THE RPI SOLUTION

What is the RPI Solution?

The RPI solution is multi-faceted, but in essence we provide the conversion of SNA-CICS transactions into CICS-TCP/IP transactions that are component based. The products we use to do this are a marriage of CPT, RPI RTE and consulting to provide a unique solution, and we do this without changing your system software or your current CICS application software. In the development of a pilot we have no need to use your staff, except for initial information

What is CPT?

CPT stands for CICS Programmers Toolkit and is in essence a very efficient TCP/IP stack that interfaces to CICS. CPT provides the ability to turn SNA-ICS transactions into TCP/IP-CICS transactions. The process of converting CICS transactions into TCP/IP calls, results in response times over complicated networks being reduced by up to 80%, which again allows better turnaround time for your remote customers.

CPT provides a mechanism to translate what would be a normal "call" from SNA to CICS to a CPT "call" to CICS. This "call" is in effect a TCP/IP "call". Your RPI representative will be happy to expand on any indepth technical aspect to your inquiry.

What is the benefit of using CPT?

By converting the call from SNA-CICS to a CPT (TCP/IP) call we are able to massively reduce the "overheads" associated and inherent in SNA with its over abundance of error checking and retransmission, thus reducing the response times significantly.

What is the RPI RTE?

The RPI RTE offer a complete development environment for remote execution of transaction on S/390 systems and complements CPT. The underlying communication protocol used is TCP/IP.

If you are an NT and/or a UNIX client, RPI RTE provides generic components to be used in applications to remotely execute CICS programs. These generic components are designated as RPI IRIS product (ActiveCICX, JavaCICX, JCorbaCICX, ASP, MTX, etc.) RPI also provides the RPI CAST tool to generate CICS transactions as specific components for various platforms and application servers. These components reduce the development time by as much as 70% on new or revamped applications.

What is the benefit of the CPT/RPI RTE solution?

CPT allows you to eliminate the need for sockets programming by covertinng the standard 128 verbs associated with the extensive sockets programming into 8 macros and RPI RTE allows you to turn your CICS Transactions into components, therefore providing a mechanism by which the developer can simply call a component to complete the CICS call rather than a multitude of verbs and transaction ids. This also has the effect of eliminating the need to have your developers call for your CICS programmers to build a different transaction every time they wish to incorporate that particular transaction into their applications. The effect is that you can insulate your development team from your systems team and speed up the process of development by 60%-80%

What does the remainder of the RPI solution provide?

In essence, expert consulting and the experience of working with over 40 corporations in the Asian region e.g. HSBC, Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank, AIA, etc. Our team will build the solution for you after consultation with your application and technical staff. We do not need to have them participate.

What are the benefits of the RPI solution?

Significant reduction in response times for your online transaction network, your Call Center, your ATMs, web applications, Internet old or new client-server applications
Removes or at worst greatly reduces expensive and slow CICS applications development time and therefore provide rapid "time to market" of new applications
Time to market for new products reduced by upto 80%
Smoother integration of legacy systems - these applications work but need to be brought into the new century. This removes the cost of building a new application from scratch
A ROI that generally reflects a 6 to 12 month payback
A reduction in the need to increase network infrastructure
A reduction in the need to increase your CPU cycles prematurely
A significant cost saving in SNA maintenance to IBM
A significant cost saving in SNA hardware and software

Contact your nearest RPI representative for a trial/pilot. RPI will provide at absolutely NO cost or obligation to you, a test trial/pilot. We do not alter your systems or applications software in the process and we do not require the involvement of your staff in the process. We are confident that you will be as excited about the results as we have been in all of our installations.