Legacy Renewal

	Gerald D. Cohen President Information Builders

What does legacy renewal mean to an IT professional? The word "legacy" refers to things handed down to us, like an inheritance. "Renewal" means to refresh or make new. Within the realm of information technology, renewing existing applications means enriching or enhancing the technology assets that are continually handed down to us. It's an ongoing challenge, and the way technology is moving today, these projects typically can't happen fast enough.
The good news is, we have a great new product to help you deal with that backlog. It's WebFOCUS, the grandchild of FOCUS. We've kept all of the simple and powerful report preparation features that has made FOCUS the standard in enterprise reporting, and added the best Web stylesheet technology for super-looking reports direct from live data in your files – wherever they are, or whatever database you might be using.

We've had 25 years of experience solving the day-to-day reporting problems you face, and we're parlaying that immense knowledge base to unique requirements of the Web. This edition of Information Builders Magazine is devoted to describing the success of a few of our WebFOCUS users. At Florida International University, the problem was how to satisfy the demand for up-to-date information from students, admission officers, and faculty. The data they needed was on the mainframe, but users lacked an easy, consistent way to generate reports. What did it take to get them started down the Web path? One demo of WebFOCUS.

Ford Motor Co. had an entirely different set of reporting problems. All dealers get a special car warranty report – kind of like a report card – which takes 146 modules of logic to produce. They wanted to improve data navigation and the appearance of these reports, but IT pros had no intention of rewriting all that legacy code. WebFOCUS helped them incorporate the existing application logic into a new Web-based warranty system. It boasts snazzy color graphs and automatic data drill-down, helping ensure its acceptance among auto dealers. The whole system was developed and rolled out in just nine months.

Perhaps you have your own success stories involving legacy systems. If so, let us know... we would love to hear from you. In the meantime, give us a call to learn more about how we can help you with your backlog of Internet applications.