• Money
• Time
• Product Stability
• Ease of use
• Experience

• Co*Star
• COBOL
• LightSpeed
• LAN Connect
• Windows NT &2000 Server
• WISP
• Microsoft Visual Basic
• Microsoft Office

• Brought Windows to the WANG/VS environment
• Allowed multiple hosts or servers connectivity
• Provided e-business component to existing WANG/VS applications
• Provided worldwide solution through Getronics organization
• Provide new software development options using emerging technology tools

Global Partner - GETRONICS
CASE STUDY

Overview
Getronics is one of the world's leading providers of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions and services to professional users of Information & Communications Technology (ICT). With more than 29,000 employees and a direct presence in over 30 countries, Getronics works with many of the world's largest companies to help them maximize the value of their technology investment. One company that was acquired by Getronics was WANG, which had a significant impact on business computing worldwide. Clearview has partnered for years with Getronics to support WANG customer base, specifically the VS line of computer users.

Industry watchers predicted the imminent demise of the mainframe and minicomputer worlds. In reality, traditional host based computing has survived and continue to run mission critical applications. Often organizations discovered that the legacy applications were so uniquely tailored to their business requirements that they could not be easily replaced by canned client server applications. Legacy solutions continue to be used where they offer real value and stability to the organization. Today, there is substantial emphasis on e-commerce and migration of business to the Internet. Most enterprises are finding that they must focus their technical skills and financial resources towards deploying and integrating e-commerce and e-technology solutions in order to remain competitive.

Getronics and Clearview responded to VS users need for windows and web-enabling applications by leveraging Co*Star and its associated Developer Services. With this integrated solution Getronics' clients were spared the time, expense and resources needed to migrate existing legacy applications to new platforms. Their efforts were dedicated to implementing e-business interfaces and focused on critical aspects of business success. The need to integrate the old with the new in examples like VS clients has driven the evolution of the Co*star technology to support connectivity across multiple platforms and networks. Many clients conveyed to Clearview and Getronics the truth in the old adage "If it ain't broke then don't fix it."

CoStar for the VS provides multiple levels of presentation enhancement - without changing a single line of code on your VS. With Costar, and without any custom development, an application could have a simple Windows look and feel, with fill in fields and the visual aspects that are familiar to users of Windows applications. With a small amount of effort, graphics, custom controls, drop down lists and dialog boxes and other more advanced windows features could be easily implemented. Add custom Visual Basic applications at the desktop and CoStar provides an additional layer with many features not possible in the legacy environment. For example, CoStar can communicate with multiple hosts or servers at the same time. Using CoStar's multi-session capabilities you can literally log onto a VS, an AS/400, an NT Server or Unix server, or all of them, at the same time.

Finally, CoStar for the Web is an extension of CoStar for the VS. This Server based product packages CoStar screens and allows them to be displayed on any standard browser. CoStar for the Web allowed enterprise customers run their existing VS based applications, with CoStar enhancements, on the Web using an industry-standard browser for the user interface.