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EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW Why Agile Business Suite Should Be Your Development Environment
EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW
Why Agile Business Suite Should Be Your Development
Environment
Executive Overview2
Development Takes Center StageAt a time when businesses define themselves by
their applications, development has taken on a
much more prominent – and visible – role than it’s
ever had before.
Organizations increasingly realize the value
their developers can deliver, and are repeatedly
turning to these teams to drive differentiation and
competitive advantage in an increasingly crowded,
dynamic marketplace.
But with this new position of prominence comes
greater expectations: to become better, more
collaborative partners to the business, align with
its strategic initiatives, and change as these goals
evolve. The market’s moving fast, with opportunities
coming and going overnight, so keeping pace with
shifting demands is vital.
With Unisys Agile Business Suite (AB Suite®),
you’ll have the development environment you need
to deliver innovative functionality with the speed
required to meet rapidly changing business and
consumer expectations.
AB Suite: Modern Development DeliveredWith the flexible, innovative, model-driven development
environment in AB Suite, you’ll be able to quickly build
and release enterprise-class applications designed to
capitalize on shifting business and IT expectations.
With it, you can collaborate with your peers and define
solutions in high-level business terms, so everyone can
focus on what the application should do – not how it
should be coded. And, when requirements inevitably
change, you’ll be able to address them with precision
and certainty.
This way, you’ll greatly improve business agility and
responsiveness. Your team will become a better partner
to the organization it supports. And you’ll help to make
sure your applications drive differentiation well into
the future.
Need more reasons why AB Suite is right for you and
your team? Consider the following…
Welcome to the Application Era
Executive Overview3
You’ll Get More Out of Your Existing InvestmentsYour applications encompass years of careful
thought, effort, and execution. They’re critical to
your competitive position and because of this,
rebuilding them can cost you considerable time
and resources.
But if you’re a Unisys Enterprise Application
Environment (EAE) shop, you can move your
current application portfolio to AB Suite without
any rewriting or rebuilding. You’ll upgrade to a
more productive, more powerful, and more flexible
development environment, while maintaining the
value and business logic you’ve worked so hard
to create.
In addition to preserving your existing business
functionality, you’ll be able to reuse your application
assets in new ways, helping you get even more
value from what’s already in place. This way, you’ll
bring your core applications in line with the latest
development standards and techniques – and take
advantage of a wealth of new possibilities – in a
safe, low-risk manner.
You’ll Enhance Security, Availability, and Performance The ability to protect sensitive data, remain accessible at
all times, and operate at peak performance are no longer
luxuries – they’re expectations your applications have to
meet to help you succeed.
With AB Suite running in the ClearPath® MCP operating
environment, you’ll be able to deliver the high levels of
security, availability, and performance the market – and
your business – demands. No matter if you’re new
to MCP or an EAE shop that’s used it for years, you’ll
develop applications in an environment with no record
of user data breaches. And with rapid updates – not to
mention exceptional reliability – you won’t have to worry
about downtime affecting the availability of your critical
applications.
Furthermore, because the MCP environment handles high
transaction volumes with ease – and offers the freedom
to tap into additional processing power as needed – you’ll
feel confident that your applications can continually
deliver the performance your business and its
customers expect.
Your Apps, But Better
Executive Overview4
You’ll Extend Your Database EnvironmentAs your application portfolio matures, it’s essential
that your database environment follows suit.
When you run AB Suite in the ClearPath MCP
operating environment, you’ll have access to
Enterprise Database Server for ClearPath MCP
(DMSII), a high-volume, enterprise-class database
management platform compatible with several
application types. Since it’s routinely updated
with every new AB Suite release, you can take
advantage of enhancements that help you minimize
reorganizations – while making the reorganizations
you do run more scalable and efficient – and
improve general DMSII flexibility.
Plus, with Unisys Data Exchange, you’ll be able
to extend DMSII data to analytics engines in real
time to support business process integration,
reporting, big data analytics, and business
intelligence activities. With the combined power of
AB Suite, DMSII, and Data Exchange, you’ll have the
capabilities you need in today’s data-driven world.
You’ll Demystify DevOps DevOps promises to help you be more responsive and
bring higher-quality releases to market faster by improving
communication, integration, and collaboration between
development and operations teams. That said, putting
the concept into practice isn’t always easy.
But when you pair AB Suite with Microsoft® Team
Foundation Server (TFS), you’ll have a development
environment with DevOps in its DNA. With support for key
concepts like continuous integration, continuous testing,
version control, automation, and continuous delivery,
you’ll release more solutions with greater frequency and
predictability – and far less risk.
By releasing applications with increased regularity,
your developers will receive feedback faster, creating
an environment of continuous learning that helps them
deliver more value to internal and external consumers
alike. As a result, you’ll become more responsive to
change while accelerating time to market.
Enterprise-Class Databases, Faster Development
Executive Overview5
You’ll Enable Anytime, Anywhere AccessYour applications can no longer “live” in just one
place. Rather, you have to make them accessible
on – and optimized for – a variety of devices
and channels to deliver maximum value to
today’s consumers.
With AB Suite, you can mobile-, SOA-, and web-
enable your applications with ease, so they’re
readily available when, where, and on whichever
device you choose. With the ClearPath ForwardTM
ePortal, you can rapidly extend your applications to
new channels, users, and environments – without
changing the applications themselves – helping you
realize a greater return on what you’ve already built.
And with the Agile Business Suite Client
Framework, you’ll be able to add state-of-the-art
user interfaces to these solutions using your
preferred development environment, giving you
more control over the user experience and more
opportunities to deliver satisfying results to
internal and external audiences.
You’ll Stay “Industry Standard” Incorporating industry-standard tools, techniques,
and processes into your development and runtime
environments is critical to boosting efficiency and
enabling your applications to interoperate with
external solutions and services.
With AB Suite, you’ll have a suite of industry-standard
capabilities that allows you to do just that. Because
AB Suite integrates with both Microsoft Visual Studio®
and TFS, you’ll be able to use the combined abilities of
these environments to make development faster,
easier, and more powerful.
Likewise, you’ll be able to integrate applications using
a number of industry-standard tools and interfaces.
For instance, you can use both Web Services and IBM®
message queuing integration to connect with internal
and external technologies, helping your applications
serve as central components in today’s highly connected
environments. And with a wide array of XML-focused
features, your applications will be free to send, parse,
interpret, and process XML communications from a
variety of sources, increasing business agility.
Setting a New Standard
Executive Overview6
You’ll Maximize Your Team’s AbilitiesIt’s not always easy keeping pace with technology
changes. That said, falling behind can leave your
team at a decided disadvantage.
With AB Suite, you’ll have a thoroughly modern
development environment – backed by Visual
Studio and TFS integration – that helps you keep
pace with change by expanding the skillsets your
developers have already established. Your team
can use a common development environment for
.NET and ClearPath MCP application deployments,
giving them an unprecedented level of platform
independence.
You’ll enable them to generate and deploy the
application, database, UI, and reports from a single
specification. At the same time, you’ll shield your
developers from the complexities of composite
application development by integrating AB Suite
components with other services across multiple
operating environments. In the end, you’ll boost
productivity and make it easier to deliver high-quality
applications faster.
You’ll Foster the Next Generation While simplifying life for your existing team is certainly
important, it’s just as crucial to make your development
environment attractive to tomorrow’s programmers.
After all, you’ll need their talent on your side if you’re
to stay relevant.
With AB Suite, you’ll have a development environment
that leverages the industry-popular Visual Studio interface
and Object-Oriented programming concepts that have
been incorporated into college and university courses.
These institutions recognize the value of model-driven
development and see AB Suite as the key way to teach
these and other modern concepts to today’s students.
So by using AB Suite, you’ll be able to attract up-and-
coming developers and quickly turn them into productive
members of your team. And when you do, you’ll know
your organization is in good hands – and well positioned
to do great things in the future.
Skills for Today, Skills for Tomorrow
Executive Overview7
You’ll Maximize FlexibilityThe pace with which change happens today
emphasizes the importance of quick, decisive
action. You must be able to shift how you operate
– and then shift again – to deliver the right
capabilities to the right audience at the right time.
With AB Suite, you’ll have access to the ClearPath
Software Series for MCP Operating Environment
products, a suite of software-only deliverables that
helps you develop what you want when you want,
regardless of the hardware you use to get there.
For example, you can allow full teams and individual
developers to work simultaneously within a single
system, shortening the time required to push new
capabilities into production.
Likewise, you’ll be able to deploy an entire
operating environment, including AB Suite,
as a software-only package on industry-standard
hardware or hypervisors.
You’ll Be Supported Every Step of the Way Adopting AB Suite opens up a wide world of possibilities.
And no matter if it’s before the move, during the
implementation process, or after you’ve gone live, we’ll
make sure you benefit from all the software has to offer.
If you’re an EAE shop, you can rely on the EAE to
AB Suite Assessment service to help you address any
areas requiring special attention during the upgrade
process. You’ll also be able to identify new AB Suite
features that could be particularly beneficial to your team.
And once you’re live on AB Suite, you’ll have access
to post-upgrade services that can help you modernize
the user experience by showing you how to mobile-
enable your AB Suite applications or integrate them into
a SOA landscape. You’ll learn how the latest AB Suite
capabilities can add more value to your applications.
And you’ll see how to close skill gaps, so you have
more time to focus on strategic matters.
The Freedom You Need, the Support You Demand
© 2017 Unisys Corporation. All rights reserved.
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Printed in the United States of America 04/17 17-0209
The Fast Track to InnovationGetting more from existing applications while
helping them perform better. Increasing accessibility
without compromising security. Fostering a new
generation of developers – and supporting the
latest, most contemporary techniques.
When you use AB Suite, you’ll be able to do it all –
and then some.
With AB Suite, you’ll be able to accelerate the
development process by utilizing a model in which
all elements are related to one another. You’ll
shorten the time you spend maintaining and testing
code. You’ll build stable, resilient applications that
can securely support massive transaction volumes
while delivering excellent performance, exceptional
data integrity, and high levels of availability.
And you’ll increase agility, so you can stay aligned
with whatever direction your organization is
headed next.
Business Value RedefinedAnd when you make development an agile, rapid process,
you’ll find yourself in a prime position to deliver ongoing
value to the business.
You’ll release new applications faster and turn
capabilities like mobile access and SOA integration into
competitive differentiators. You’ll discover new ways to
deliver value to your customers. And you’ll be able to
shift your focus from the long run to the short term,
so you can capitalize on emerging opportunities before
your rivals are even aware they exist.
In short, when you use AB Suite, you won’t simply react
to change. You’ll have the capabilities you need to make
it your competitive advantage.
Please visit our web site to learn more about all the great
things AB Suite can do for your business. And if you have
questions about AB Suite, feel free to reach out to us at
Embrace the Application Era
