IBM has used the combined resources of IBM Software Group, IBM Global Services and IBM Research to develop a set of tools and services to help customers modernize and transform legacy applications.
The three groups, company executives said, worked together to deliver the application modernization offerings, which will provide end-to-end solutions and services to modernize applications, including Web-enabling old, legacy “green screen” applications.
The tool that will transform green screens to Web-enabled applications is Host Access Transformation Services 5.0, according to Mark Heid, program director for WebSphere Enterprise Modernization at IBM. “It literally will take a customer 2 hours to change a user interface to be Web-enabled” using the tool, Heid said.
Despite the prominence of IBM Global Services in the announcement, Heid refuted the reputation IBM has among its competitors as being the “complexity” company.
“Our top priority, based on research, is that ease of use needs to be maximized,” he said. “Thats why we designed the Host Access tool to be implemented in 2 hours. We have a huge focus in our lab in Raleigh [N.C.] on ease of use.”
Danny Yellin, director of the IBM Research Software Technology Department, said, “I work closely with Global Services and also very closely with the IBM Software Group, and one of the big themes is the usability of our products.
“The growth of services isnt because IBM makes it so, but because of the complexity of the problems of our customers,” he added.
“Were incorporating these tools and techniques and taking feedback from initial engagements and rolling it back into the engagement model,” said Kathy Hansan, a director in IBM Global Services.
Other tools in the mix of offerings from the software group include the IBM Host Access Client Package Version 4.0, WebSphere Studio Asset Analyzer Version 3.1, WebSphere Studio Application Monitor Version 2.1 and the WebSphere Studio Workload Simulator.
IBM Global Services offers Legacy Transformation Services and Application Portfolio Management Services, including Web services offerings and on-demand services offerings.
Yellin said IBM Research is working on projects to deliver tools that look at legacy code and automatically find the data models in the code. The research group is also delving into the area of patterns and finding patterns embedded in code, he said.