Success Stories and Feedback on lookdirect

“After seeing how quickly and easily lookdirect can modernize my applications and eliminate the requirement for 5250 OLTP, I recommend all System i customers with classic 5250 applications test the looksoftware claim of 'getting you up and running in minutes'.” More

Carl Novit, Vice President, FRS Inc.

"Our customer K C Dat, benefited from the savings available from lookdirect which allows their 5250 logistics application to utilize the batch CPW capabilities of the System i Power 5+. The resulting savings of 35% on new hardware made the decision to stay with the System i easy." More

Joshua Saw, Cavu, Singapore

“For some time now, looksoftware has been in the forefront of user and program interface design. Building on their knowledge of these areas, their resulting new product, lookdirect, should continue to show their strong position in this space.”

Alison Butterill, System i Application Development Offerings Manager, IBM, USA

Komtek Systems, USA

Komtek’s validation on their System i Model 520, with 600 total CPW and 30 interactive CPW concluded lookdirect delivered an 8-fold gain in transaction throughput and much faster response times. More

"Our ability to market to new prospects will be dramatically improved by lookdirect. As our County Government customers upgrade and add capabilities using looksoftware’s modernization suite, lookdirect will offer them significant savings on hardware costs. lookdirect releases the full power of the i5 to all users."

Larry Gustafson, President, Komtek Systems, USA

“Innovative’s trucking solutions are used by more than 500 transportation companies. looksoftware’s modernization suite, and its most recent announcement lookdirect, makes our System i5 solution more competitive against other platforms. Now that we can deploy our solutions on the System i5 Standard Edition, we can drive our customers’ IT dollar much further.”

Ernie Betancourt, CEO, Innovative Computing Corporation, USA

“System i customers are continually looking for creative ways to get the most from their IT investment. Saving money on enterprise enablement charges, that can then be ploughed back into acquiring new generation POWER5+ hardware, is a great thing for them. lookdirect provides them with a double-good alternative - modernizing their existing 5250 assets and eliminating or reducing 5250 workload. I think looksoftware has a winner with lookdirect.”

Doug Fulmer, Systems Architect, Clear Technologies, USA

"lookdirect may well be viewed by many IBM i5 customers (and indeed i5 vendors) as 'manna from heaven'. Not only does it provide rapid 'green screen' modernization to a GUI (or Browser) interface, it also enables companies to utilize the immense processor power (Batch CPW) that comes with all the new System i5 servers - even the base models. And if that isn't enough to convince you, the icing on the cake is that it allows companies to switch to an i5 Standard Edition server if desired, with absolutely no risk (due to the loss of interactive power), since you can run the converted GUI screens in 'green screen' by the touch of a single key. I call that, 'game, set and match' to looksoftware."

Michael Hayes, CSI (Ireland) Ltd, Ireland

“When talking to prospects about our warehousing applications, the System i5 hardware costs were becoming increasingly prohibitive. lookdirect will allow us to be much more competitive in the logistics market from a total solution point of view.”

Ritu Rooney, Head of Sales, Four Soft Ltd, UK

"lookdirect will be a great help to ISV's to win business against other platforms in competitive situations. It will enable customers to retain their investment in their i5, upgrade to new models, modernize their applications and save money in the meantime! This is a real win-win outcome for everyone concerned!"

Andreas Göring, Göring iSeries Solutions, Germany

“After reviewing lookdirect, I am sure it will help the future success of the i5 market. Having worked in the IBM midrange market for over 25 years, I understand how lookdirect can help i5 partners and customers. For partners, they can sell latest i5 technology more successfully (bundled with their software) because the total solution cost is much lower. For customers, lookdirect support for 5250 workloads on i5 Standard Edition will mean customers should no longer consider leaving the platform because of upgrade costs. I have seen the performance improvement lookdirect makes to my i5 Model 520 – it is great news for all i5 partners, customers and of course IBM.”

Klaas Keesman, Director, Inform'Aid, Netherlands

“We created DSTWare 2006 using a strategic and tactical blueprint for reinventing a warehouse distributor’s basic service value to increase bottom-line performance. Our i5 ERP solution was designed to be scalable to benefit both single and multi-site enterprises to effectively address all sophistication levels. lookdirect will make the i5 a much better value proposition for the smaller warehouse distributors previously considering only Wintel solutions.”

Floyd Beadle, VP of Business Solutions, DST Inc, USA

“The release of lookdirect is a pivotal moment in the evolution of the System i5. You can have your GUI at a green screen price, and move your applications into SOA at the same time.”

"Modernizing your applications invasively to remove 5250 and save the cost of enterprise enablement, will take 18 months or more of development time. Also, a System i5 upgrade would incur the cost of enterprise enablement while you modernize unless you decide to use lookdirect from looksoftware. At last we have out of the box 5250 enablement - and GUI to boot - without the cost of the enterprise option. It is no longer a dream!"

Trevor Perry, Technical Director, KMR Systems, USA

“After discovering newlook 6 years ago, I’ve found looksoftware’s products to be the best modernization solutions available for the i5. lookdirect gives the i5 market a chance to grow again, because it makes the i5 affordable for ALL market segments.”

Jorge Pinto, Director of Eugénio Branco, Portugal, has worked in the IBM midrange for 25 years and regularly runs System i5 training on IBM’s behalf.

“lookdirect delivers huge improvements in price/performance to the world’s most robust, scaleable server. The System i5 and lookdirect is a great combination.”

Miriam Luna, Director, Systexce (an ERP supplier) Equador.

“lookdirect levels the playing field, allowing solution vendors with i5 based 5250 applications like us, to compete and win against other platforms like Wintel.”

Bill Turman, Vertical Solutions Manager,
Nex-Tech, USA

"lookdirect is significantly different, it's really an application-modernization tool. It lets customers take existing applications and provide a new browser-based, modern front end to them. What I like about the looksoftware capability is the ability to not just deploy an application to a standard Web browser but also to deploy it to PDAs, cell phones, and that sort of thing. It let’s you leverage existing business logic in a new way."

Jim Herring, Director of IBM System i Products.