Perception Is Reality

by Dan Burger

Stop me if you've heard this one before. There was this AS/400 shop still running applications developed in the Stone Age. And because many of the shop's users saw green screens and got the impression that it was "old technology," upper-level management believed that old-technology label, too.

Over the course of several years, more and more tasks were removed from the '400 and run on Windows NT servers, where users--who were trained on PCs--found things a lot friendlier and more to their liking. Meanwhile, the IT department saw its OS/400-based world being flushed down the porcelain receptacle.

This is a fairly apt description of what was going on at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. MoMA is a world-class institution featuring a collection of more than 100,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, architectural models and drawings, and design objects. It also owns some 14,000 films and 4 million film stills, as well as 140,000 books and periodicals.

There was a time when the museum's 600 users relied on data that resided on the AS/400. Now the number of AS/400 users is less than 50 percent of that figure. The collection management system, which tracked all the works in the museum's art collection, was shifted to NT. So was the financial system.

"These systems were lost off the '400 because there wasn't a GUI interface," says Dave Baker, the IS project manager. Also lost was the simplicity of managing these and other systems on the AS/400. "It has been costly from a resources standpoint," says Robert Rocco, the associate director of IT applications and development. "We run a tight ship here, and it is difficult to keep up with the work." An accumulation of various applications and servers with little integration or common infrastructure was pushing the IT department to the brink.

A plan that would put MoMA back on track was devised: consolidate more applications on the iSeries. Imagine the outcry from those who saw this as a commitment to old technology.

Rocco, a guy with deep OS/400 roots, was instrumental in the move to "pull things back onto the AS/400." With some channels running on NT and others with outside services that required data exchange, Rocco described IT management and support as "a tremendous headache" just to keep these various systems up and running each day.

Here's how MoMA chose to rid itself of the headache.

Step one was designed to reface those ancient applications. To modernize and improve their ease of use and integration with desktop applications, MoMA considered solutions offered by looksoftware, IBM, SEAGULL, and Jacada.

During the decision-making process, the IT group came to the conclusion that newlook, by looksoftware, was the best fit. In making that determination, several points came to the forefront. Products with a "batch- oriented collection process" would take longer to implement and require double the maintenance (changes on two screens rather than one). If it required Java expertise, there would be extra training involved and therefore extra money invested. But because no other Java needs were forecast, there wasn't a reason to bring it in for this project. Overall expense was, of course, a consideration. "Even if we would have wanted to invest in Java and the training that went with it," Rocco says, "we could not have afforded it."

One of the top priorities was dealing with the MoMA membership programs. That task required changing 300 to 400 different screens. According to Baker's description, newlook's dynamic rendering of the screen significantly streamlined this process. For one thing, it allowed refacing changes to be done in one place rather than in two.

Baker also liked that looksoftware offers a 30-day product trial on newlook and that it was downloadable from the Internet. "We saw from day one how easy it was to use," says Baker.

"In refacing, we wanted to give existing applications more of a graphical look and feel, making them easier to use and navigate and easier to learn," says Baker. It allowed the IT department to roll out an application that one department at MoMA "would not have supported if newlook had not provided a great graphical interface. "The head of that department was ready to go outside [of the IT department] for a solution until the capabilities of the AS/400 were demonstrated," says Rocco. "They were sure they did not want the system [AS/400] with the green-screen look."

Rocco estimated a potential cost saving of more than $100,000. "Not having to outsource projects was a factor," says Rocco. "If we couldn't provide the solution, we would have had to bring in one that ran on another platform. That would have meant purchasing another server and hiring consultants to develop and implement the system."

Another example of cost-saving Rocco cites is that MoMA is upgrading its desktop operating system to Windows 2000. "We have a retail system that will run only on Windows 95; now we have to pay the vendor to come in and upgrade the software to work with Windows 2000. We don't have that issue with newlook running on the AS/400."

An AS/400 Model 720 currently resides at MoMA, but Rocco said the lease on that machine expires at the end of the first quarter of 2002. He hopes to replace it with an iSeries Model 830 or 840.

Rocco likes to note that many of the MoMA users did not even consider the iSeries as a viable platform for several newer applications. But after seeing the newlook screens, their perceptions have changed tremendously.

"What we are doing is bringing things back onto the AS/400 platform."