Able-One Blog

Over the past three decades, user interfaces have evolved from basic entry screens accessing batch-oriented systems to advanced, omni-channel, ubiquitous “experiences”.

In fact, user experience (UX) design is now defined as a “robust field combining elements of product design, service design, and innovation”.

For organizations committed to UX for their customer-facing platforms, or their “Customer’s Experience” (CX), this can drive significant competitive advantage, leading to increased sales and greater adoption and loyalty to their products and services.

However, for in-house applications, there can be a range of ‘user experiences’, sometimes cumbersome or redundant and for organizations managing legacy applications, this can have an impact on employee productivity, customer service, and the bottom-line.

Green Screens

Many traditional applications, developed for IBM i (aka AS/400) or IBM mainframes, had ‘green screen’ interfaces designed according to strict standards established by SAA/CUA (Systems Application Architecture/Common User Access) which helped advance the field of user interface design over 20 years ago. However, since that time, the world of software has evolved by leaps and bounds while many mission-critical enterprise applications still have these older interfaces. 

VansonBourne, a technology market research company conducted an independent global research study to assess how organizations and their respective CIOs worked with their existing back-end infrastructure. Respondents were polled from organizations varying in size, sector, and location. Nonetheless the issues seemed to be uniform across all firm characteristics with minimal standard deviation in key stats. Some figures that were pulled from the study include:

• 93% of organizations today still use green screen applications
• 54% of CIOs say working with green screen applications is having a negative impact on end user retention and recruitment
• 98% claim new features to green screens would enhance productivity

Negative Impacts on Productivity

Of the 590 CIOs and IT directors polled from nine countries around the globe, a staggering 89% have had complaints from end users about aspects of their green screen applications, with nearly two thirds (65%) claiming end users feel bored, frustrated, ambivalent or restricted when using these applications. IT leaders themselves appear to agree, with 55% believing green screen applications do not do a good job (VansonBourne).

Workforce Challenges

The other challenge involves bringing new talent into an organization to use older system interfaces. 45% of CIOs reported having difficulty hiring new employees with the skills they needed. The obstacles hampering modernization exist, but with the right outlook, problem identification and strategy, they can be easily overcome. Almost all survey respondents (98%) from the VansonBourne study agree that there would be a positive impact on productivity by adding newer capabilities over their green screen system.

So. while there may be an understanding that transforming your user experience will bring hard benefits, the associated costs and risks with the project must be weighed. Simply shifting from green screen applications to omnichannel, graphical user experiences can require a revaluation of your entire process, and a step towards greater efficiency while staying ahead of the competition.

Extending Legacy Systems

Today there are numerous options for extending legacy systems to take advantage of more current user experiences, involving new interfaces for deployment to browsers, mobile, and rich desktop clients, however, simply transforming a text-based CUA-style green screen into GUI does not reap the promised rewards of increased productivity and improved workflows without UX design and planning.

 Able-One has an upcoming event focusing on modernization of applications which will review approaches to leverage and extend existing systems. A key part of that discussion will involve UX design. And while simply changing green screens to GUI may not be a business driver, the impact that these interfaces are having on employee productivity may be.

Of note, Gartner has recently released their Top Ten Strategic Technologies for 2016. The top two, “The Device Mesh” and “Ambient User Experience” are good indications of how important this is becoming in the world we live in today. Below are excerpts from Gartner.

The Device Mesh

The device mesh refers to an expanding set of endpoints people use to access applications and information or interact with people, social communities, governments and businesses. The device mesh includes mobile devices, wearable, consumer and home electronic devices, automotive devices and environmental devices — such as sensors in the Internet of Things (IoT).

Ambient User Experience

The device mesh creates the foundation for a new continuous and ambient user experience. Immersive environments delivering augmented and virtual reality hold significant potential but are only one aspect of the experience. The ambient user experience preserves continuity across boundaries of device mesh, time and space. The experience seamlessly flows across a shifting set of devices and interaction channels blending physical, virtual and electronic environment as the user moves from one place to another.

The transition from green screens to a modern and relevant interface is a complex undertaking. To explore options for extending the value of your IBM i enterprise applications, join us for a special event on Wednesday December 2, 2015 from 12 PM to 4 PM in Toronto. There are a limited number of seats available. Register today.

By Eden Watt, Vice President, Application Innovation, Able-One Systems

If there’s one common challenge that I hear repeatedly from IT leaders that I meet, it’s how to integrate and merge disparate applications, especially after acquisitions or line of business changes.  

The complexity of systems managed by many organizations today can be mind boggling. This happens over many years of technology maturation, especially as the organization adds new products and services, or additional business units are added through mergers and acquisitions. Rather than acquiring new software to meet the comprehensive and evolving needs of the organization, this typically involves extending the original software or working with multiple software applications for different business areas and stitching them together.

Gartner has coined the term “Postmodern ERP” to be a “more federated, loosely coupled ERP environment with much (or even all) of the functionality sourced as cloud services or via business process outsourcers”. This growing trend indicates that the days of purchasing one monolithic ERP package to service all the processing needs of the business is coming to an end. Applications that have served the business well over many years do not necessarily need to be replaced as organizations start to embrace new cloud and mobile technologies as they expand their capabilities.

Case Study: Challenger, a Transportation & Logistics Company 

The approach Challenger has taken to address their growing business is a great example of how to achieve this with the least amount of disruption to the business.

In business for 40 years, Challenger is one of Canada’s largest privately held trucking fleets offering transportation, logistics, warehousing and distribution services. With their traditional business model, Challenger started with an RPG-based software package as their Transportation Management System (TMS) from Innovative Computer Corp (ICC) and Infinium for financials. They have knowledgeable in-house developers to maintain these applications which have been stable and finely tuned to their needs for many years, especially in the FTL area of their business.

However, the Challenger business has grown significantly both organically and through acquisitions and they now offer complete supply chain including truckload, LTL, LCV and small parcel transport services, 3pl and 4pl support, intermodal, container shipping, air freight and ocean freight cargo shipping internationally.  

To service logistics and other business areas, Challenger uses cloud-based Mercury Gate which allows customers to sign into TMS and provides more customer-facing capabilities. However, their financial systems and LTL business are still handled on premise with IBM i based Infinium and ICC. In order to manage the flow of invoice information between the two systems, Challenger’s invoicing department has been rekeying information between the two systems on a daily basis. 

Recently, Challenger acquired looksoftware’s soarchitect to develop web services integration to address manual procedures for integration between their on premise and cloud-based systems. This tool is unique in that you can target the RPG-based screens to create a web services layer, reducing the need to rewrite or duplicate complex logic for interfacing with legacy systems.

After a short learning curve, Les Peebles from Challenger has been able to very quickly introduce automation in two key areas for the invoicing team which is saving them considerable time and reduction of errors. 

This is the first in a series of blogs on PHP for the Enterprise by Eden Watt, Able-One VP of Application Innovation with Guest Blogger, Amy Anderson, Zend Director of Business Development.

With millions of sites and millions of developers using PHP, it’s a technology that should interest everyone in IT. This first blog provides an introduction and in subsequent blogs, we’ll review the features of PHP and Zend Server that are most valuable for business users.

PHP is an open source development language designed for web and mobile applications.  Originally, built as a scripting language for “personal home pages” (as in, “PHP”) the language has proven itself adaptable, resilient, and future-proof. According to UBM, “More than 240 million websites, including those of ADP, Facebook, NYSE Euronext and Toyota, are written largely in PHP”.

Many organizations have some PHP scripting embedded within their websites – especially since popular content management solutions, such as Wordpress, Magento, Joomla, and Drupal, use PHP under the covers and to extend the base package – while others may have a larger, more strategic commitment to an Enterprise PHP platform or framework for their applications. 

This Chart shows widespread use of PHP as a server-side programming language for deploying web applications.

PHP continues to expand in popularity and usage because it has matured along with the Internet itself.  As businesses have developed requirements for increased levels of security, performance, and reliability, PHP has stepped up to the challenge.  And because it is a dynamic language, it is well suited to mobile development as well.

There are many use cases for PHP, including Content Management Systems such as Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla, Commerce solutions such as Magento and X-Cart, and Customer Relationship Management solutions such as SugarCRM and OroCRM.  A fourth use case is perhaps the most relevant for a majority of established businesses: application modernization.  

As various computing trends have come and gone—from mainframe to client-server to web-enabled—businesses have invested in application environments that all too often resulted in a dead end for the business logic and data structures contained within those systems.  And yet, those environments continue to deliver value to business through high productivity and low total cost of ownership.  By using PHP as a front-end to those back office applications, businesses can leave the business logic and data where it is, and still deliver the information business users demand on the devices that are currently trending, whether it’s a tablet, a phone, or a smart watch.

PHP brings many advantages to these solutions.  First, the cost of entry is relatively low as compared to heavier application environments like Java.  Second, there are millions of PHP developers worldwide, and they are well networked together, so businesses can identify and hire critical skills regardless of location. 

And finally, PHP has evolved into a robust, enterprise-class environment that delivers the highest levels of security, performance, and reliability.  Zend Technologies, whose founders were two of the original authors of PHP, delivers a commercial-grade application platform for PHP that provides enterprise class features, improved ease of use, and of course, service and support that is unparalleled in the PHP community.

If you’re interested in finding out if PHP and Zend Technologies is a good fit for your enterprise, please get in touch with us.

Today’s manager of application development must juggle managing traditional systems and day to day needs of the business with the challenges of delivering their systems via various interfaces or channels to their users and customers.

It's a challenge that has evolved over time: 

• in the early 90's, providing interactive screens to transaction processing systems, (with the added bonus of standardizing them, incorporating SAA/CUA design), was a mandate for many RPG and COBOL developers in the AS/400 / IBM i world
• then came client/server and the need to extend the back end to a Windows GUI interface, perhaps integrated with desktop applications
• by the late 90's/early 2000's, web browser front ends to enterprise systems became popular for intranet, as well as, extranet, business-to-business, and business-to-consumer ecommerce systems
• today, the demand for mobile and tablet interfaces is now a key concern, and continues to grow and evolve

The result? Many companies have different areas of their systems developed with different technologies (such as RPG, COBOL, Synon, Windows .net, HTML5, PHP, and more)  - and ALL must continue to thrive and evolve. To encompass all of the current capabilities extends beyond just the user interface and belongs more in the realm of user experience and deployment to multiple channels. Considerations for managing a range of user experiences today can include:

• screen sizes / real estate
• navigation and on-screen controls
• use of keyboards, mice, browser controls, touchscreens and voice controls
• and, perhaps most important: whatever comes next

A key design principle for delivering enterprise applications via these various channels or interfaces is Responsive Design – can you code something once and have the interface dynamically work within various form factors?

This and other topics are discussed in this interview of Nick Hampson, (owner of Cydis Ltd., looksoftare Product Evangelist, and UX Design Expert), by Paul Tuohy from IBM Systems Magazine

 Learn more about Application Modernization and looksoftware:

 You can also access our webinar-on-demand on "Modernizing and Mobilizing with Open Standards" here: http://info.ableone.com/looksoftware-webinar-on-demand-1