iSeries Integration Is Target of New looksoftware Product: centric

by Alex Woodie

The Australian iSeries middleware provider looksoftware last week announced that early next year it will begin shipping a new product that allows OS/400 applications to integrate more easily with applications running on a variety of other platforms. The new software, called centric, will be targeted at OS/400 shops and ISVs that want to go beyond 5250 screen scraping to provide direct access to OS/400-based ERP programs or the DB2/400 database for integration projects such as CRM implementations.

The development of centric began about a year-and-a-half ago because, as company sources say, many iSeries shops don't have an easy way to integrate their existing RPG, COBOL, Java, and C applications with newer desktop applications, many of which are based on Microsoft and Oracle database technologies.

"The typical iSeries shop is surrounded by other applications. What we're trying to do with centric is provide easy integration and extension capabilities, to tie together applications," says Marcus Dee, looksoftware's managing director. "We've always been iSeries centric, and that's not changing, but what our customers are asking for is easy access to applications."

What centric will do is give OS/400 shops (and mainframe shops a little later) a three-pronged integration approach that covers the interface, application, and database layers of their systems. The software runs on a Web server and basically serves as a hub that routes front-end data and application requests to their proper destination on the back-end application. A macro editor will allow developers to control the flow of business processes. The centric package includes a development environment (which it shares with the company's application modernization software called newlook), a server component (which runs on any HTTP Web server), and a thin-client Web browser component (which will require an ActiveX-compatible browser).

The new centric program is currently in limited release and will become generally available in the first quarter of 2003.

At the interface presentation layer, centric will be able to interpret the 5250 and 3270 datastreams. Access to OS/400 applications is handled using the remote procedure call (RPC) method. Record-level access to the DB2/400 database will be provided using the distributed data management (DDM) function of the operating system. On the front end, centric will be able to read from, and write to, Microsoft SQL Server, Access, and Oracle databases using DDM and Microsoft's ActiveX data objects (ADO) specification.

Dee says centric is differentiated from the slew of legacy integration products that have recently hit the midrange market by the fact that centric will use the same core development component as its popular Web-to-host product, newlook, which has been adopted by nearly 1,000 customers around the globe, many of them OS/400 shops. "It isn't just marketing. It's genuinely different than competitors,"Dee says of newlook's dynamic environment that provides on-the-fly, non-invasive access to iSeries and zSeries processes. "Nothing's changed with the architecture, but now we've added centric support."

Dee says centric opens up the possibilities for iSeries application integration. For example, FISERV, which for years has used newlook for some of its insurance applications, used centric during the early release program to access an iSeries insurance application in a new way. Instead of converting the 5250 datastream to HTML, as newlook provides, FISERV used centric to directly access DB2/400 database files and display them in a Web browser, enabling the company to bypass the 5250 datastream.

Software Systems Unlimited, a Jefferson, Georgia, provider of administrative software for schools, has also started using centric. SSUI already used newlook to extend its native OS/400 application to the Web, and is impressed with what it sees in centric. "Using newlook and centric is one of the best decisions we ever made," said Robin Wilson, SSUI's president. "It is fast, powerful and robust--a rare combination of innovative software which is also simple to use."

Another ISV using centric is aRED P.I., a Brazilian provider of an OS/400 human resources application called Siebensoft. According to a looksoftware case study, centric allowed Siebensoft users to eliminate a time-consuming process of cutting and pasting data from a 5250 screen into Microsoft Word and Excel documents. With a new form--created with centric--the Siebensoft user is prompted to select required documents and spreadsheets, and a centric macro automates the integration task, reducing the time required by 4 hours, looksoftware says. "We've been able to reuse our existing traditional applications, provide modern flexible UI support and multiplatform integration support without the complexity of other alternatives," says Federico Schäfer, the software company's CEO.

The main theme with centric is allowing OS/400 users to open up and make the most of their AS/400 and iSeries systems they already have in place. "We've been bound by the datastream, constricted by it. What centric does is provide access to other core components of the application," Dee says. "It's not only reusing what they've already got, but being able to easily extend, customize, and integrate their applications."

Pricing for centric starts at $12,000, which provides a license for one development seat and 10 concurrent users. For more information, visit the company Web site at www.looksoftware.com.

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