Computacenter has earned the right to know exactly what to expect out of a computer. With more than 9,000 staff members in offices throughout Europe, Computacenter is Europe's leading IT infrastructure services company. It can advise its customers on computing strategy, implement the most appropriate technology from a wide range of vendors, and then manage the system on their behalf. Operating in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Austria, Computacenter is very busy organizing and fulfilling its customer commitments.
In the old days, the only way engineers knew what work they were scheduled to perform was by phoning the central scheduling department. Likewise, the only way the central scheduling department knew what work had been carried out was by phoning the engineers. As you can imagine, with more than 500 technical service people in the field in the UK alone, organizing and performing customer tasks was a nightmare of epic proportions. About a year ago, however, Stephen Kennedy (Computacenter's Business Solution Manager) set his mind to re-crafting Computacenter's manual call center into an Internet-based "Web Call Closure" application. Kennedy and his IT team selected ASNA's Visual RPG Development Suite and solved the problem in record time!
First: Pick the Tool
Working for a company of Computacenter's stature, Kennedy is well-versed in many computer solutions and had crafted a solid specification for his Web Call Closure application. From very early on, he had a very clear vision of what Computacenter's new application should do for them.
Says Kennedy, "We desperately needed an application that any of our 500 customer engineers in the UK could use to schedule and monitor appointments and other customer-related tasks. A primary goal of the application was that it should be available to any of our widely scattered customer engineers securely and with appropriate response times across the Internet. Beyond solving deployment problems, we needed this application to be available to our engineers from any office they would happen to occupy."
Long-time iSeries users, Kennedy and his IT staff first turned their attention to possible Java alternatives. However, after some investigation, the Computacenter team quickly ruled out any Java options.
Explains Kennedy, "We needed a quality solution, but we also needed it quickly, and, of course, we wanted one that presented the most value. Upon examination of Java-based options, we determined that the training curve and costs were too steep for us. It was important for us to be able to re-use as much of our staff's RPG knowledge as possible. Tools that mapped a 5250 green-screen to HTML were also considered, but those tools didn't let us add enough functionality. We didn't want to port an existing application--but rather, create a new one with the modern features we needed."
Onward and Upward
After attending an ASNA one-day introduction seminar, Kennedy understood basically what ASNA's Visual RPG could offer Computacenter's new project. He downloaded a trial version from the Internet and, after a bit of experimenting, was ready to move his team to the next step.
Says Kennedy, "After spending just a bit of time with ASNA's Visual RPG, I was convinced it was the tool for us. It let my team put their iSeries RPG skills to work quickly, made it easy to call existing iSeries program objects, and was affordable and easy to learn."
The Computacenter IT team is composed of several highly qualified, talented members. (Remember, Computacenter specializes in making IT departments effective--it leads by example!) Some of the low-level details of the Web Call Closure application were deferrable to the in-house specialists. Thus, Kennedy and his coding team relied on the skills available to them to architect the Internet network needed to host the ASNA Visual RPG solution (which consisted primarily of a Windows 2000 Server connected to their production iSeries). However, there was still a lot of code for his team to write.
After finalizing his program specifications with his staff of experts, Kennedy put his team to work writing code. He says, "I was quite surprised how quickly we were able to put something together with ASNA's Visual RPG. In a matter of a few short weeks, we had built a small proof-of-concept to prove that we were indeed headed in the right direction. To hone their Visual RPG skills further, two Computacenter RPG programmers attended a five-day ASNA Web development workshop in Guildford, England. That gave them the boost they needed to move from prototype to production application.
Up and Running
The time spent at ASNA's classes gave the two primary Computacenter RPG programmers the confidence they needed to plough ahead.
Kennedy recalls, "I'd like to tell you that we rolled up our sleeves and in a few short weeks we delivered a working Web app. While the process was simple and we loved developing with ASNA's Visual RPG, the leap from coding for the green-screen to coding for the Web does indeed present challenges. However, even though we stumbled a time or two early on, we did indeed deliver a basic version of our application in just three months or so.
Once we fully learned a few basics, we were very productive writing our Web app. We found it especially easy to make our new application user-friendly. We knew we'd have many users from many areas using the application, and it had to be intuitive and easy to use. ASNA's Visual RPG came through for us with flying colors in perhaps the most important part of the application: connecting our iSeries data to an Internet Web page. The ease of integrating our iSeries data with the Web environment using Visual RPG was extremely easy."
In the end, Kennedy and his team rolled out a successful Web Call Closure application that is now used by more than 500 staff. The Computacenter team successfully replaced a troublesome, error-prone, manual system in a matter of months.
"Offering a Web interface was key to the success of our project and also conforms to our strategy of having all of our applications accessible by the Internet," says Kennedy. "ASNA's Visual RPG made my team top-notch Web programmers quickly and effectively. Not only did it enable my RPG team to work with totally new and different technologies, it gave them the satisfaction of acquiring a rewarding new set of skills."
At Computacenter, they know what to expect out of a computer. ASNA's Visual RPG was just the development environment Computacenter needed to make that expectation a reality!
ASNA Visual RPG for .NET is now available!
Roger Pence is ASNA's education director. Prior to joining ASNA three years ago, Roger worked for many years as a journalist, speaker, and technical editor in the AS/400 community.
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