Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

OS/400 Edition
Volume 3, Number 4 -- January 28, 2003

IBM Repositions WebFacing to Convert Interactive Apps to Batch

by Alex Woodie

IBM's new interactive pricing policy for 5250 iSeries applications is pretty much an all-or-nothing proposition: Either pony up the big bucks for OS/400 Enterprise Edition and get unlimited 5250 CPWs or convert 5250 apps to batch and run OS/400 Standard Edition, which will be cheaper than Enterprise but won't support 5250 apps. To encourage companies to choose the latter, and break the green-screen habit, IBM has made a change that allows its WebFacing tool to convert 5250 apps to run in batch.

The interactive tax has become a serious bone of contention in the AS/400 and iSeries installed base since it was introduced in the mid-1990s. Often accounting for 50 percent of the cost of a new server, the interactive tax was what IBM charged users for scaling back the internal CFINT governor that limited the amount of total CPWs that could be used to run interactive applications on any given box.

On January 20, IBM announced sweeping changes to the way it will charge for interactive capability. No longer will users have to buy--or be able to buy--incremental amounts of interactive capability. It's an all-or-nothing deal (except on the smallest iSeries server). Companies that need more than 50 CPW of interactive capability, the upper limit on the Advanced Edition of the new entry-level iSeries 800, will have to purchase OS/400 Enterprise Edition, which will give them unlimited access to use their server's CPWs in any way they want. The other version of OS/400, OS/400 Standard Edition, does not provide interactive CPWs for workloads, and it is expected to be much less expensive than Enterprise Edition when IBM announces pricing. (To get a pre-announcement look at the latest iSeries pricing structure, see "The Deal on New iSeries Pricing."). IBM's new interactive pricing scheme is a game-changing move, but it raises questions about how ISVs will support their customers. For thousands of ISVs that developed green-screen applications for the OS/400 server, the question is: What will they do to avoid penalizing their customers by forcing them to purchase Enterprise Edition? Many of these ISVs have already Web-enabled their applications, using standard screen-scraping, or 5250 intercept, products, such as those sold by Jacada, SEAGULL, looksoftware, ClientSoft, ResQNet, and many others. But the majority of these Web-enabled apps still run 5250 under the covers. Is it feasible for these companies' customers--the largest OS/400 ISVs---to undertake a re-engineering program to move them to batch?

IBM has an answer to this problem, and it's called WebFacing. In its January 20 announcement, IBM states that customers will be able to run their 5250 interactive (which it has rechristened "5250 OLTP") applications on OS/400 Standard Edition as long they modernize the application using the IBM WebFacing tool.

IBM has made changes in the Systems Licensed Internal Code (SLIC) that activate a previously dormant API that allows applications that have been Web-enabled, using IBM's WebFacing Tool, to run in the batch subsystem. Before this change, all WebFaced applications have run in the interactive subsystem since the WebFacing Tool was launched with OS/400 V5R1, in May 2001. Sources say IBM Rochester could have opened up WebFacing to the batch subsystem back then but decided not to for political--and likely financial--reasons. IBM will not be making WebFacing's new batch capability available to older iSeries or AS/400 servers. Companies that want to Web-enable in batch using the WebFacing Tool will need to purchase a new server and either Standard or Enterprise Edition, and install the relevant OS/400 PTFs.

IBM finally allowed its WebFacing tool to run in batch mode because it wanted to stop penalizing its customers for doing e-business, says David Slater, the worldwide market manager for iSeries application development, in Toronto, Ontario. "A lot of the other tools have a usage chart, and you pay for how many users and you pay for the tooling," Slater says. "With WebFacing, it's part of WebSphere Development Studio Client. It's a no-charge addition, and the tooling didn't cost you anything. . . . We've made e-business very affordable."

Slater says the new WebFacing capability will have a dramatic effect on the value of an e-business solution. "In certain businesses, you can sell an e-business application for less than a green-screen application. You could never have done that before," he says. "Even at the high end, where ISVs sell very sophisticated applications that are $200,000-plus, you can't sell that application to anybody with less than $25 million in revenues. Now WebFace the application, and it can be delivered in ASP [application service provider] mode for a very affordable price."

IBM is releasing several case studies that describe how OS/400 ISVs have used the WebFacing Tool to Web-enable applications with thousands of screens in a matter of weeks. Several of the OS/400 ISVs that have already made the switch to WebFacing include Island Pacific, which sells a merchandise system for retailers; TSC Solutions, which sells ERP for construction companies; and Inter-American Data, which sells property management systems to hotels. The case studies are expected to be posted on IBM's IBM's WebSphere Development Studio Client for iSeries Web page in the next several weeks.

But dozens of other ISVs will stick with their existing Web tools business partner and forgo IBM's promise of "inexpensive e-business," says Andre den Haan, SEAGULL's vice president of product strategy. "I've spoken with ISVs who have been approached by IBM, and there's major pushback," he says. "WebFacing still requires significant time and money to develop the applications."

SEAGULL's JWalk Web-enablement technology has been OEMed by about 450 ISVs, including some of the biggest ERP vendors in the OS/400 market, like J.D. Edwards, Baan, Interactive Business Systems, and Manhattan Associates. These companies' applications are available in green-screen and GUI modes but require interactive capacity.

SEAGULL released a new development tool last fall called X-Caliber, which allows companies to convert their 5250 applications to use XML and run in batch, instead of interactive. (See "SEAGULL's X-Caliber Replaces 5250 Data Stream with XML" for more on X-Caliber.) Not many of SEAGULL's OEM clients are using X-Caliber yet, but here's the good news, says den Haan: Companies that have used SEAGULL's JWalk to develop GUI front ends for RPG applications can plug the output of X-Caliber into J Walk for a relatively easy upgrade to batch and XML capabilities.

Jacada tells a similar story. The Atlanta, Georgia, company doesn't expect any of its prominent OEM partners, such as MAPICS, H.T.E., and CommercialWare, to jump on the WebFacing bandwagon. "In every case where a company has looked at WebFacing and Jacada, they've selected Jacada," says David Holmes, the company's vice president of business development. "WebFacing as a technology, I'm not at all concerned about from a competitive standpoint."

Like SEAGULL, Jacada offers its own software, Jacada Interface Server, Legacy Extension, DDS Bridge (formerly Innovator), which allows companies to bypass the 5250 data stream in the creation of GUIs. Also, like SEAGULL's X-Caliber, the DDS Bridge is invasive technology that requires inserting code into an RPG or COBOL program (X-Caliber doesn't yet support COBOL) and then recompiling. Both companies see their invasive technology as providing an advantage over WebFacing, which is non-invasive, because their products make deeper, more profound changes to the application architecture. Jacada also offers Jacada Studio for iSeries for developing GUI apps that run in batch.

All parties involved agree that WebFacing's new batch capabilities will have by far its greatest impact on the user when the user is upgrading to new hardware. If that user is running a 5250 application that has been Web-enabled using interactive-dependent software from companies such as SEAGULL or Jacada, he could be facing the prospect of shelling out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for OS/400 Enterprise Edition. In lieu of that, the user may choose to Web-enable, using one of the available tools that bypass interactive, and purchase the less expensive OS/400 Standard Edition.

As usual, it comes down to money. But SEAGULL and Jacada say IBM is being less than totally truthful about how much it really costs to Web-enable with WebFacing. "IBM is very slick with their words," den Haan says. "Yes, they give WebFacing away with WebSphere Development Studio Client. But how do they obtain WebSphere Development Studio Client? It isn't for free."

There's also the requirement for a Java 2 Enterprise Edition-compliant Web application server to run WebFacing applications. While Slater says you can run it on any J2EE-compliant server, he says you'd be unwise to run it on anything but the new WebSphere Express application server IBM is delivering with the new hardware. WebSphere Express will cost $2,000 per processor.

The de facto requirement for WebSphere with WebFacing is a sticking point for Jacada's Holmes. "IBM has a vested interest in finding a way to move companies to WebSphere," he says. "But, ultimately, getting to WebSphere will be very difficult for all of our AS/400 shops. With our technology, you don't have to know anything about Java middleware, J2EE, or object-oriented programming or development environments. You can continue to use your RPG and COBOL skills to continue to deliver Web and client/server-style applications, without new skills, and without implementing WebSphere."

SEAGULL and Jacada weren't surprised by IBM's batch-enabling its WebFacing Tool because Slater had repeatedly warned IBM that he intended to deliver that enhancement. "Before I introduced WebFacing, I warned them four times. I told them when, and I told them why," says Slater, also known as the "Father of WebFacing." "Will it impact their business? Absolutely yes. I didn't want to burn them, but I told them I want to make e-business affordable. You have a proprietary solution that locks people into your interface."

SEAGULL's den Haan agrees that IBM's announcements will impact his business, but only to the degree it causes customers to consider IBM's new pricing as they evaluate purchases of the company's new X-Caliber product. "WebFacing has been around for well over a year and didn't even cause a blip, because it isn't nearly as robust or effective as the more mature Web-to-host products in this market," he says. "But we expect that X-Caliber opportunities will move slowly while customers try to grasp the full meaning of the announcement. The way IBM positions it, they make it sound better than it is. It's confusing to a lot of people."

"IBM can arbitrarily decide when they want to turn that switch on and off," Holmes says. "The customer is so confused, with so many mixed messages. I think a lot of people are getting tired of the rhetoric."

This article has been edited since its original publication to correct several errors. The number of ISVs that use SEAGULL's JWalk technology is 450, not 70, as originally stated. The sentence "Companies that have used SEAGULL's JWalk to develop GUI front ends for RPG applications can plug the output of J Walk into X-Caliber for a relatively easy upgrade to batch and XML capabilities" has also been corrected. The sentence now reads: "Companies that have used SEAGULL's JWalk to develop GUI front ends for RPG applications can plug the output of X-Caliber into J Walk for a relatively easy upgrade to batch and XML capabilities." Guild Companies regrets the errors. [Corrections made 1/30/03.]