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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iFusion.net is the solution

iFusion.net blends the IBM i and Windows platforms into an integrated resource providing more opportunities to extend existing applications, build new applications and improve the productivity of both business users and IT staff.

Here are a few examples of projects you can use iFusion.net for:

• Replace 5250 screens with rich-client or Web
• Use Microsoft SharePoint for Portals and Collaboration
• Publish Web services for customers and suppliers
• Connect ASP.NET Web site to in-house ERP for eCommerce
• Populate Microsoft Excel for more useful ad-hoc queries and reports
• Integrate to a data warehouse for business intelligence (DB2 to SQL Server)
• Link Microsoft CRM front office to existing ERP system

If any of the following scenarios resonate with you, then iFusion.net can provide a solution...:

• You need to improve collaboration if you have distributed offices, branches or divisions.
• You need a dealer extranet or some other aspect of supply chain communication, where you need to take a subset of an internal application and make it available via a secure Web portal.
• You need to publish Web services from legacy programs because you have customers that are demanding to track the status of their delivery or request a quote via the Web.
• You have a Microsoft-based Web site that is allowing you to do business or commerce online, but does it have real time, bi-directional integration with the core ERP system? Does it always contain your most up-to-date pricing and promotions? Does it publish real-time inventory levels? Or is there some form of data replication happening underneath so the data on your website is usually 24 hours old?
• Your online ordering system is not a straight-through process. Can you get that order into the order entry system and make the credit card payment and generate the advice note without human intervention? Perhaps those Web forms are being turned into emails or printouts, which somebody then has to type into the green-screen system? With iFusion.net, you can make that an integrated, straight-through process.
• Your burning issue could be around business intelligence and giving decision makers on-demand access to the information they really need – like being able set-up key performance indicators and allowing operational data to be monitored in real time through a rich, graphical dashboard.
• You see the opportunity to embrace CRM technology and take an out-of-the-box solution like Microsoft CRM and have that integrated with your back-end systems.

These examples are only some of the possible business applications that can be delivered with iFusion.net. Click on the links for more details.

• Composite Applications and Mashups

  Building composite applications that mashup content from multiple applications is one of the strengths of iFusion.net. The Visual Application Framework provides a focal point for information drawn from different sources and iFusion.net provides the interface tools to gather the data.

  • Build an application to track outsourced warehouse and distribution services. This application will provide managers with up to date information about the warehouse and deliveries. It will include information about orders and deliveries from your ERP system, warehouse information from the outsourced warehousing supplier, delivery schedules and status from the outsourced distribution provider and Google maps to show locations for customers and drivers.
  • Build a customer service application comprising a mashup of orders, customer details and payments with accounts receivable items. Customer details and orders come from the ERP system on an IBM i server with accounts receivable items and payments from the financial management system on a Windows server.
     
• Workflow and Collaboration

  Workflow and collaboration tools provide opportunities to automate business processes.

  • Improve collaboration and workflow automation by combining tasks that require both Windows and IBM i functionality (including program logic, data queues and access to the IFS) inside a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server enterprise portal. SharePoint Server will manage the collection of data (for example orders or subscription requests), route the data through an approval workflow and submit the approved data to a line-of-business system on an IBM i server to save in the database.
  • Use SharePoint Server as a portal to publish data from line-of-business systems into the portal. The data might be documents, catalogs or lists that provide useful and personalized information to customers.
  • Synchronise customer information between the ERP system on an IBM i server, Microsoft CRM and Microsoft Dynamics (financial modules). This solution will ensure that all of the applications using customer information will have the same up-to-date information.
     
• Office Productivity

  Most office workers are familiar with the Microsoft Office tools. They are familiar with way the applications look and they know how to operate them. Presenting information from line-of-business systems in Office tools takes advantage of these skills.

  • Extend the financial analysis and reporting by linking the back-end systems with Web services that provide data (via queries) to Microsoft Excel for extended analysis, ad-hoc queries and reporting.
  • Use Microsoft InfoPath and Microsoft Word to collect data from a form and couple the form with Web services to transfer the data to applications on IBM i servers.
  • Build C# applications used by Excel (or Word) to manipulate databases on IBM i servers. iFusion.net will manage the data access and enforce the business rules to prevent incorrect data in the database. The business user operates in Excel and does not need to know about the back end applications.
  • Create Outlook-style applications that use Web services to retrieve data from applications on either or both IBM i servers or Windows servers.
     
• Business Intelligence

  Business intelligence provides tools to help business users gain insight from data beyond the record of facts like an order or a payment. iFusion.net can help to gather data form multiple sources to feed into business intelligence solutions with Microsoft SQL Server.

  • Use SQL server data warehouse tools for business intelligence by loading data from the DB2 databases into a SQL server data warehouse and from there provide an executive dashboard.
  • Use iFusion.net to gather data for use by the business intelligence tools provided by Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
     
• eBusiness

  eBusiness is a term describing business activity conducted via the Internet or a similar form of electronic communication. The participants in this form of business activity will be suppliers, customers and partners. The variety of relationship offers potential for many solutions in this context.

  • Provide customized ordering for selected customers by building .NET Web applications that will publish the functionality of the line-of-business-systems. Workers at a customer site might order directly from an online catalog and a workflow will manage the approval and update for the ERP system on an IBM i server.
  • Publish Web services using C#.NET that will manage the exchange of data and electronic business documents between your company and your suppliers.
  • Fuse an eCommerce Web site built using ASP.NET to an IBM i ERP system, thereby publishing inventory and pricing information in real-time along with the straight through processing of orders.
  • Ready your business application for deployment into cloud computing.
  • ISVs can deploy their applications to operate on the Software-as-a-Service model.
     
• Productivity for Business People

  Business users need information and the faster the delivery of up to the minute content the better.

  • Provide sales staff on the road with real time stock information and ordering via mobile devices (PDA or Netbook).
  • Allow users to amend live operational data on the IBM i database (DB2) directly from a Windows or Web-based application, without having to launch a terminal session or toggle between multiple screens.
  • Snap your 5250 style applications into the Visual Framework to provide them with an interface that is familiar to business people.
     
• Productivity for Software Developers

  Improving the productivity of software developers will help IT departments to keep up with the changing business demands.

  • Give Visual Studio.NET developers the authority to perform create, read, update and delete actions on the DB2 databases – without risk of jeopardizing data integrity or security – by sharing the same rules as your RPG or COBOL applications.
  • Incorporate system management for IBM i servers into Windows system management tools by building C# snap in modules. Windows operators will be able to manage the IBM i servers, initiate jobs and view spooled reports from the Windows system management console.