The e-Business Suite from ICOM Informatics is a family of products designed to give users easy, secure access to data on corporate mainframes and servers via robust PC-to-host, Web-to-host and LAN-to-host connectivity. The e-Business Suite consists of Winsurf+ version 4.4, a PC-To-Host solution; Winsurf Mainframe Access version 2.4, a Web-To-Host solution and the new Winpass TNserver, a communication gateway providing LAN-To-Host connectivity. As a family of connectivity products, the e-Business Suite components give the end user and system administrator a common look and feel. That simplifies training, by making it easy to move among products in the suite without having to learn each product from scratch, and minimizes the costs of installation and maintenance.

Components of the e-Business Suite

 WMA provides Web-To-Host connectivity that integrates Internet, intranet and extranet technologies into a mainframe environment. Winsurf Mainframe Access provides Microsoft and Netscape browser-based emulation of a broad range of IBM, DEC/UNIX and Bull terminals. Residing on a Windows NT 4.0 server running Microsoft’s Internet Information Server, Winsurf Mainframe Access provides centralized management of Windows 95, 98 or NT clients accessing IBM, DEC, UNIX or Bull hosts.
Winsurf+ is an integrated software suite composed of high-performance, Windows-based terminal emulation software that allow users to access IBM mainframes, UNIX, DEC and Bull platforms from their PCs. Designed for use in organizations with a variety of host systems, Winsurf+ supports a wide range of network architectures and employs the familiar, user-friendly interface found in Microsoft® Office applications.
Winpass TNserver is a high-performance gateway capable of connecting thousands of Windows users to IBM mainframes. The newest entrant into the mainframe connectivity market, Winpass TNserver provides innovative tools to ease configuration and systems management, requires up to 96% less disk space than competitive products and offers low total cost of ownership.

The e-Business Suite is designed to meet the host access needs of a diverse group of users. Casual users or users outside the enterprise can access host data with their familiar Web browsers. Users without a browser can use a dedicated solution for feature-rich terminal emulation. MIS directors and system administrators will be able to extend access to the company’s central hosts (large and medium-sized IBM and Bull systems, DEC and UNIX systems, and/or Videotex servers), without affecting the existing applications on those sites.

ICOM Informatics’ e-Business Suite generates a rapid return on investment and helps user organizations continue realizing a return on their past investments in host technologies, as 70 percent of corporate data are still located on central host sites. The e-Business Suite provides numerous features that together bring users simplicity, efficiency and increased productivity. User organizations, in turn, become more competitive.

Meeting needs of individual users and administrators
The global e-Business Suite solution enables systems to adapt exactly to the needs of diverse users, making it no more difficult to use than the familiar, standard Web browsers virtually every user deploys every day. Workstations running traditional emulation under Windows (PC-To-Host) can easily coexist with those running browser-based emulation (Web-To-Host). The e-Business Suite’s terminal emulation functionality of the PC-To-Host and Web-To-Host components is identical. Moreover, the same user-friendly interface is built into both the PC-To-Host and Web-To-Host emulation programs, allowing users to easily move from one means of host access to another, without costly and time-consuming retraining.

Centralized administration and automatic deployment of e-Business Suite components, specifically Windows- and browser-based emulation software, simplify network management and software distribution, allowing the system administrator to use a desktop browser to configure and control Web-based host access. The administrator can monitor and control LAN-To-Host connectivity from any workstation on the LAN, and load PC-To-Host software on a central server, eliminating the need to visit every workstation every time there is a software upgrade.

The e-Business Suite also includes gateways to IBM, Bull and Videotex servers, ensuring the seamless integration of user workstations with centralized mainframes. For example, the new Winpass TNserver is an SNA gateway running on any 32-bit Windows platform and supports several thousand simultaneous TN3270 sessions accessing one or more IBM hosts.

Application reengineering and intranet development tools
e-Business means more than simply being able to access mainfame "green screens" through a browser. Rather, the development tools built into the Web-To-Host component of the e-Business Suite enable users to access host applications through new, more ergonomic HTML pages, Active X components, and Java applets. This comprehensive set of development tools enables the customer's technical staff to more effectively present to the user in a single screen the information he needs to do his job whether that information is accessible through one or more applications on one or several host systems.

Additional benefits from ICOM Informatics’ e-Business Suite
Technology independence : organizations can take advantage of the e-Business Suite technology that best meets their host data access needs. Users can select browser- or Windows-based terminal emulation; ActiveX, Plug-in or automatic HTML conversion for accessing host-based data via the browser; SDLC, 802.2 LLC, or X.25/QLLC protocols for IBM mainframe connectivity; Visual Basic script language or Visual InterDev technology for application reengineering.

  • Standards-based solutions: e-Business Suite relies on strict compatibility with the following standard technologies: Microsoft and Netscape browsers
  • IBM, Bull and IEEE gateway connectivity
  • Microsoft, Novell and the IETF workstation connectivity
  • IBM, DEC, and Bull for precise terminal emulation with the standard applications interfaces (HLLAPI, UVTI, OHIO)
  • The SAM (Security Accounts Manager) database of Microsoft and the LDAP standard used by the NDS (Netware Directory Services) of Novell.

Standards-based solutions protect the user’s investment in both hardware and software, enabling them to get more benefit from their products as competition drives developers to write ever more valuable applications.