A wise man was once asked by a stranger for directions to a town many miles away. When asked the question "How do I get there from here?" he replied, "If I was you, I would not start from here at all!" This is often how IT managers feel when asked how they can update their existing systems and infrastructure to make business critical legacy applications more widely available. In the world of IBM's iSeries servers, still known to many as AS400 systems, Advanced BusinessLink has a few suggestions to make.

The AS400, and more latterly the IBM eServer iSeries, has been around for many years and has acquired admirers who are almost as fanatical about the platform and its capabilities as any Linux devotee. Many of the applications and services supported by these systems are now found at the heart of business operations and are frequently relied upon to be available around the clock. The longevity of many of these systems means that it would be extremely complex and, needless to say, expensive to update them to the standards in use in today's connected world.

Advanced BusinessLink started off life in 1987 as a consultancy company that specialised in remote communications and the remote management of strategic systems. In order to carry out these tasks the company developed a number of software tools that have evolved over time into a very effective suite of tools that are marketed under the Strategi Platform. These products are focussed at the iSeries/AS400 user base and help to make legacy applications hosted on these platforms available to the Web quickly and securely.

One tool, Strategi ACCESS™, uses a small Java applet to provide extremely fast web browser access to any applications running on an iSeries server. In this fashion, end users unfamiliar with traditional 'green screen' applications can work comfortably without significant retraining. Another tool, Strategi webSTYLE™, is an out of the box offering that not only makes legacy iSeries and AS400 applications available via an Internet browser but also provides the same look and feel as the corporate web standard without the need for any source code changes.

The company also supplies HSM as a development tool that provides developers with the capability to build web applications using existing skill sets and provides significant web extensions to existing legacy applications without adversely effecting performance. The tool manages to separate web presentation from the underlying application logic, allowing many different front-end devices to access the back-end services.

As the impact of the Internet and Web Services propagate throughout organisations, it is clear that Advanced BusinessLink's range of solutions should interest many iSeries/AS400 users. The ability to make legacy applications available cost effectively, efficiently and securely using the Web as a delivery mechanism will certainly attract attention as the company seeks to expand throughout the UK and Europe from its traditional North American and Australasian bases.

Advanced BusinessLink clearly has the potential to become a significant supplier of strategic technology and services, even though this is an area in which competition is bound to intensify.

by Tony Lock