LANSA Emphasizes Comfort Factor with Application Modernization

Published: October 24, 2006

by Dan Burger

I can name two things that stand in the way of application modernization projects: complexity and cost. That doesn't quite make me a genius. Complexity and cost stand in the way of a lot of IT projects. And, you can be assured that as complexity increases costs will follow. Last week I spoke with John Siniscal, president of LANSA about what his company is doing to overcome complexity while at the same time modernize applications that are critical to the continued success of the IBM System i.

"We see reluctance on the part of many companies to move forward because there are so many different types of technologies and approaches to how it all gets managed," says Siniscal, whose company just wrapped up its annual user conference last week. "It's a big issue."

Big enough to stall IT projects that are costing companies business advantages as they delay while trying to sort it out. Companies want to grow their business, Siniscal says, but they are reluctant to hire staff. "They are looking for ways to grow business without increasing staff. Creating a Web-based, self-service Web site that's dynamic and accesses the back end core system is such a no-brainer."

The intersection of wanting to establish that as a business goal and actually doing it is where many companies are hitting the wall.

So what does LANSA do to make things less complex and therefore easier to make decisions to move forward with application modernization? First of all, it takes an incremental approach to modernization and, secondly, it concentrates on a single environment that bridges many of the technologies that companies and their IT staffs struggle to learn and master before moving on to yet another technology. LANSA is a high-level language, Siniscal says. It uses XML as the delivery mechanism and has the capability to build green-screen applications, client-server type apps, as well as Windows- or Web-based applications. It generates low-level languages such as Java, C++, and even RPG, so specialists in those languages are not necessarily needed. He says it also simplifies things by not requiring personnel to learn things like Wireless Markup Language (WML), dynamic HTML, Java Script, Ajax, or Web services.

"In the past, you had three ways to modernize or innovate applications," Siniscal says. "One was to do a quick and dirty screen scraping of the applications. The second was to add incremental extensions to the applications using technology that would co-exist with the old stuff. The third way was to throw away the old and build a new application."

Siniscal likes to refer to the option of rewriting the entire application as "the Big Bang approach." Not many companies are willing to make that leap. Siniscal describes it as a minimum two-year investment after which you hope you end up with better functionality and that your users will accept it. In other words, it's a gamble.

That's where the incremental approach comes into play.

RAMP was designed as a continuous process that allows users to choose how they want to proceed in an incremental fashion. It allows them to establish a comfortable pace based on skills and budget.

"Screen scraping is a stop gap method," Siniscal says, "but it can be run in a modern application framework and later you can build extensions that run in the same user interface, the same portal." On the screen the user sees the screen scraped part of the application that is needed to access parts of the functionality, but new functionality can also be added to run in that same framework and gradually, as more functionality is built in, the application replaces the screen-scraped green screen. "It could be 12 months later, 24 months later, or five years later," Siniscal says. "The old application has been replaced. It's a series of incremental releases."

At the user conference LANSA was focused on training customers that had committed to the new technology and bringing onboard those that hadn't yet made the move. It put in the spotlight customers that could show and tell of applications that were built and deployed in three or four months.

That's not to say LANSA is the only company accomplishing a level of application modernization in that time frame. Other vendors can make similar claims. Customer success stories, however, go a long way toward showing the way to others. LANSA is at a point where it is working to get users of its LANSA 2005 and RAMP products accustomed to working in a new framework and with a new user interface while building the skills and confidence to start adding new components and functionality that will replace green screens. LANSA 2005, the development environment that is an evolution of what was previously called Visual LANSA, was introduced in the spring of 2005. RAMP, the application modernization tools that run within LANSA 2005, was introduced earlier this year.

According to Siniscal's estimates, 70 percent of LANSA's maintenance-paying customer base have asked for and received LANSA 2005. He says approximately 40 percent of those have it installed. Although LANSA's installed base can be described as nearly 100 percent OS/400-centric, those numbers likely reflect an above average number of shops involved in Web application development, which is still lagging compared to shops where Windows is the dominant platform. Siniscal points out that LANSA has promoted and sold LANSA for the Web since 1996 and that makes its customers slightly ahead of the typical iSeries and System i shop when it comes to building Web applications.

"There are a couple of trends going," he says. "One is the application modernization trend, which I see picking up stream. The Web building of B2B ad B2C e-commerce applications is still very hot. And the other thing is application integration--building machine-to-machine interfaces. We have an EDI product and we have seen a big take-up in sales."

Companies are cautious, according to Siniscal. "They are looking at ROI. Some of these Web-based applications have a pretty obvious ROI--if not a direct-cost ROI, and then there is typically an improvement in customer service or customer satisfaction."

Another area that LANSA sees opportunity is in the manufacturing and distribution sectors that have been solid backers of the AS/400, iSeries, and System i. At the LANSA conference there were sessions specifically devoted to users of MAPICS, BPCS, and J.D. Edwards. These are the back-end core systems for many large iSeries customers.

But many customers aren't looking to the original developers of these ERP systems for new functionality--if the developers are still left, and those numbers are dwindling every day.

Now that the consolidations that have taken place, there's not a lot of R&D going into the products from these software vendors and customers are looking outside of the vendor for new functionality, Siniscal says. They're looking for help in business-to-business integration, self-service Web sites, or bringing data to mobile, hand-held, wireless-type devices. LANSA can help them build those things.

Perhaps this is an indicator of the many changes taking place in the System i ecosystem where adding functionality to existing applications is on the mind of many customers.

"IBM keeps talking about 'white space'--we have to win new-name accounts," Siniscal says. "The only way IBM is going to win new accounts is for solution providers to modernize their applications so they can win new business. They can't win new business with green-screen applications. We hear that constantly. Every time we get in a sales discussion with an ISV, we say: 'Why are you looking at doing this?' And they always say the same thing: 'We can't sell new business with a green-screen application. We can't win any new business unless we have a new application, and we can't afford to spend $3 million and take two years to do a rewrite.'"

LANSA held its user conference in Las Vegas, at a new hotel and casino called the Red Rock Resort, which is owned by Station Casinos. Station Casinos, along with most of the other casinos around the world, run their core business applications on the iSeries and System i. A high percentage of casinos are also LANSA customers. The event included executive-level sessions featuring an IT technology-oriented behind-the-scenes tour provided by the CIO and IT manager at the resort.