Web-Enabled Legacy Interfaces

Imagine being able to combine the power of legacy applications with the flexibility of a web browser!  In the early days of the Internet, although both genres of technology used TCP/IP for telecommunications, they did not interact.  Today, organizations can provide Internet or Intranet-based, web-enabled access to legacy systems applications wherever they are hosted.  This combination of powerful technologies enables organizations to leverage the investments in legacy systems, while providing users the experience that they demand.

Client Situation

Many organizations have mission-critical business systems running in mainframe environments. Typically, such systems represent many millions of dollars of investment over a long period of time. The systems are characterized by:

• traditional non-graphical user interfaces
• applications that effectively execute business processes and enforce business rules
• databases that are robust, and
• performance that is reliable and fast, with large capacity.

However, users of such systems may desire additional functionality through a graphical user interface. Providing Intranet or Internet access to legacy systems enables functional experts more flexibility to use mission-critical systems. Additionally, adding new functionality is often easier in a web-enabled applications development environment. Combined with the increasing shortage of technical resources able to work in legacy environments, a non-traditional solution is needed.

IAI's Solution

IAI can extend your legacy system to the Internet, by adding a web-enabled graphical user interface to legacy mainframe systems. To achieve this powerful combination, IAI uses the Micro Focus suite of products, as well as our own ICONS tools, to provide an application layer between browsers running on user workstations and legacy system applications. Adding this tier into the architecture enables access to legacy application functionality, but does not adversely affect performance of the legacy systems.

Value of this Approach

Because the legacy systems continue to be used in their current state, web-enabling a legacy interface can be implemented quickly and at a fraction of the cost of re-engineering.

IAI’s Legacy Modernization Practice

To learn more about IAI’s capabilities web-enabling legacy systems, see:

• Solution Architecture for legacy platforms, databases and languages
• Methodology and Tools that we use to automate and manage projects
• Client Summaries for government and commercial projects
• Micro Focus Partnership
• Modernization Alliances
• Contact us!