Pepsi Bottler Uncorks Application Modernization with looksoftware

Published: May 27, 2008

by Alex Woodie

Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Northeast Wisconsin (Pepsi NEW) has selected looksoftware's application modernization solutions to update the interfaces of legacy OS/400 applications and provide integration with Microsoft Outlook, the software company announced last week.

For the last 25 years, Pepsi NEW has been serving more than 300 products to 2,500 customers in the greater northeast Wisconsin region. In support of this operation, the independent franchise, which is based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, has relied on some pretty old RPG II code to power its OS/400-based applications. However, those applications were beginning to show their age, which precipitated a search for a modernization solution.

After looking for a year-and-a-half, Pepsi NEW's IT manager, Steve Jones, finally found his solution. "I knew what I had to get done, and I was also well aware of the limited resources to get me there," he says. "With those two key constraints in mind, looksoftware rose to the top after only a week of evaluation."

A single test of look's capabilities made the difference for Jones. "I applied it to some real old RPG II code right out of the box, and with a little tweaking, it's given me a new look right off the bat, which is quite amazing," he says.

In particular, Jones cited look's snap-ins for Microsoft Outlook as being particularly beneficial. The offering, which look calls SNAP, provides the capability to access any RPG- or COBOL-based application from Outlook. SNAP was launched by look at last month's COMMON conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

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