has been investing in mainframes for years. Abandoning such investments as new technology arises is folly. Rather, reinvesting in those systems is vital to ever-changing enterprises.

"The government needs to take advantage of its existing investments," says Zip Brown, vice president of American Management Systems Inc.'s e-government solutions group. "And they can do it without taking major risks."

Three main technologies are enabling systems administrators to take advantage of their mainframes in the Internet age. They are:

The Web: PC access to mainframes through terminal emulators, which display information in a mainframe format, has been available for years. Companies that provide terminal emulators have taken this notion to the Web and are making software that facilitates Web-based access to legacy systems. Some solutions are as simple as using the Web to access a mainframe type of display, or a "green screen." Other solutions are more complex, streamlining multiple green screens into a single Web page that benefits from the intuitive look and feel of a Web browser.
Middleware, or enterprise application integration software: This software helps different mainframe systems communicate and use the same information. This is a significant feat because the software has to take into account different information styles. For example, if one system identifies Virginia as "VA" and another as "Va.," the middleware software must format the information accordingly.
New programming languages: IBM has seen its fortunes rise and fall on the mainframe wave. And now, as the Web injects mainframes with a new vitality, IBM seems to be on the rebound. IBM has revamped its mainframe operating system to make its units more Web-friendly. This gives mainframe programmers access to new, popular programming languages often used with Web applications and familiar to the new generation of programmers. Reducing costs, increasing revenues and creating efficiencies are driving mainframe shops to the Web, Morris says. Moving to the Web is reminiscent of an older idea of accessing a mainframe through a network of terminals. But it also embraces the newer client/server structure, making a mainframe just another server, Smithson says. "We're going back to what the mainframe concept really is," he says.

The Interior Department's National Business Center (NBC) has taken this approach. The center uses the Federal Personnel Payroll System (FPPS) to handle administrative, payroll and financial systems for the department. NBC also sells its services to other agencies. The center serves approximately 180,000 federal employees at the Social Security Administration, the Education Department and more than a dozen smaller agencies, says Michael Colburn, chief of the NBC's applications technology and planning group.

The NBC used Jacada for Java to put its mainframe-based applications on the Web. Unlike products that just replicate a green screen, Jacada can reengineer entire systems.

"Even though FPPS was implemented a few years ago, our problem was that when we started, the Internet was still an unknown entity," Colburn says. "Now we're playing catch-up with the technology. We have a very fast and robust mainframe system but it doesn't afford an intuitive graphical user interface."

The NBC's system has 2,200 screens. So far, the agency has been able to convert 200 time-and-attendance screens to the Web. "The Internet, in a lot of ways, breathes new life into these systems," Morris says, "This system will stay around for another 10 to 15 years if reengineering occurs."

For Colburn, the Web offers two important benefits. First, by using a standard Web browser, the National Business Center doesn't have to install any special software on agency desktops. Second, it doesn't matter what kind of system taps into the mainframe. This means Windows, Unix and Macintosh screens look the same when users connect to the mainframe via the Web.

The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which provides government employees with data about their retirement funds, updated its mainframe by installing a voice response system. Matcom Corp. designed this Web application.

"We developed a Web front-end that duplicated the integrated voice response system and tied it into the IBM mainframe," Smithson says. "Many agencies are putting Web interfaces on their mainframes. Everyone is comfortable with point-and-click technology."

The Defense Department, for example, is using enterprise application integration technology, known as "middleware" for short. Over the last four years, DoD has been implementing the client/server-based Standard Procurement System (SPS). Hundreds of legacy systems are required to link to the SPS. DoD is using middleware to ensure procurement data can be translated and used across its enterprise.

"We needed to figure out how to create interfaces to our new product without burdening legacy environments," says Michael Dow, vice president of the acquisition business solution group in American Management Systems' defense practice.

AMS brought in WebMethods Inc., a Fairfax, Va., company that specializes in linking disparate information systems. "We don't care how the information is stored. Rather, we look at how we want the data to be represented," says Al Fox, director of public sector operations at WebMethods. "We hide the complexity of the integration effort so that everybody is speaking a common language."

WebMethods uses extensible markup language to help all the systems get onto the same page. "We're allowing legacy systems to remain intact and merging the information from those systems in an up-to-date user interface," Fox says. "The most important thing is that we don't have to make any changes to legacy systems."

Serving Up Internet Coffee

In the past, mainframes were considered difficult to program. Moreover, they took up huge amounts of space. And with powerful servers running Unix and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT and 2000 operating systems, the mainframe seemed to be on the way out. Who would need the behemoths?

It turns out that the mainframe machines have changed. What used to take up an entire room now looks like an oversized refrigerator. What's more, Colburn says, "the speed is must faster and the price has gone down." IBM has changed its entire marketing strategy, pegging its mainframes along with its other servers as eServers. "In modern [systems] architecture, you have to think of the IBM mainframe as just another type of server," Smithson says. "With a Web front end, it really doesn't matter anymore whether an application is hosted on a Unix server or a Windows NT server or an IBM mainframe. They are all tied into one network and agencies can make use of them any way they wish."

IBM has taken a two-pronged approach to future application development for its mainframes. It has enabled its mainframe operating system, OS 390, to interact with two newer programming languages that are popular on the Web: Java and Linux. "This approach for Java and Linux enables kids to come out of college and pop right onto one of our systems," says Rich Fuqua, an e-business executive for enterprise servers at IBM.

As IBM tries to convince users that mainframes are really just great big servers, Interior's Colburn reminds managers that these workhorses have been designed to

be reliable with minimal downtime-a valuable asset to a government moving rapidly to serving citizens on their time, rather than the government's. "The mainframe is coming back," Smithson says. "There was serious doubt for a long time as to whether it would survive. I think the answer now is firmly 'yes.' "