enableHTML & enable/ME

Close on the heels of the groundbreaking, Java-based, enableHTML unveiled in March, enable has now announced two interrelated wireless-to-host offerings - viz. enable/ME and enable - that together change the whole complexion of the wireless-to-host enablement process.

What sets enable apart is that it is concentrating on the pivotal issue of wireless-to-host: the ability to quickly rationalize and simplify host application dialogs (as they appear across multiple 3270/5250 screens) so that a mobile user can "get-to-the-point", so to speak, without having to scroll up-and-down and side-to-side with large screen displays, and waiting to receive lots of host screens. enable, an acknowledged leader in host application enhancement and user interface reengineering, is, of course, uniquely positioned and equipped to address this crucial aspect of wireless-to-host.

It has the experience, expertise and most of all the requisite tool - i.e. enable's hallmark, 'drag-and-drop' Customization Studio for user interface reengineering - to help customers quickly wireless enable host applications - without requiring any changes to the host applications.

But the icing on the cake is the 'expert on-site' feature of the enable offering. With the unique enable service, enable will send one or more highly competent GUI specialist to the customer site to work with the customer to expeditiously wireless enable a pre-agreed number of host applications. This onsite expertise should slash lead times and as such actually reduce the total cost of implementation.

Accessing the N.C.Wake County Dept. of Revenue Mainframe from a Palm using enableHTML

The Best Deal In Town

enable which is an optional, value-added adjunct to enable/ME has a start price of $50,000 - which includes the onsite wireless enablement of two mainframe applications by enable experts along with all of the necessary software; i.e. enableHTML, enable/ME and the seminal Customization Studio.

This, whichever way it is sliced or diced, is an exceptional deal - and is probably the closest thing to a 'free lunch' in this sector of the market. enable will indubitably redefine the anticipated lead-times for successfully wireless enabling host applications. With enable, wireless enablement projects expected to take months will most likely be completed in weeks. Those that were anticipated to take weeks are likely to be on the air in days.

When you factor in the significantly minimized in-house development costs and the reduction in 'lost opportunity costs' due to the faster activation of the wireless service, the true cost of using enable, rather than trying to do it in-house, is likely to be extremely compelling.

enable/ME deployed on a mainframe, along with enableHTML, and serving a mixture of desktop and mobile users

enable/ME, as shown in the figure above, is really a Java-based servlet extension to enableHTML. This ensures that wireless-to-host à la enable is but another facet of Web-to-host host publishing. The same technologies, tools, customization definitions, and above all user interface reengineering expertise is shared between Web-to-host and wireless-to-host. Thus there is consistency, commonality and in the end synergy.

Cutting Through the Static
enable/ME the enable combo can be summarized as follows:

• Highly scalable: an OS/390 mainframe implementation, in particular, will be capable of supporting thousands of concurrent wireless sessions.
• Comprehensive coverage: enable/ME's support of mobile clients is open-ended and includes Palm, Pocket PC and Windows CE.
• Expeditious roll out: enable/ME, with its bundled in Customization Studio capability, will by itself speed up any wireless enablement project. enable will turbo-charge the process and most likely slash lead-times from months to days.
• Application agnostic: enable/ME is guaranteed to work with all mainframe and AS/400 applications, without exception.
• No changes to host applications: true to enable's fundamental user interface reengineering precepts, enable/ME is guaranteed not to require any kind of programming or changes to host applications.
• Platform independent: since enable/ME and enableHTML are 100% Java, the enable solution can be implemented on many different and diverse platforms - most notably mainframes and AS/400s.

Bottom Line
With wireless-to-host, the key hurdle that had to be overcome, for a change, was not networking. The network plumbing aspect, in this case, was being taken care, more or less transparently, by Web server extensions. So the challenge was that of customizing host dialogs so that they would work, efficaciously, with the small displays found on wireless devices. enable, to its credit, has provided a truly elegant and attractively priced solution to this problem with enable. As of now, enable and enable/ME will be the gold-standard against which other wireless enablement efforts will be measured.