Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition - Car Auctioneer Cruises Through Setup

Early one Saturday morning, Rick DuVall, systems manager for Dealer's Auto Auction of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, began migrating his company's software environment and configuration to a new iSeries Model 810, which was replacing an AS/400 620 that didn't have the horsepower to serve the interactive and batch requirements of 500 employees. As the switch-over moved forward, no unexpected surprises were encountered. When the time came to reconfigure his remote twinax devices, though, DuVall, a 20-year IT veteran, was astonished by what happened next.

Two years earlier, DuVall, already busy with development work, also endured the tedium of babysitting an IBM 5494 remote workstation controller. The 5494 had to be reset almost every two hours because of SNA timing issues caused by intermittent interruptions in the pair of BellSouth ISDN lines. In a facility two miles away, 50 employees, who receive hundreds of cars daily from Ford and General Motors for reconditioning, depended on access to the system from their terminals. If access was denied by a balky controller, things could get ugly.

DuVall sought a suitable replacement to the 5494, but an initial attempt misfired. "We had been trying for days to set up a Perle 594E, and never could get it to talk TCP/IP. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was the box, but we could never get to the bottom of it," he said. Then a B.O.S. Better On-Line Solutions e-Twin@x unit was delivered for testing.

The e-Twin@x controller was first rolled out in 1999. It is a hardware and software configuration that enables users to run TCP/IP and SNA securely over the same network, like the Internet or a WAN. Shipped in several configurations to support both twinax and RJ45 connections, e-Twin@x manages traffic between dumb and smart desktops, SCS and IPDS printers, and multiple iSeries and AS/400 servers. Regardless of how many green screens are connected, e-Twin@x unit requires only one IP address. Configuration can be done from a terminal or over the Internet with a common browser.

Because many folks think of green screens as out-of-date technology, the question is frequently heard: Why are so many green screens still in use, with all kinds of fashionable alternatives available? That's not a difficult question to answer. Many people see the terminal as the ideal tool for no-nonsense, heads-down data entry and inquiry. "There's no real reason to change to anything else, because if you go to a thin or thick client, you increase your cost and maintenance problems. Really, it slows people down."

With DuVall terminally busy, the e-Twin@x carton sat undisturbed next to his desk for three days. On day four, DuVall recalls, "I set it up at the remote site, plugged in the cables, and turned on the unit. Then I went back to my office at headquarters and used my Web browser to configure it." In addition to Twinax-connected terminals, this facility has printers and time clocks wired with Cat5. Although e-Twin@x can auto-create devices, Duvall, having concerns related to his device names, explains, "I went into it and told it I needed to do my own device naming." Afterward, e-Twin@x automatically created these devices on the iSeries and finished the configuration without any intervention.

Early that same day, DuVall had all the remote devices, including those connected with Twinax, talking to the new iSeries server at headquarters over an Internet connection. Because 5250 traffic requires very little bandwidth, users clocked subsecond response times. That allowed DuVall to terminate the twin ISDN lines previously used for the 5494 SNA traffic.

In the days following, the B.O.S. unit also demonstrated its reliability. DuVall muses, "Once we installed the e-Twin@x controller, the users stopped complaining immediately. It never went down. It took me a couple of weeks to notice that I wasn't running over there all the time."

Dealer's Auto Auction's IT and accounting departments are housed in a space the size of a football field, while just three programmer/analysts develop, maintain, and modify the applications that handle accounting, customer data, vehicle maintenance, repair, and inventory control. IT keeps the wheels turning at Dealer's, which is one of the largest independent auto auctioneers in the country, offering 2,500 cars a week to car dealers. The company's expansive facility consumes more than 125 acres and houses full reconditioning, mechanical, body and paint shop departments, and a test track. Its fleet and lease department services more than 980 banks and leasing companies.

Saturday, 10:30 p.m.: DuVall just finished the iSeries Model 810s installation, and all local I/O devices are active. All that remained was the configuration of the remote twinax terminals, printers, and time clocks. Tired, and anticipating the remote user setup to take at least another hour, with eyes almost shut, he continued.

"I opened up the browser interface, found a link for systems, saw all the information on our old AS/400, and plugged in the new iSeries serial number and IP address," DuVall says. "Then the controller took over. It printed out about two pages of text on my browser as it proceeded from one step to the next. It even checked for PTFs. I was amazed. The units were coming online as I watched. The whole process took less than a minute."

The e-Twin@x controller has simplified many aspects of DuVall's life. The time clocks connected to the controller are very sensitive to power fluctuations, and, periodically, they "kill themselves," DuVall says. "The controller is very helpful in resetting the clocks. I can open up the connection with the Web browser, go in there, and reset the clocks from here."

Dealer's considers its IT assets to be pivotal in enabling the company to efficiently do business in a highly competitive space. The company has built a successful reputation based on personalized customer service, and it relies on excellent technology to get customers to their destination.

Robert Gast writes about a variety of IT subjects for Guild Companies publications. E-mail: evantgroup@aol.com