RPG Open Access provides Stafford the platform for the future.

Background

Established in 1893, the Stafford Group has built a reputation of excellence in the manufacture of leading edge menswear. As a long-standing IBM i user, The Stafford Group relies on several RPG based applications to manage their manufacturing, warehouse, distribution, financial and operations which are the Apparel Computer System (ACS), Scan Warehouse Management System (ScanWMS), Retail Management System (RMS), JD Edwards (JDE) and IMAS Costing. These core applications have been customised and integrated using RPG to support the company’s continuing growth. Stafford have long embraced emerging technologies in the development of manufacturing processes, and has recently successfully implemented mobile technology to improve customer service and sales revenues of its premium Anthony Squires brands.

Challenge

The success of a recent mobile technology project highlighted the need for a standard technology architecture that supported new and emerging technologies which could leverage the company’s 15 years of investment in processes and systems. Most of the company’s key applications were based on IBM’s RPG language. However, RPG did not provide native support for the latest technologies like mobile devices or easy integration with other open platforms and technologies.

When IBM announced the RPG for Open Access architecture, Stafford’s IT Manager, Rod Riley, initiated a technology review to determine if they would be able to use native RPG to integrate their applications with emerging technologies like iPhones. Rod said “We had just completed a mobile project that delivered the projected customer service benefits and an approximate 7% sales increase for our premium Anthony Squires product. However technically it was constrained by the 5250 green screen architecture that forms the basis of our core applications. It’s a dead-end architecture. We’ve invested significantly in customising the RPG based business rules and integrating these applications to deliver effective systems support for our business, so we’d rather not dump that investment and start again when a new technology comes along. We needed to review our business priorities and assess whether our IBM i technology platform could support our plans.”

A useful review process Riley participated in involved reviewing each of Stafford’s core applications and assessing business value and technological health. Known as Application Portfolio Analysis (APA), the process starts with the realisation that your existing IT applications and platform are an asset.  Depending on the technological health of each application and the business value being derived from the applications, APA recommends a number of alternative paths forward ranging from simple modernization to application/platform replacement.

The application rating of business value versus technical health (see Figure 1) provides an indication of the appropriate path forward for each application.

Figure 1. Categorise applications by Business Value and Technology health and value

If the business value is high, then ongoing investment to further improve business value and technological health is recommended. If the application is delivering low business value, and technical health is an issue, further investment in the existing application is not recommended.  The common sense APA review provides the business with a summary of the health of the business application infrastructure and suggests the appropriate investment alternatives (see Figure 2). Each application’s ratings determine whether the application should be retired or whether continued investment is justified. 

Figure 2. APA recommends technology strategy based on business and technology value.

This assessment provided the business with the confidence to invest further in the application portfolio to improve the technical health of the RPG based application portfolio by modernizing the key applications to support IBM’s RPG Open Access.  

Figure 3 Criteria used to determine business value and technical health.

Figure 4. Stafford’s applications rated high business value and good technical health, so an Invest, Integrate, Modernise strategy was appropriate.

Solution

Rod Riley led the evaluation of the RPG Open Access to determine if the enhancements to the originally proprietary platform and language would allow Stafford’s existing applications to integrate natively with technologies like mobile devices, popular browsers, web services and cloud technologies.
Rod said "Rather than attempt to directly support every new technology that customers might want to leverage, IBM chose to define an open architecture natively within the RPG programming language that could support virtually any new device , platform or application. The architecture requires little manual effort to upgrade our existing RPG code to completely remove the green screen device constrains of our existing applications which separates the presentation layer from the business logic.  For example, the recent mobile we implemented project (before RPG Open Access was available) still had the legacy green screen 5250 code within it. Open Access provides an automated process to remove the 5250 legacy code constraints and enables the one  set of RPG business rules to support the new iPhones we’ve deployed as well as continuing to support the older devices where required. This Open Access architecture allows the 90% of IBM i sites that use RPG, to reuse their RPG investments to support today and tomorrow's new devices and technologies including web services and the Cloud, rather than starting again. Over the past 20 years IBM has done a great job allowing its midrange customers to keep running their software applications investment's even though the hardware technologies have completely changed.  RPG Open Access makes it easy to plug these same applications into today’s popular technologies and devices."

Benefits

Stafford’s decision to adopt the RPG Open Access architecture is confirmation that the company will continue to base its back-end technology infrastructure on the IBM i. While the business has been comfortable with the reliability and TCO (total cost of ownership) of the IBM’s Power 7 based technology platform, Stafford's applications are based on the RPG language which until the recent Open Access investments had been viewed as an ageing development language. The Open Access enhancements allow Stafford’s existing RPG skills and application code base to drive newer technologies such as the iPhones and browser based devices that will be accessing the Online web orders application.      

The key benefits RPG Open Access provides includes: 

1. Investment protection of IBM’s strategic path forward for RPG

2. Reduced costs by reusing application investments rather than replacing applications to support new technologies

3. Reduced risk by reusing proven existing applications investments

4. Support new technologies using existing RPG skills and applications  

5. Productivity and performance improvements from leveraging new technologies

6. Reuse strategy rather than application replacement reduces business disruption

By adopting a pragmatic business oriented review of their Application Portfolio, Staffords can use APA as an ongoing management process to proactively manage their application portfolio. APA can help ensure that IT investments are aligned with business strategy. 

Contact looksoftware for more information about assessing your application portfolio.