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SYSTEM
Z HELPS B-RIGHT
KEEP ON TRUCKING
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The
Client
B-Right Trucking is a common and contract
carrier, freight forwarder, and freight brokerage headquartered
in Youngstown, Ohio. Growing from a regional steel hauler in the
1950's, Bright today operates throughout the Southwest, Midwest,
and Southern United States, with annual revenues approaching $50
million. Since 1980, Bright has developed custom software for virtually
all of the company's accounting and management functions. The software
was originally developed using Wang VS COBOL.
The
Need
As
the Wang market share declined, it became obvious that a platform
change was needed to maintain remote access and still provide Y2K
compatibility. Bright chose the IBM RS/6000 running AIX. According
to MIS Director, Gary Walborn, it was important to find a way to
keep their existing custom programs rather than find a packaged
replacement. "We needed to find a migration path that would preserve
our software investment and, at the same time, leverage the latest
advances in hardware and operating systems."
The
Challenge
Bright was faced with migrating their legacy COBOL programs to an
open systems platform while maintaining all of the custom features
found in their applications. Adding to the pressure of completing
a project of this magnitude was the fact that everything needed
to be completed by December 31, 1999.
The
Solution
Gary
began his search for a solution in 1998 and after several meetings
with Zortec, decided that System Z and TranZform were the best fit.
"We were impressed with the power and efficiency of System Z and
Tranzform. With the Z compiler and data dictionary, System Z combined
the power of a 4GL with backward compatibility for COBOL code. Plus,
Z provided the power of a modern database and database language
in a way that our legacy programmers could understand and use almost
immediately. We were sold." Bright took delivery of the RS/6000
and System Z in January 1999 but because of other pressing projects,
were unable to begin their conversion efforts until May. "Amazingly
with a staff of only three programmers, we converted over 500 programs
by Thanksgiving...a month before our deadline!"
"Application development is a snap with System Z. The data dictionary
makes all of the declarations needed in COBOL obsolete. The ability
to use callable functions and subroutines with arguments has allowed
us to put commonly used routines in a library so they can be reused
wherever needed. We can write subroutines to access almost all of
the functions of our RS/6000 directly from Z, including telecommunications,
the Internet and wireless communications. We currently have programs
for Dispatch, Billing, Accounts Receivable, Collections, Accounts
Payable, General Ledger, Office Payroll, Driver Payroll, EDI, Sales
Reporting, Brokerage, Compliance, and Fuel
& Mileage Tax Returns . . .all converted or implemented in System
Z."
The
Result
"I don't believe we would have met our
Y2K deadline without System Z and TranZform" says Gary. "Even our
senior management was very impressed with what we were able to do
with only three programmers in such a short period of time. "System
Z is no doubt the easiest, fastest, and most efficient platform
I have ever used. Z programs are easy to write, maintain, and deploy.
Major programs went from 5,000 lines of code to less than 500 lines
of code. In fact, over two thirds of new programs involve less than
three pages of Z code. System Z has made our IS department 100%
more productive!"
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