Thursday, December 7, 2006

Managing the Transition from VTAM to the Intranet

Several factors will determine whether the transition to the Intranet from VTAM and other host-based systems will be rough or smooth:

1. What is the present level of open systems expertise?

Obviously, the greater the experience with open systems, Internet-related technologies, the easier the transition to the Intranet. Corporate development groups that have gotten their hands into Unix, TCP/IP, HTML, and perl will stand a better chance than those that have yet to taste these technologies.

2. How will IP be deployed throughout the enterprise?

Corporations are faced with running a mixture of protocols over various parts of their enterprise networks. There are numerous choices, depending on a number of factors such as which protocols are required to support which legacy applications, the resources of both staff and machines that are required to support each protocol, and the cost of purchasing new hardware to handle routing or gateway functions.

First, there is the matter of running IP throughout the enterprise network. Corporate IS groups have a series of choices for getting IP services to each desktop: the direct approach, where an IP stack is loaded on every machine in the enterprise is often the best but could be expensive, particularly if a great number of DOS machines need to be replaced or reconfigured. Such an IP stack is included in a variety of Attachmate and other vendors' products, such as the Extra Personal Client product.

Another approach is to use gateway servers, such as the Firefox series of NetWare-to-IP gateways. These gateways enable desktop computers to still run their Novell-related protocols, leaving IP on the server. Attachmate's IRMA TCP Suite is another solution, and a current version has a server-based implementation where the administrator configures the software that users copy to their desktops. It also does IP tunneling. A final approach is to run multiple protocols on both desktop and servers, making use of the newer breed of operating systems such as Windows95 and NT and even Macintoshes that can handle such multiprotocol operations.

A second matter is mixing IP and SNA networks. Attachmate's white paper, TCP and SNA 3270 Integration, provides a description of the various alternatives here, and one solution is Attachmate's TCP Server which offers the ability to run IP at each desktop but still have access to the SNA host and run individual 3270 sessions directly to each desktop.

3. Can IS take the technology lead on managing web services for the corporation?

For the transition to be effective, IS professionals must take the lead and manage the web services for their enterprises. This could be difficult, particularly as the skills level required to setup a web server continues to drop. Products such as O'Reilly's Website and Compuserve's newest Internet Office Web Server are Windows-based and take little time to install and configure. Other products, such as Performance Technologies' Instant Internet offer a single-stop solution for bringing up a turnkey Internet server, complete with software and hardware.

4. Can IS set an example for maintaining web-based content and deploy appropriate training resources?

But just setting up a web server isn't the real issue: it is maintaining its content and keeping up with the changes in corporate information that is the true challenge. What is needed is the ability to deploy corporate publishing and conferencing services using the web and Intranet as the core technologies for distribution of information.

IS departments are filled with people that know how to maintain information, and should quickly assume the role of mentoring line managers throughout the enterprise. Products such as Vermeer's Front Page and new products from Attachmate that enable "out-of-the-box" Internet conferencing and publishing along with other products that handle content delivery, web publishing and document searching are also expected in this arena. New products are needed, though, to enable mainframe-based data to be easily accessible via Internet-like tool sets, and Attachmate's forthcoming products. The Internet versions of QuickApp and QuickDB will extend their current host and database development tool offerings to support the developmen t of Web applications that require access to legacy mainframe databases.

Each of these factors is critical for the success of the Intranet and for the successful involvement of IS departments in the transition from legacy mainframe systems. Note that many of these issues are not technical but political. Indeed, many of our own sources within corporate IS departments have told us that they are wrestling with these issues just as they once wrestled with the issues surrounding PC ownership and configuration. Let us all hope we have learned from the mistakes of the past ten years and not repeat them!