4.3 StoreCompany and its business application

StoreCompany is used in this book to demonstrate issues of security, performance, and system management. StoreCompany is the larger of the two example companies. StoreCompany is an established retail company that is looking at using excess capacity to test a new business opportunity.

StoreCompany illustrates two different possibilities for using Linux on the mainframe:

  • Back-end integration (Figure 4-4)

    Figure 4-4. StoreCompany's back-end integration

    graphics/04fig04.gif

  • Vertical growth

StoreCompany, a leading department store chain with 85 stores, has been in business for decades, mostly in large cities in the eastern United States. Their IT organization has been very progressive over the years, moving from back office and support functions to actively managing sales and inventory. They have also become involved in business-to-business type transactions with their key suppliers.

Our examples demonstrate the growth of the mainframe side of StoreCompany's IT division as Linux enters the picture in a new business endeavour. After integrating and growing Linux applications on the mainframe, the logical setup of StoreCompany will be as in Figure 4-4 (simplified).

See Appendix B, "StoreCompany" for a more complete story of StoreCompany's development.

StoreCompany is looking to test a new business opportunity. The suggestion is to use spare IFL capacity on the mainframe that hosts a Web-based ordering service and add a catalog of gifts (called "One-of-a-Kind" or OaK). The catalog is based on the inventory database and customer database already in place on the mainframe. Most of the changes related to the implementation of this will turn out to be in the software. If the experiment turns out well, more IFL capacity will be added to a new business intelligence application.

This application will then grow vertically, and the new business opportunity will take off. The hardware for the new business opportunity is mostly in place. See B.6, "Project 3: OaK project" for more details.



Linux on the Mainframe
Linux on the Mainframe
ISBN: 0131014153
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 199

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