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WEBIFYING THE mainframe may seem like a contradiction in terms - old technology in a new age. But to a growing number of companies, legacy hosts and Web front ends are turning out to be a hot combo.
Take The Mutual Group. Prior to installing Wall Data Inc.'s Cyberprise Web Host and Server, "We actually tried to keep down the number of customers who accessed our mainframe because of the headaches involved in giving all of them an emulator, installing it, configuring it and supporting it," says Tim Wadman, technology solutions consultant at the Canadian insurance company.
Cyberprise is one of a growing bevy of products that enables users to make use of Web browsers - "which everybody already has anyway," Wadman points out - to do their own mainframe querying with software they download from a Web server.
Such products are in demand. A recent report by International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass., found that the worldwide market for Web-to-host browser license shipments is exploding: from 67,000 desktop licenses in 1996 to an estimated 17 million in 2002.
That shouldn't be surprising. More than 70% of corporate data in the world is still on mainframe systems, according to Meta Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn. And many companies have concluded that those legacy systems are at least as capable as Unix or Windows NT Server when it comes to dishing out data over the Internet or intranet. "We already know that our S/390 can share information efficiently, securely and cost-effectively to a wider universe," such as the Web, says Michael Conchatre, manager of information systems at Ducks Unlimited Canada in Oak Hammock Marsh, Manitoba.
Another reason for slapping Web front ends onto mainframes is the huge cost savings to be gained in cost-of-ownership for client systems. According to a recent Gartner Group Inc. study, businesses realize 15% savings in software costs such as distribution and maintenance and 15% in technical support from replacing IBM 3270 terminal emulation software with a Web browser.
That's not to say mainframes make perfect Web servers. For one thing, you can't boost their CPU power incrementally to cope with escalating Web traffic as you can with LAN servers. And mainframe vendors have been slower than their NT and Unix counterparts...