OVERVIEW MOVIE

Watch a 3 minute overview of iFusion.net

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IN-DEPTH DEMO

Fusing Microsoft Outlook with IBM i Systems

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IN-DEPTH DEMO

Fusing Microsoft SharePoint with IBM i Systems

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INDUSTRY GURU MIKE OTEY

White Paper that talks about developing real world IBM i applications using
Microsoft's .NET Framework.

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LANSA WHITE PAPER

Fusing the IBM i and Windows platforms with iFusion.net

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CUSTOMER SHOWCASE

Showcases LANSA customers who are Fusing the Windows and IBM i worlds

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PRESS RELEASE

Announcing the Fusion of Power and Productivity

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The benefit of iFusion.net

Only iFusion.net lets you view two different architectures – IBM i and Microsoft – as a single logical platform. iFusion.net does all the hard work "under the covers" to overcome the obvious inefficiencies caused by having different systems (applications and databases) based on different technologies that don’t work well together.

iFusion.net gives you choice and flexibility.

Each platform and technology has its own strengths and iFusion.net provides a well-architected way to fuse them together and ensure your company is enjoying the best of all worlds.

The IBM i is beyond reproach as a secure corporate database server and powers many back-end systems. It’s trustworthy and proven to be both cost-efficient and scalable at processing a very large number of transactions.

Microsoft Windows Servers in the middle tier are deployed by many organisations for new kinds of applications and services, whether they be collaboration or portal solutions like SharePoint, instant messaging, using SQL Server for more advanced business intelligence or for storing and managing new types of data.

Microsoft Windows Desktop – clearly the standard corporate desktop. Windows is the most familiar user interface for the current generation of computer users.

The solution that offers the best of all worlds allows the business to choose how to build and deploy software without the constraints of an IT solution that is deployed based on technology preferences or the available IT skills. Achieving the best from both platforms requires a set of tools offering choices for development and deployment with an underlying superstructure that provides consistency and governance. iFusion.net provides this set of tools.

Developers can choose the presentation layer that will provide the business user with the optimum productivity gain. Examples are Web interface, Windows rich-client, smart client, and Office tools.

To increase the flexibility for building applications, developers can choose the software development language with which they are most familiar (e.g. RPG, C#, LANSA). An application can be deployed on either the IBM i or Windows platform. Alternatively, the application can be structured into distributed components and deployed across both platforms.

Your application can be integrated with Collaboration tools, Office tools, and provide resources from line-of-business systems for a Portal solution. iFusion.net provides tools to expose resources on the IBM i platform to Microsoft products. You could build an order entry form with an approval workflow using Office SharePoint Server and link it to an ERP system running on an IBM i server. Microsoft CRM and SQL Server Business Intelligence tools are also examples for integrating Microsoft products with applications and databases on IBM i servers.

Select the best option for the database management tools to suit the use and nature of the data. For example, use DB2 for transaction processing and as the master database and deploy data for analysis to SQL Server for use in business intelligence applications.

Defining application meta-data (for example business rules) and storing it in a repository will provide consistency in the way that applications interact with data. All applications will refer to the repository for information that defines how they should treat the data. The repository will become an active participant in the day-to-day operation of the software, protecting the data by applying the validation and business rules.

The benefits are:

• Increased agility – change the rules without a programmer
• Reduced programming cost – apply programming skills to business algorithms, process automation and structural tasks
• Contained maintenance costs – more resources available to develop new and enhanced functionality

The repository provides the underlying superstructure that delivers consistency and governance for both the development activities and the deployed applications.

With iFusion.net, companies can mix-and-match software to support business operations in a way that caters for business needs, priorities and costs. Therefore, if a solution to a business need offers the best cost/benefit on the Windows platform, the company can deploy the software on Windows confident that it will integrate with the IBM i platform and be capable of evolving as business needs change.