April 6, 1998 You may already own an I-commerce application server The Web is a great place to do business. Right now, your company is probably already using it for marketing or to publish information about your company and products. For these purposes, deployment can be as simple as setting up a Web server on a Unix or Windows NT box. But what happens when your CEO wants to do other kinds of business on the Web, such as high-volume order processing, customer service, electronic data interchange via the Internet, or Web-based supply chain automation? What if your company starts to rely on the Web for a significant portion of its revenue stream? Your Web application servers will need to stay up 24 hours per day, 7 days per week -- and they will need to handle heavy traffic and complex applications with aplomb. A single Unix or NT server is not going to be enough to support your mission-critical Web applications. You may already have a system that can, though. The return of big iron If you're an IS manager at a Fortune 500 company or other large organization -- and many InfoWorld readers are -- the chances are quite good that you're still running at least one mainframe. This "big iron" is probably handling essential line-of-business applications, such as your order-entry system, finance, accounting, payroll, and the like. And, with a little work, the mainframe can be a great Web application server, too. Mainframes are born to process and store large volumes of data reliably, securely, and quickly. They're ideal transaction-processing platforms -- on or off the Web. That's why, despite frequent proclamations that the mainframe is dead, many companies still extensively use their big iron. For transaction processing and line-of-business applications, the mainframe can't be beat. If you're getting into Internet commerce, you should take a good look at your mainframe as a possible Web application server. Web-enabling the mainframe Currently, there are two classes of products that can let you use your mainframe as a Web application server. The first group relies on a Unix or NT server to act as an intermediary between the Web and the mainframe, which continues to run the same applications it always has. To the mainframe, this server looks like just another "green screen" terminal. The server translates terminal output into HTML, Java, and ActiveX, and serves it to browser clients via the Web. Two recently announced products in this class are Wall Data's Cyberprise suite of host-access tools and Attachmate's HostView Server 2.0. The advantage these products offer is that existing mainframe applications can continue to run without modification. Furthermore, the addition of a server between the mainframe and the Web browser adds a layer of security. However, using a Unix or NT server may introduce a bottleneck into your application- and transaction-processing capabilities. The second class of products lets the mainframe itself act as a Web server. For example, Bluestone Software announced at the end of March that Sapphire/Web 5.0 will include an application server that runs on IBM's OS/390 mainframe operating system. This means that Web applications developed in Sapphire/Web can be deployed right on the mainframe. Such an approach lets your Web applications take advantage of the mainframe's heavy-duty computing power and I/O capabilities. It may also simplify integration between your Web applications and existing mainframe-based applications. On the downside, putting your mainframe on the Internet may pose security problems. And you will have to do a significant amount of work to adapt your mainframe applications to the Web. Whichever route you choose, it's clear that big iron is far from dead. In fact, mainframes may just see a resurgence of popularity as Web commerce applications become more prevalent. Dylan Tweney edits InfoWorld's Focus on I-commerce section online and in print. He welcomes your comments at dylan@infoworld.com. Missed a column? It's easy to catch up -- just click here.