| QUICK VIEW |
Problem
Needed to open mainframe applications to new technologies.
Solution
Used Verastream Host Integrator to transform IBM Mainframe-based legacy functionality into reusable services.
Results
- Improved management of satellite offices.
- Better communication with business partners.
- Solution rolled out in six weeks.
|
Avis France is an operating division of Avis Europe, the leading car rental company in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Avis France has a network of 560 points of sale; a presence in more than 270 cities, 65 airports, and 193 railway stations; an average available fleet of 35,600 vehicles; and a staff of 2,186.
Scoping the Project
When Avis began looking for a new terminal emulation solution, they requested a software evaluation download from Attachmate via the Internet. But at a subsequent meeting between Avis France and Attachmate, a new strategy emerged.
Mustapha Latti, engineering and development manager at Avis, explained it this way: “During the meeting, it became obvious that we needed to open certain applications to new development, especially with regard to our partners, and this could not be achieved using the solution we had been contemplating.”
Avis began looking instead at products that could actually integrate their legacy IBM OS/390 environment with newer technologies. It was imperative that testing for the new solution would not impact Avis France’s existing operations. “In France, our access paths to Avis worldwide resources are relatively limited,” said Latti. “So our real-time operating mainframe processes could not be disrupted during a proof of concept.”
That’s one reason other vendors could not compete. “Attachmate focused on helping us with the problem, rather than just focusing on the financial benefits of this opportunity,” Latti said. “We also appreciated Attachmate’s ability to easily understand our technical requirements and arrive at the ideal solution. The result was a business relationship based on total confidence.”
POC Completed in Record Time
Attachmate’s first proof of concept took less than a week. On a technical level, Verastream Host Integrator allowed more sophisticated integration of the business tools than other products. And Avis France saw that the advanced capabilities of Verastream could meet their other needs as well.
Then, to prepare the acceptance environment, Attachmate trained four Avis France development team members on Verastream Host Integrator. Testing was successful and proved that the Attachmate solution was fast.
In the meantime, a vote of confidence for Verastream Host Integrator came from an unexpected source: “Coincidentally and unbeknown to us, Avis Corp.’s English subsidiary was going down the same path at the same time, evaluating the very same product,” Latti reported.
ROI Boosted by Deployment Speed
Ultimately, the benefits of Verastream went beyond the successful testing phase; the solution’s speed of implementation proved to be another advantage.
The production system at Avis France, based on two runtime servers for failover, illustrated Verastream’s outstanding performance, especially in terms of real-time compliance in the face of massive loads. “This was most notable in the case of new services deployed for our partners, generating several thousand transactions per day,” Latti said.
The entire deployment was wrapped up in six weeks. Since then, Avis France has trained other internal developers on Verastream, so the company can repurpose additional legacy applications. “Thanks to Verastream, our developers are now able to create business tools without being slaves to a mainframe culture,” Latti said.
Because good news spreads fast, especially in a company whose motto is “We try harder,” the Verastream successes did not go unnoticed. In fact, Avis Europe has now officially endorsed the Avis France Verastream solution as a model for their other European sites. See related Verastream customer story at www.attachmate.com/CustomerStories/avis-europe.htm.
About Verastream Host Integrator
Verastream Host Integrator encapsulates mainframe data and logic via the screen interface to enable participation in today’s service-oriented architectures. It transforms legacy applications into SOA assets by exposing business processes as web services, XML, Java, or .NET components that can be mixed, matched, and reused to build composite applications.
Verastream provides rapid results, as it did for Avis France, because you can use existing development skills, familiar IT tools, and proven mainframe investments. Whether your environment is IBM zSeries (S/390), IBM iSeries (AS/400), UNIX, OpenVMS, or HP e3000, Verastream can give users and partners a new look and feel, without disturbing mainframe-application code or associated business processes.
The Verastream Host Integrator platform is continuing to expand the reach of Avis France. It will soon support centralized management of the web portals implemented for each of the Avis agencies in France. The portals enable direct initiation and management of agency operations, eliminating such prior constraints as installation of terminals or opening of transmission channels.
Avis France used Verastream to transform mainframe-based legacy functionality into reusable services, without disrupting daily business operations.