The iSeries Goes to Town in Local Government

by Mary Lou Roberts

OK, you admit it. You were going a tad over the speed limit on your way to pick your kids up from soccer practice. At least the city is making it easy to pay that ticket online. Perhaps you want a membership at the city-run swimming club? Or you may want to pay your utility bill or apply for a building permit. Doing all these things may be as easy as accessing the city's online systems. And in many cases, an iSeries may be the server platform behind the scenes, letting you do all this and more.

For years--decades to be precise--the OS/400 platform has been a popular choice for local and county governments, for much the same reason as it has been in other tight verticals: availability of applications. But we may soon be seeing even more local and county governments coming on board with the iSeries in the near future.

In my recent interview with Chip McClellan, IBM's senior marketing manager for market segments, he identified several "hot" markets that are being targeted by IBM for iSeries growth in 2006. Among those is government. McClellan says that this growth, which is occurring in all three geographies (Americas, Europe, and Asia/Pacific), is being driven, in part, by government spending on security, disaster relief, infrastructure projects (especially in Asia), and "broad-based investment in the public sector."

Certainly here in the United States, the events of September 11, 2001 have triggered major attention to upgrading systems to facilitate the work of first responders, and it's a certainly that local, county, and state governments are being driven to use technology to upgrade their ability to track and collect money. (Yes, you are going to have to pay those pesky parking tickets.) It's a virtual certainty as well that Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma have upped the ante for governments to be better prepared at a minimum for backup and recovery and communication with residents and other government agencies.

However, perhaps more than traditional business, governments are strapped for money and must be able to show a strong ROI for technology implementation. Fortunately for many of them, their existing AS/400 applications have weathered the storms of time and are offering a solid base on which to upgrade and modernize.

Sergeant Andrew Jaffee, Information Technology Manager for the Hartford Police Department in Hartford, Connecticut, notes that his organization installed its first System/38 in 1983 as a result of its high performance in benchmark testing. Since that time, the department's hardware has evolved to the current configuration of one iSeries 820 and one iSeries 270, each with 1 GB of memory and 200 GB of disk. Both systems are operating OS/400 V5R1 using Lakeview Technology's MIMIX to replicate the databases. Applications running on the iSeries include the department's in-house-developed COBOL applications for its public safety computer-assisted dispatch (CAD) system and its records management system (RMS). CAD--not to be confused with computer-aided design--and RMS are terms of art in the IT field as it relates to police departments.

The department does have several applications that run on Windows-based platforms. These include a stand-alone bar-coding application used to manage their seized property and evidence collection, says Jaffee. "Additionally, we have developed a very robust geographic information system/crime mapping system utilizing ESRI software. A part of our GIS system is a third-party application developed by the Omega Group, an ESRI partner that we use for our crime mapping. A component of the Omega Group application is an import wizard that takes daily extracts from our iSeries system and stores the data in a Microsoft SQL Server database used for mapping routines. We also have a mug shot application using SQL Server for the back-end database that also interfaces with our RMS. Each mug shot is associated with an arrest number, and a master file number that corresponds to the RMS database. We also feed arrest data to a Cogent Livescan via an FTP process deployed between the two systems."

Jaffee believes that the iSeries is a particularly good choice for local and county governments. "Mission critical applications, especially public safety systems, require an operating environment that is fault tolerant. In my opinion, the iSeries provides this stability. Coupled with MIMIX, a governmental agency is protected against almost any failure scenario." Jaffee reports that in the past two years, his organization has experienced only one occasion when a disk drive failed on one of boxes, causing the department to switch operations to another server. "The application never crashed; the operating environment only slowed, but we felt the best action was to switch servers."

If it were up to Jaffee, his organization would never migrate away from the iSeries. But a platform switch cannot be ruled out. For one thing, his sole remaining developer is preparing to leave city service within the next couple of years. "There is a possibility that we may migrate off the iSeries as we are actively developing new CAD and RMS applications."

A model installation of city government on the iSeries is the city of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. When asked how long the city has had an iSeries or any of its predecessor systems installed, both John Konich, manager of information systems, and Gary Bishop, iSeries administrator, laugh: "Longer than either one of us has been around." Konich believes that the first System/3X was installed in the mid- to late-1970s to run the city's first homegrown utility billing and tax management systems.

Today, the city of Cuyahoga Falls has four iSeries boxes on the floor: a 170, an 820, an 810, and a new i5 550. Konich explains that the 170 is basically a development and test box. The 820 runs public safety, police, and fire dispatch. The 810 is running financial packages, income tax, and utility billing. And the i5 has been installed to drive the new eGovernment initiative. Ultimately, the plan is to get rid of the 170 and the 820 and consolidate those functions onto the i5 550. The city plans to take the 810 offsite to the fire station and mirror the data through fiber for a fully redundant system.

What is the eGovernment initiative? Konich describes it: "It is the ability for our residents to get online and transact business. In September, we installed Phase I, which allowed our residents to pay and view utility bill information online. Soon, we will be releasing a Park and Recreations module, where they'll be able to view membership information, sign up for classes, renew their memberships, and pay for memberships online. Also, toward the end of this year, we're going to have an income tax filing preparer that will be online and will interface with our income tax. Contractor licenses are going to be coming online probably some time next month, where contractors will be able to renew their licenses online. And next year we will be able to do building permits online, we will be able to look up code enforcement and zoning information, and our police records will be online for traffic and accident reports."

Cuyahoga Falls' main line of business applications come from SunGard HTE. At the present time, the city also uses New World Systems financial, public safety, dispatch, and records management applications. However, Konich predicts that these may soon be replaced with HTE's systems. "We are looking to reduce the number of vendors that we have to go to for support. We went with HTE because that's who currently supplies our utility billing package, which is one of our main applications. Rather than going out and completely replacing everything and going through a conversion, we decided to stick with HTE and buy its other products as well." In addition, the city uses MIMIX for high availability and disaster recovery, an ad hoc reporting tool from HTE, and imaging is on the agenda for 2006.

Bishop explains that the eGovernment initiative is "a separate initiative from our regular line of business applications. That is on the i5 550 and is almost completely an IBM solution, put together with WebSphere portal, Tivoli Access Manager, and utilities from our application vendors HTE and Vermont Systems, the latter being our recreation and parks software." Will the eGovernment system communicate with the other systems running on the iSeries? "It already does," says Bishop. "The HTE system is the front end to our line of business applications, and the application from Vermont Systems, Web Track, is a web front-end to their web tracing software. These are put together with WebSphere with portal pages and we use WebSphere to wrap those applications."

And yes, like just about everywhere else in corporate computing, Windows is present for the desktop environment and for file and print serving. Linux is also virtually hosted on the i5 550, running in a logical partition. At the present time, the city's use of Linux is limited. But, Konich predicts that "Linux has opened the door for us to do more, and it may become an alternative further down the road."

Konich, who comes from a mainframe environment, believes that the iSeries is a great choice for local government, primarily because of its price and performance. "The box is rock solid. It runs well. I can't think of any downtime we've had. We haven't had any major issues with the box, and from a price standpoint, you get a lot of power for the money. We have the i5 550 on the floor right now, and it's powerful enough that we can consolidate multiple servers onto that one box. It's going to save us on floor space and maintenance, and it's easier to manage because it's all on one box."

Bishop agrees. "The iSeries has traditionally been an integrated environment. We've brought a lot of technology in house, and to run it all under the covers of iSeries has made it easier to manage. From our standpoint--not having had LPAR before and now managing LPAR-integrated, virtualized servers--the technology that's come out has made it very easy for us to manage."

Translate that into dollars. Konich says that Cuyahoga Falls looked at several alternatives for the eGovernment project, but by sticking with the iSeries, it probably cut 50 percent to 75 percent off the total project, including all new software. "Looking at moving to another platform, the expense was huge. We wouldn't have been able to do it if we'd had to go out and buy all new software. With the iSeries, we had no conversion. All we had to do was upgrade the box." They even avoided the cost of retraining and hiring, and are able to do all this with eight full-time and two part-time people, only three of whom are dedicated to the iSeries applications.

What more would Konich and Bishop like to see from IBM? "Advertise and get the box out there so more people are familiar with it and recognize what it can do. And get it out into the hands of students in the schools."

Another long-time user of the iSeries is the city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota where Ed Castle, information technology manager, traces the history of the platform back to the late 1970s (the first System/38) and the installation of its first AS/400 in 1989. Today, the organization has an iSeries 810 with two logical partitions--one for production and one for testing.

The iSeries runs the city's utility billing application, financial systems (also from HTE), human resources and payroll, planning applications, building services applications for permits and zoning, and even parking ticket and those dreaded red light camera ticket tracking systems. They are working to install MIMIX for high availability, with a target date of going live in December 2005.

In addition, the city has what Castle describes as "a myriad of Windows servers, running health clinic application software, park and recreation reservation programs, and the email system. After evaluating products, Windows-based applications seemed to meet the users' needs."

One of these needs, Castle says, is user demand for "point and click" applications. After evaluating both WebSmart from Business Computer Design and IBM's WebSphere, WebSmart was selected and is being used to move as many of Sioux Falls' legacy applications as possible to a WebSmart version, including its home-grown parking ticket and utility billing applications.

But Castle hedges a bit when asked about the future of the iSeries in Sioux Falls' data center. He truly praises the iSeries for the reliability of both its hardware and software. He applauds IBM's efforts to support Windows applications on the iSeries. And he likes the fact that the iSeries can have logical partitions that run Linux and AIX applications. Furthermore, he believes that the iSeries is currently the only platform where one can find an applications suite that integrates all of the financial applications for an organization, as HTE does. "You can't find that on Windows," Castle says.

But . . . Castle does have one concern. He runs a department of 18 people, including four iSeries programmer/analysts and one iSeries computer operator. The other 13 include two managers and 11 people working on the Windows platform. "It is becoming extremely difficult to go out and look for iSeries people. That would be a reason for us to move off the platform."

It is interesting to note that in all three of these situations--where all are long-time (decades long) users of the platform and have major investments in legacy applications--two specifically mentioned difficulty in staffing iSeries positions and stated that as a possible reason for moving off the platform some time in the future. The third specifically mentioned the need for IBM to get college students introduced to the iSeries.

It seems clear and logical that the iSeries may be sitting on a potential gold mine of local and county governments. But, stating the obvious, by definition, these opportunities are very local. To realize the potential, companies have to be able to get programmers and system administrators to work on these systems not just in Chicago or New York or even Hartford, but in Cuyahoga Falls and Sioux Falls and in a myriad of other smaller cities and towns. What a shame it would be to see the established installations move off the platform, and new prospects turn to Windows-based applications simply because IBM has not done everything possible to get the iSeries educational programs firmly planted within the community college system.

Mary Lou Roberts, a 35-year veteran of the information systems industry, is a new contributor to IT Jungle. In addition to her work as a reporter in the iSeries space, she has spent her career as a marketing and communications professional working exclusively with information technology publications and companies. She can be reached at WriterNewf@aol.com.

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