Mark Orlan is President of Orlan, Karigan & Associates Ltd. an IBM Premier Partner headquartered in Toronto.  His company focuses on e-business for the AS/400.  Mark has an MBA from York University and has been working in the IBM mid-range field for over 18 years. Mark currently enjoys working with Senior Management, helping them to define an IT Vision for their companies - one that includes determining how to best use Internet technologies to help their firms compete, improve customer service, and web-enable their supply and demand chains.

Mark Orlan

 

How many times have you wanted to explore a new technology, but you were just unsure where to start?  E-business is the buzzword of the late 1990s and the new millennium.  Wouldn’t it be great to be able to build a small e-business application on your AS/400 and turn around to the Senior business people in your company and say:  “Look what I built!   I figured it out on my own, using the technology that you’ve already paid for, on our AS/400”.   What they thought was just a “green-screen” host box has now just moved up a few notches in their minds – Wow! An e-business machine!   And you’ve created a new awareness and perhaps have even been able to influence some future technology directions within your organization.

With a bit of training, it’s not difficult to build a small web site on your AS/400.  I’ll give you a quick introduction in this article.  But keep in mind, it’s only a start.  You’ll require many weeks, and perhaps even months of ongoing training if you want to build robust e-business sites such as online auctions, store-fronts, or self-service web sites that integrate with your existing database.

The message that I want to leave with you is that if you’re on a RISC processor, even under V4R1, e-business is just around the corner and you can start today.

Before we get into a discussion of how to light the e-business fire at your company, let’s agree on a definition for this widely-used term.

E-business (e'biz'nis) n.

1. Improving business processes using Internet technologies.
2. Leveraging your intranet, extranet, or the Internet to bring together customers, vendors, suppliers, and employees in ways never before possible.
3. Web-enabling your business to sell products, improve customer service, and get  maximum results from limited resources.

In1998, Canadians spent close to $4-billion in business-to-business e-commerce.  Over the next three years that number will rise to $67.7-billion.  Consumers will spend just $12.8-billion on internet purchases in the same timeframe.

In the United States, the difference between consumer and business spending on-line is even more dramatic.  Electronic trade between businesses is predicted to hit $1.3-trillion by 2003, while consumer e-business spending will reach $108-billion.

What does this mean for you and I in the information technology field?  Over the next few years, business-to-business e-commerce will grow like a curve on a hockey stick.  This field is going to explode as more and more companies link up with suppliers and customer over the Internet.  It’s a snowball effect.  Electronic trade will grow exponentially as more companies go on-line.

Within a few years, the Internet will turn business upside down. Be prepared – or die!

Andy Grove, the chairman of Intel, says that in five years’ time, all companies will be Internet companies, or they won’t be companies at all.  Internet companies are lowering their costs dramatically across their supply chains, taking their customer service to new heights, entering new markets, creating additional revenue streams, and redefining their business relationships.  Now one might argue that as the leading chip manufacturer, Mr. Grove is just trying to scare customers into buying his products.   I think that what he’s really saying is that if in five years time a company is not using the Internet to achieve some or all of the improvements just mentioned, then it will be destroyed by competitors who are.

The Internet is changing everything.  But what’s more, this paradigm shift is doing so at a far greater speed than any of the other great disruptive technologies of the 20th century, such as electricity, the telephone, and the car.

Recent surveys of senior managers around the world found that more than 90% of them believe the Internet will have a major impact on the global marketplace by 2001.  The trouble is, most of them don’t know how to take their own companies to the Internet.  They need to be shown where to start.

Enter the AS/400 – an e-business powerhouse loaded with features and capabilities such as HTTP Server, Lotus Domino, Websphere Application Server, Java, Net.Commerce, Net.Data, and the integrated Firewall.

Now the AS/400 has been web-friendly since it was running on CISC architecture under V3R1.  But to truly take advantage of some of the newer features that come bundled with the newer RISC machines, V4R3 is probably the place you’d want to start.  So where do you go from here?

Well, let’s think about it.  If you could build a small web application on your own time, without asking management for additional funding, and transform the “green-screen” box you have in your computer room into an Internet/Intranet box, what do you think the higher-ups might think?  Probably that you were forward thinking – that you were behaving more like a business person than a “techno geek”.  And that maybe they were underestimating what they could do with their own in-house resources.

Now imagine that!

I recommend you start simple, with some safe and easy projects. These projects will lay the groundwork for developing some of the skills you’ll need for more sophisticated tasks such as hosting an on-line self-service web site or an online store.  Let me help by walking you through the creation of an internal web site on your company’s AS/400.

There are four major steps in this process.
 

1)Register a Domain name for your web site by going to www.networksolutions.com (formerly, the InterNIC) or www.oznic.com and choosing what you think is a unique name.  Although you will not need this unique name for your internal network, registering a name early will save you a lot of time later, when you decide to extend your application to the Internet.

Example:  If your company is ACME and you sell widgets, you might ask in order of preference from a list such as ACME.COM, ACMEWIDGETS.COM, or ACME.WIDGETS.COM. If you're a school, you would use an .EDU domain. Internet Service Providers use .NET. Non-profit organizations use .ORG. There is also a national domain ending, such as .CA for Canada.

2)Configure TCP/IP on your AS/400.  If your AS/400 is already running the TCP/IP protocol to access your LAN, you’re all set.  Otherwise you’ll have to assign your AS/400 a unique IP address so that it can communicate over other networks.  Use the AS/400 command CFGTCP and add a TCP/IP interface, specifying the Internet Address, Line Description, and Subnet Mask that you received from Network Solutions when you registered your domain name.  Next, you’ll need to define a Local Domain and Host Name using menu option 12 of the CFGTCP command.  The final step requires that you build a Local Host Table to link your AS/400’s Internet (IP) address with its associated Host Name.  Use the ADDTCPHTE command for this. Finally, using the STRTCP command, start TCP/IP.  Note that if you power down and power your AS/400 back up, you’ll need to restart TCP/IP.

3)Start the Internet Administration Server.  First you have to verify that the AS/400 HTTP server is installed on your machine. GO LICPGM and verify that there is an entry for licensed program #5769-DG1 and its status reads *COMPATIBLE.  You also have to make sure that TCP/IP Connectivity Utilities are also installed with a *COMPATIBLE status.  This is licensed program #5769-TC1.   You now need to start the ADMIN server instance.  Type in the command: STRTCPSVR SERVER(*HTTP) HTTPSVR(*ADMIN) and press Enter.  It may take a while to start.

4)Post your Internal Home Page.  With the Admin server running, you can now create a home page for your site and any additional HTML pages.  Use the CRTDIR command to create your own directory.  Call it whatever you’d like.  Now you can create an HTML page using your editor of choice and save it to the directory you just created.  Make sure that the extension of the file name is .htm.  The next step is to use the AS/400 Tasks Page to configure the server instance.  From within your web browser, enter the URL http://your_server_name:2001/ (where you_server_name is your server’s host name).  You’ll be prompted to enter your user ID and password.

Click on the IBM HTTP Server for AS/400 icon. From here, the tasks get a bit more complicated.  But essentially, you will have to start the server instance, change the configuration of your AS/400 to allow add, map, and pass directives, and set the server instance parameters to default settings for public access.  So essentially, you’re creating a routing table for how users will navigate through your site and access documents or resources.

Next you must start your HTTP Server using the following command: STRTCPSVR SERVER(*HTTP) TTPSVR(your_server_name).  If you want IBM HTTP Server for AS/400 to start automatically whenever TCP/IP starts, type on the command line when you start the server: CHGHTTPA_AUTOSTART_(*YES)

Your AS/400 Internet server is now up and running.

I leave you to do your own research for discovering how to extend the functionality of your simple web site by adding security, e-mail, and/or database access (by running CGI programs on your Internet server).  The concepts are pretty straightforward and clearly explained in the AS/400 manuals.   You’ll want to add these features prior to showing your work to Senior Management.  It’s the real value add that they need to see.

Use the Internet to review the IBM Redbooks on this topic.  Join the discussion group at www.ignite400.org.   Browse, browse, browse.  The Internet makes it so easy to gather the information you’ll require to set up your own AS/400 web server over a weekend.  You may have to spend some hours of research time on your own to take your site to the next level.  But conservatively speaking, you could go from ground zero to becoming a webmaster within a couple of months of elapsed time.  I can assure you, it will be worth your while.

And if your company is like the majority of AS/400 shops out there, you may even turn some heads among your Senior Management team, especially if you let them know that what you’ve built did not cost them anything more than what they’d already spent on the box.  They’d had the technology all along; they just needed someone like you to show them how to make it work.

Mark can be contacted by email at morlan@okassoc.com, or by phone at (416) 863-1261.  Orlan, Karigan's website is www.orlankarigan.com.