Power Tools 1993 November

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CS-01 HP's Open Client/Server Advantage Client/Server is the new paradigm for corporate computing in the 1990's. It provides significantly more flexibility and responsiveness that traditional host based computing. HP has helped a number of our customers implement client/server solutions in a variety of ways. In this presentation I will talk about some of the different implementations of client/server solutions and about the benefits associated with each of them. I will then go on to describe the components of a client/server solution and talk about some of the general characteristics that one should look for when selecting each of these components as part of a total solution. Finally, I will sum up by describing HP's philosophy regarding client/server computing which : - is based on open technologies - builds on customers current IT investment - draws from our experience -- both internally and externally. CS-02 Major Forces are Creating Client/Server Computing Lets begin with a brief discussion of how and why client/server computing has become the compute model for the 90's. Client/server computing has come about because of some significant changes that have taken place in the business environment and because of significant technological developments. Businesses have become more competitive. Customers are looking for more value from vendors and vendors have been forced to reduce the time it takes for them to bring products to market. In order to be successful today, companies need to have the capability to respond quickly to their customers' needs and to marketplace changes. On the technology side we have seen significant developments. One is able to have on their desktop today the power of a mainframe. In addition to this, a number of advances like graphical user interfaces and windowing capabilities make it easier for users to take advantage of this technology in ways that can make them more productive and more responsive. Client/server computing uses these technological advances to address the increasingly competitive business environment. Client/server computing puts information at the hands of the decision makers so that they can respond more quickly and effectively to changing market demands. CS - 03 What is Client/Server Computing? So, what is client/server computing? Simply stated client/server is a computing architecture that splits processing between two systems: a client, usually (but not always) a PC or Unix workstation, that requests services from a server which fulfills those requests. Use slide to walk through typical client functions and typical server functions. CS - 04 Client/Server Configurations There are a number of ways of implementing a client/server solution. Multiuser Server: First, lets agree on what is not a client/server solution -- an application still running in host/terminal mode. Although may companies have greatly improved the design of terminal screens for ease of use, if the processing takes place on one, back-end system, it does not take advantage of the client/server model of computing. Application Server: A first step to a client/server environment is to leave the application and data on the server but move the processing logic for presentation or the user input portion off to the client. There are a number of tools available to write GUI's for legacy application making them easier to access and use by having a more intuitive front end. Database Server: Another way to move an application to the client/server model is to to move both the presentation and application logic to the client while leaving only the data on the server. In this case the application, running locally on the client, can achieve better response times than when it is vying for the same resources as many other applications on a back end server or mainframe. Again, there are a number of development tools, like PowerBuilder, Gupta and Uniface, that specifically address this method of implementing client/server applications. Distributed Application: Another implementation of client/server involves splitting the application logic itself so that a portion of the application is running on the client (along with the user interface or presentation logic) and a portion runs on the server (along with the database). This is what we see many of our customers moving toward as their IT environments evolve. The parts of the application it makes sense to have centralized can run on the back-end server while other parts can be customized to user needs and can take advantage of a dedicated system as they are run locally. (An example that can be used to describe the difference between the Database Server architecture and the Distributed Application architecture is the following: Imagine in a banking environment and end user running an application locally ( on a PC or Unix workstation) who needs to know the names of all customers who have account balances of greater than $10,000 -- perhaps for a marketing program. In the case of the Database Server, when the request is sent to the server since the server only contains the database the database recognizes that the client needs customer information and thus sends the entire customer file across the network. In the case of the Distributed Application the application piece on the server side understands the request for only certain names and performs the sorting process on the back end server thus sending only the required information across the network -- reducing the network traffic to only what is essential. NOTE: This is example is a good way to illustrate the difference but please realize that may of the relational databases now contain a feature called "stored procedures" that allow the database to perform some pre-determined functions that we typically would have considered to be application logic function -- so the line between a database server and distributed application is becoming a bit fuzzy.) Distributed Databases: Another manifestation of client/server that could take place in each of these examples is to distribute the database across more than one server. HP is doing this with an inventory management application. Before the change to a distributed database the inventory data for each of HP's seven computer manufacturing plants was located and controlled locally. Apparently it wasn't being managed too well because writeoffs one year were more than double the 1% of sales target that manufacturing had been aiming for. When re-engineering the inventory application we considered centralizing the inventory data into one large database but decided against it because of the inefficient network traffic that a central database would cause and because it did not fit well with the decentralized character of HP's operations. Instead HP implemented a distributed database so that the inventory associated with a specific manufacturing plant would reside there locally. It was set up in such a way that if one plant, say the Colorado manufacturing plant, had a shortage of a particular inventory item the inventory manager could use the new inventory visibility application to instantly log into the servers at all seven HP computer manufacturing sites, input the part number for which there was a shortage, and see a chart showing the amount of that part carried by each of the seven sites. With that information the inventory manager can contact another HP site directly and offer to buy surplus parts rather than purchasing parts on the open market. CS - 05 GUI's Make Applications Easier to Use Lets walk through a few examples of companies who have implemented these different client/server architectures. First, there is a major oil company that HP has worked with. This company has some applications running on their mainframe that track seismic and stratification data. A study was performed and they found out that only 20% of the users actually used the applications. The rest would either request that MIS run some reports to get them the information they needed, or they would make decisions based on their own gut feel without obtaining any information at all. The reason that they didn't use the applications was because it was too difficult -- or inconvenient -- to remember the access method to get into the mainframe, and from there it was not very easy to navigate through the applications. The oil company decided that it did not want to rewrite the applications, but wanted to make them easier to access and easier to use. HP helped this customer by encapsulating the applications on the mainframes and developing a graphical user interface that would run on users desktops that would make accessing and using the applications more intuitive for infrequent users. Now users can get the information needed to make quick decisions -- right from their desktops -- by pointing and clicking on icons. The result -- better decisions are being made and users are more productive. CS - 06 Client/Server Offers Data Access and Data Integrity The next example is of a customer service application. Many consultants are now saying that customer service is the "killer" application for client/server (as Lotus 1-2-3 and word processing applications were the "killer" application for PC's). HP has helped a number of our customers move their customer service environments to a client/server architecture. We have even re- engineered our own response center to a client/server architecture. The typical problem that companies face with traditional customer service applications is that customer information or product data may sit out on multiple systems. Customers end up "on hold" while customer service reps sequentially access the systems to retrieve the information requested by the customer. A good analogy is to think about the last time you called your bank to get information about your savings or checking account. If in the same call you tried to get some information about your mortgage or car loan chances are you would be on hold for a while or would be forwarded to another number altogether. With the competition in business today, a significant competitive advantage can be realized with a more responsive customer service application. In the U.S. West example customer service reps are running the customer service application on their desktops. When they receive a call they can send one request to what you see described on this slide as a "Data Integration Server" or "Data Extract Server". This middle tier server is able to access data that may reside on multiple legacy systems so that it sends back to the customer service rep, all the information about the customer in such a way that they can see it on one screen or can easily scroll through a series of screens. Companies, especially in the highly competitive packaged goods industry are re-engineering customer service applications and are achieving additional benefits by developing screens that prompt the customer service reps with questions to ask of the customer on the line so that they can gather real time data that is later passed along to marketing or R&D functions. CS - 07 Client/Server Utilizes MIPs Cost Effectively The two concepts that I'd like to get across with this next example are that a client does not have to be a desktop system and that one of the benefits of a client/server implementation is that it can help customers to move some applications from expensive mainframes. In this example BASF was in a situation where they needed to consider upgrading their mainframe. The found out that the a multi-million dollar price tag was attached to the upgrade and instead decided to consider other alternatives. BASF was running an executive information system (EIS system) from Pilot Executive that they learned had been ported to HP's Unix platform. An EIS system is a fairly easy application to move from a mainframe because the application is relatively small and is used by a well defined work group. BASF decided to move the application to what we at HP typically call a server, but since they left the data on the mainframe (since some other applications used it as well) the "server" now acts as a "client" to the mainframe on a biweekly basis when it requests that a shadow database be downloaded. So you see the client/server concept is a logical one and the client does not have to be a desktop system. CS - 08 Client/Server Allows Data and Document Sharing The pharmaceutical industry is facing a number of the business pressures I described in the start of this presentation: their markets are becoming more global, regulation is increasing, they are facing considerable price competition from generics and the number of players competing in drug discovery is increasing. The customer that HP worked with was feeling all of these pressures and did not feel that they were using their IT investments to the greatest advantage. HP helped them our in a number of ways: E-Mail Infrastructure: The number of e-mail servers in the company was steadily increasing in order to support the growing number of mail users. This created an administrative nightmare for the IS staff. To improve their mail situation HP implemented our OpenMail, standards based, client/server messaging solution on 2 server rather than 17 -- drastically reducing the administrative overhead. OpenMail on an HP 9000 server provides them with a open messaging backbone that can grow with the number of users. OpenMail provides the capability to transport objects as well as messages -- like spreadsheets, graphics, visual packages etc. It also allows mail-enabled applications to run on top of the mail engine. An example of one of these mail enabled applications is WorkRouter. WorkRouter was implemented at this customer side to move information throughout the enterprise. New Drug Application (NDA) submissions can be hundreds (or thousands) of pages and require data from sources throughout the company. WorkRouter allows these documents to be transferred -- directly through the mail system - to the various constituencies within the company who need to added to the documents, enhance them, review them and approve them. This capability has eased the burden of managing documents and has shorted the time necessary to create new ones. HP's Document Manger product completed the solution by providing for easy storage and retrieval of the documents -- including the spreadsheets, graphics and images within them. The end-users are now able to retrieve the documents with searches that use attributes such as title , author, creation data and pre-assigned keywords. When creating such huge documents as New Drug Applications, access of information from all over the company is essential. HP's Document manager makes accessing this information possible -- and easy for the users. (Note: the HP Document Manager product is based on Saros Corp.'s Mezzanine, which is recognized across the industry as the most fully featured network-based PC document management engine available today.) CS - 09 Enterprise-Wide OLTP Applications What I've heard from a number of customers and from systems integrators who have moved customers to client/server architectures is that "client/server is a great excuse to rewrite my applications the way I wish that they'd been written in the first place." What they mean by this is that they'd like to have integrated applications. With older mainframe applications many times users find themselves entering the same pieces of data into more than one application or manually entering the results from one application as input into another. In this example we see that when the user adds an order it affects the order management system by updating the order history, it reserves the inventory needed to manufacture the product, it schedules the shipment of the product and updates the company's financials. It is the modularity of the client/server architecture allows for ease of application integration. CS - 10 Benefits of Client/Server Computing The presenter can walk thorough the benefits as they are listed on the slide (they are self explanatory) or the benefits can be grouped into three benefits for end users and three benefits to MIS. End User Benefits 1. Increased user productivity --- Graphical user interfaces can make difficult applications or access routines much easier to use and can significantly reduce training time and increase user productivity. 2. More effective decision-making --- Like we saw in the customer service example, a client/server architecture can give users access to information that was difficult or impossible to get at previously. Better decisions are made when information is easily available to those who need it. 3. Faster Response Time -- With some of the application processing taking place locally - on a desktop - users can experience the same quick response times that they have become used to from their personal productivity applications. MIS Benefits 1. "Reconciling the Tension between Responsiveness and Control" -- End-users want responsiveness. They want data at their fingertips. MIS realizes that the company's data will not be worth anything at all if the integrity of the data is not retained. By having the data sit on a back-end server -- where it can be controlled by MIS, while giving users local processing capabilities and access to that data (with some business rules and authorization rules associated with it), the integrity of the data is preserved while users have access to the information they need to make quick and effective decisions. 2. Faster Application Development - A number of the characteristics of client/server applications make them easier to develop than monolithic host-based applications. There will be a learning curve to travel but 4GL's and CASE tools can make client/server application development much more intuitive. There are tools for the client platform that may specialize on GUI design and tools for the server platform that specialize in the data access routines. Application development can be streamlined because of the modular nature of client/server applications. A team of developers can be working on the client piece while another group is working on the server piece. The server piece, which takes the bulk of the effort (70% vs 30% for the client piece) is also reusable which not only speeds application development for the next application but also promotes better quality code (because the pieces being reused have already been proven and tested. HP has been realizing the benefits of client/server application development since 1989 when we outlined a client/server methodology and architecture for all future applications. Since then we have seen a 30%-50% acceleration in the time it takes to develop our applications. It is also easier to add functionality to client/server applications. In a monolithic mainframe environment, if a certain set of users want some new functionality in an application MIS has to weigh the benefit to those users against the time and cost of involved in retraining all other users who access that same application. In a client/server environment changes can be made to the client portion of the code given certain users additional capabilities without affecting the others. 3. Cost Savings: There is a lot of controversy about whether client/server computing will save any money or if it actually costs more than traditional computing. The Gartner Group has an interesting way of approaching this. In their seminars about client/server the Gartner representative will ask the audience how may are moving applications to client/server -- many hands go up. Then they will ask how many think they will save money by moving to client/server -- few or no hands go up. They then go on to describe client/server as being analogous to "quality" programs in the 70's and 80's. There was an up-front cost to most of the quality programs that companies implemented, but most companies also received significant benefits from them -- like increased yields of product or better customer satisfaction. Client/server is similar. There may be up-front costs, but the benefits in terms of responsiveness to customers and to the marketplace will make up for those costs. In addition, if customers are moving away from mainframes to a client/server environment they can apply the savings from moving from the mainframe to the initial costs of a client/server solution. CS - 11 Benefits of Client/Server go Beyond what Clients First Expected This slide is data collected by IDC and presented in ComputerWorld. It contrasts the initial expectations of customers as to the benefits they thought they would receive from moving to a client/server solution with the benefits they actually received. I chose to pull out of the study the benefits for which there was the greatest disparity between what customers expected and what the actually experienced. Starting at the far right - We have already talked about some of the reasons why client/server applications can be developed more quickly than centralized ones. From my conversations with HP's client/server application developers, I know that even they were surprised by how much more responsive they could be to the business units requesting new applications and changes to older ones. Customer service is the next area where the benefits realized were much greater than expected -- we spoke about this earlier with the U.S. West example. Finally, I believe that the competitive advantage that customers are realizing are the result of a combination of both developer productivity and the customer service applications they have implemented. Another note on competitive advantages -- use this as you will -- for as long as I have been involved in the client/server program I have been trying to track down examples or reference sites of where HP has helped customers move applications to a client/server model. There are over 100 wins listed in our database and as I try to convince sales reps to have these accounts used as customer testimonials I am hearing over and over that customers are reluctant to do this because they are realizing such significant competitive advantages from their client/server solution that they do not want any of their competitors to learn what they are doing with their HP solutions. CS - 12 Components of a Client/Server Solution The balance of this presentation will address each of the components of a client/server solution and will describe characteristics to look for when you are considering each of the components. CS - 13 Server Characteristics Scalability The most important characteristic of a server is that it be scalable. Because the graphical user interfaces make applications easier to use, and because end users can access information to help them make decisions and do their jobs better, they will user the system more. It will be hard to predict how much use your new client/server system will get so it is nice to know that there is room for growth in the product line that you are choosing. Customers are also finding that downward scalability is important too. Many times when an application is first moved to a client/server environment companies may be tentative about how much of the application to break apart or may choose at first to keep their data centralized. Over time as they are more comfortable with client/server and see the advantages of moving more of the application to a less costly client or decide to distribute their database to reduce network traffic, they may have the need for smaller servers. Adherence to Standards Another important characteristic of the server is that it adhere to standards. Client/server computing is usually associated with open systems. They are not one and the same, but it would be very short sighted to implement a new architecture and not have it adhere to industry standards which make it will be easier to incorporate new technologies and accommodate a multi-vendor environment. Mission Critical Capabilities Lastly, one should look for a server that has mission critical capabilities, like high availability features and systems management tools. Most customers will move a non-mission critical application to client/server as a pilot project and may not be concerned with mission critical capabilities. It is likely that the next application that they move will be mission critical and the implementation process will be faster and smoother if they are working with a server that they are already familiar with. CS - 14 The HP 9000 Series 800 Business Server Family HP's servers provide the characteristics just described and take them the next step. Scalability. HP's Series 800 Business Servers are the broadest line of binary compatible servers in the industry -- desktop to data center, one user to 4500 users. The same application code runs -- unchanged across the whole line and most servers can be upgraded on-site with a simple board swap. In addition HP is the price/performance leader giving customers significant value across the entire range of our servers. Adherence to Standards. HP is already recognized in the industry as the open systems company. A number of our employees have key positions on the major standards bodies and a number of our technologies haven been chosen as distributed computing standards. HP does recognize though that not all of our customers have made the complete leap to open standards and open systems so we also provide the bridges that are needed to enable customers to protect their prior investments in technology. For example, as shown in the three tiered customer service example, our Series 800 servers can act as clients to legacy mainframes as well as servers to a variety of desktop systems. Mission Critical Capabilities. HP's Series 800 Business Servers offer a number of high availability options for data and system availability and integrity. In addition to this choice of hardware features we also have the systems management tools necessary to manage mission critical environments, including: capacity planning tools, job scheduling capabilities, fast back- up and a range of security features. A combination of these qualities makes the Series 800 and ideal choice as a server in a client/server environment. CS - 15 Your Choice of Clients HP recognizes that many customers are interested in making the move to a client/server architecture in order to take advantage of the "sleeping desktop MIPS" that already exist within their company. To this end HP offers customers the ability to connect their legacy desktops, whether they be PC's, MacIntoshes, X- terminals or Unix workstations. Functionality Over time though we do suggest that customers standardize on a single type of client. Not necessarily one type of client for the entire organization, but one type of client, with the appropriate functionality, for each set of similar users. For example financial traders and even customer service reps gain significant benefits from the superior performance and advanced graphics of Unix workstations or X stations, while users entering data or simple ad hoc queries have their needs well suited by PC's or MAC's. Ease of Administration and Management For ease of management and administration be sure also to standardize on the version and type of operating system you choose in addition to the hardware architecture. NOTE: Choose one of the next three slides according to your customer situation. CS - 16 - 01 HP's Client Offerings -- S/700 Workstations, X- stations and Vectra PC's CS - 16 - 02 HP's Enterprise Desktop -- S/700 Workstations and X-stations CS - 16 - 03 The HP Vectra PC CS - 16 - 01 HP's Client Offerings Many of you are already familiar with PC's because you already have them in your companies, so I won't dwell on them a whole lot except to say that their familiarity to users is an advantage, as well as their offering a full suite of personal productivity applications and client development tools. Using the PC's you have will help you to retain some of your current IT investment and any additional investment that you make in in PC's (as you standardize your desktop clients) will have a lower entry cost than other alternatives. HP's PC's are industry compatible, reliable and affordable and their aggressive pricing does not come at the expense of quality, performance or features. What we are starting to more and more of is that as customers move applications to a client/server architecture, a number of them are considering our S/700 workstations and X stations as clients. Many of the implementations of customer service applications, for example, have chosen a combination of workstations and X-stations because they wanted very fast windowing capabilities. Other customers are looking for a level of performance and functionality that is not supported by PC's. They are looking for capabilities like advanced multi-tasking, sophisticated networking, advanced and distributed graphics. The homogeneous environment that results from a combination of HP's UNIX clients and servers provides additional and significant advantages in terms of administration and systems management and the flexibility to move parts of an application from server to client or vice versa without rewriting or recompiling. CS - 16 - 02 HP's Vectra PC HP's PC computing strategy is based on customers' needs both now and in the future. HP's objective is to continue to proactively solve the needs of corporate accounts by focusing on connected environments . In 1991 HP introduced a new dimension to the design of our PC's. We call it HP Trouble Free Personal Computing. Its a set of features that takes our PC's a step beyond your expectations. Features such as: Reliability: HP's PC's are rated number one in reliability -- according to industry surveys and offer the quality that HP is legendary for. Ease of Service: HP's new easy-access design keeps downtime to a minimum. A locking, snap-off cover with no screws and accessible sub-assemblies mean internal components can be upgraded or replaced in minutes, making servicing easier than ever before. Ease of Setup: Our new PC's auto-configure most standard accessories at power-up. In addition, other newly installed hardware is automatically detected by the setup program through a straightforward user interface, saving hours of setup time. Upgradability: When applications demand more PC power, HP Vectra 486 PC's can grow to higher processing speeds simply by plugging in any of Intel's 486 or OverDrive processors. 386 PC's can be upgraded via a simple board swap. Network-Ready: In 1991-92 HP introduced the idea of "network- ready " PC's by bundling the LAN card with its systems. This year HP has taken it a step further by introducing PC's with the LAN function integrated directly on the motherboard. Security: HP's Vectra PC's have built-in security features that are sophisticated and easy to use -- like a keyboard lock button, two levels of password protection and a backup system to prevent loss or corruption of your data and settings. Aggressive Pricing: HP's new line of PC's are priced very aggressively, but the attractive prices do not come at the expense of quality, performance or the features that you want. With the scalability and upgradability of our PC's you can always count on having the latest and greatest to support your increasingly demanding business environments. CS - 16 - 03 HP's Enterprise Desktop - S/700 Workstations and X/Stations In today's business climate, forward-looking companies are re- engineering their IT environments to dramatically cut costs and increase competitiveness. Across industries, desktop client systems are being networked into the corporate IT infrastructure, turning them into enterprise desktops that need access to shared services or to a multiplicity of legacy systems. Large companies are downsizing their information systems, rebuilding their aging IT infrastructures and opting for the distributed computing paradigm. The UNIX desktop client system is an integral building block within this re-engineering effort. Companies are using the distributed nature of the UNIX client/server architecture to achieve high computing capabilities and significantly lower costs. There are many professionals within these environments who need performance and functionality that cannot be serviced by PC's. Certain applications require the advanced multi-tasking, improved data access, sophisticated networking, distributed graphics, multimedia and superior performance of UNIX workstations. Many customers have also embraced the concept of open systems as the mechanism to ensure their options in platform application and integration flexibility. The Common Open System Environment (COSE) delivers this concept. The homogeneous client/server environment provided by a common operating system and architecture offers the IT organization the opportunity to develop, deploy and manage a truly distributed computing environment. When change occurs, these organizations can effectively move to accommodate these changes while protecting the investments already made. This type of "future proofing" allows users to control their pace of change to address business situations. Distributed desktop clients continue to offer enhanced performance and functional capabilities at affordable pricing, in a usable manner conducive to the needs of the enterprise ... resulting in a modern day version of the datacenter residing on the desktop. CS - 17 Transitions in Client/Server Computing -- Networking Networking is a critical component of a client/server solution. This slide shows the transitions we are currently seeing in the networking area. Most customers are starting out in a "Mainframe Centric" computing environment. The network is very hierarchical. Monolithic applications run on mainframes. Users are connected to them through terminals that connect into front- end processors which in turn connect into the mainframe. Today most companies are moving toward "Server-Centric" computing environments. The network is flattened out as companies are putting an enterprise-wide backbone in place. To this backbone these companies are connecting specialized servers. For example here we see an application server, a database server, a communication server (which is the same as the data integration server that was in the customer service example). The communication server is connecting the mainframe, in its new role as database server, into the enterprise wide backbone. PC's are also connected either directly or through bridges and routers. Basically companies are hooking all their compute capabilities to this backbone so that information can be free flowing throughout the organization letting them be more responsive and able to make decisions more quickly. What many of these companies are working towards is "Client- Centric" computing, where the users won't need to know where applications or data resides. The network will be able to send their requests or their units of work to the appropriate resource. With standards for distributed computing like DCE, OSF's standard for the distributed computing environment and DME, again from OSF -- the distributed management environment, this client-centric computing environment will become a reality. CS - 18 Characteristics of Distributed Databases Databases are important components of all computing environments but one must look for different characteristics when choosing a database for a distributed environment than for a centralized environment. This slide lists out a few of the characteristics that are important for preserving data integrity in a distributed environment. Rule integrity - Business rules can be predefined so that users cannot perform operations on the data that are not specified by the business rules. For example a rule can be set up so that users cannot delete a customer record when there is an outstanding balance. Locking - Databases can a have locking capability at a field or a record level so that only one individual can update the data at a time. If I am updating a piece of data it is locked to me in such a way that others can still see the data (in a read only mode) but they cannot update it while I have it locked. Stored procedures - Stored procedures provides application functionality within the database. Routines can be set up to provide simple, standard sorts or queries within the database. Two-phase commit - It is important that if a transaction is going to affect data that sits on more than one server, that all the servers involved are up and running and ready to accept that transaction. Let's take the HP inventory application as an example. AS mentioned earlier, the inventory data is distributed according to the geographic location of the manufacturing plants. If one location, that has a shortage of a particular part, can see that another plant has a surplus, the user will want to perform a transaction that increases the local inventory amount while decreasing the amount for the plant with the surplus. If the server at the plant with the surplus is not up and running the transaction would reflect the increase in one place without reflecting the decrease -- making it appear the the amount of inventory of that part had doubled. Two-phase commit is a capability that checks to see that all servers involved in the transaction are up and running and able to accept the update before the transaction takes place. (Some of the database vendors (specifically Oracle and Sybase) have taken this feature one step further. They recognize that companies don't want to postpone transactions just because one server may be down. Oracle has come up with a feature called Parallel Server and Sybase has its Replication Server that can accept transactions to servers that are down and updates them as to the transactions that took place when they were off-line.) Data access to and from heterogeneous databases - In a number of the early examples we saw how client/server architectures were built on or around existing systems. Many times they need to incorporate legacy data. The distributed, relational database vendors recognize the need for their databases to have the capability to access and work with a companies existing databases. Another reason why access to and from other databases is important is because many companies are trying to standardize on one database, but they may find an application that suits their needs to a "T" that uses another database. The ability of these databases to work with one another gives customers the flexibility to choose the applications that best fit their needs without being completely tied to one database. CS - 19 Client/Server Application Development Tools As mentioned earlier, one of the significant benefits of client/server computing is faster application development. The application development tools depicted on this slide can be contributors to achieving that benefit. As you can see there is a variety of tools you can choose from according to the degree of cooperation you are looking for between the clients and servers -- whether the clients will run only the user interface or the servers only the database vs. having the application truly split between the client and server. There are also choices that you have based on the level of integration you'd like in your toolset. To the left of the chart we show the standalone tools while those on the right are fully integrated. Some other points to note on the slide... The tools listed in red are available for desktop client platforms only, those in blue for server platforms only, and those in purple can generate code for clients and servers. The tools denoted with a circle are participants in HP's SoftBench framework as loosely integrated tools that can pass information to one another. Those with a star are not part of our SoftBench framework. CS - 20 OpenView: Integrated Systems and Network Management A distributed environment poses some very different challenges for systems and network management than a centralized IT environment controlled within a "glass house" data center. Some companies have chosen to retain a centralized method of systems and network management made possible by a number of new systems and network management tools that allow for remote management of distributed environments. Others are choosing to manage regional hubs that may house a number of servers that are dedicated to specific branches of office sites. Still others are moving IT personnel out to the business units where they can assist the users directly (writing client software) and can help to manage the equipment local to that site. Some features necessary for the management of distributed environments - whether you choose to do so in a centralized fashion or not -- are shown on each side of the slide. HP's OpenView integrated systems and network management framework has taken a lead in managing distributed environments. Some of you may know of the OpenView products like Network Nodal Manager that identifies all nodes on the system and flags ones having trouble, or Network License System, (Net LS) that monitors, manages and enforces software license across a network. OpenView is more that these products it is a framework used to integrate a number of systems and network management tools like the ones I just mentioned from HP and others from over 200 vendors that are writing applications to this framework. OpenView was chosen by OSF to be the core of the Distributed Management Environment (or DME), making it an industry standard. CS - 21 Hewlett-Packard can Offer Complete Client/Server Systems With our wide array of products and our strong relationships with partners like database, tools and application vendors, HP can provide you with a complete client/server offering. Perhaps more important is the foundation on which our client/server solutions are based.... CS - 22 HP's Client/Server Strategy HP's client/server offerings are based on open technologies so that customers can more easily integrate new technologies into their environments and so that any further migrations efforts will be minimized. Our client/server strategy is also based on the concept of legacy preservation. We can build client/server applications that work with legacy systems whether they be legacy mainframes (as you saw in the earlier examples) or legacy desktops. We don't require your to throw out what your already have, but rather we help your to build from there where appropriate. Another strength of HP's client/server offering is our experience in implementing client/server solutions. In this presentation you have seen a number of ways that we have helped a number of our customers. HP is also committed to the client/server architecture for our own operations. In 1989 a number of our engineers developed a methodology and an architecture that we have been using since them to move a number of our legacy applications to a client/server model. In addition to offering all the pieces for a client/server solution, we also offer integrated solutions in the area of enterprise-wide electronic mail and our information warehouse products which are delivered to you with the necessary pre-loaded and pre-tested. Finally, at HP we are concerned with offering the users and developers the types of benefits that you have heard throughout this presentation but we recognize that users won't experience those benefits unless the system is up and running consistently. To this end we have dedicated resources to develop the tools, like our OpenView products, that help administrators to optimize the performance and availability of our client/server solutions. Client/server applications have helped HP and our customers to achieve some significant competitive advantages. We'd like the opportunity to offer these advantages to your company as well.