Ascent Logic Corporation (ALC) has since 1987 assisted engineers to develop and improve many of the world's most complex systems. An international credit-card transaction processing system, a worldwide telecommunications system using dozens of orbiting satellites, and a major redesign of a Navy fighter plane are recent projects supported by ALC software and consulting.

The Challenge

Large organizations typically have a heterogeneous information system that links mainframes, UNIX systems, and PC servers over a complex network. Operating systems, compilers, databases, scheduling software, networking software, CASE tools, utility packages and other software run on the hardware platforms. All these components together support the applications upon which today's business processes depend.

Since in most cases this enterprise computing system evolved gradually over many years, fashioned and modified by many hands, its complexity has grown beyond the ability of most organizations to understand it completely. Yet the Year 2000 problem demands detailed knowledge not only of the information system, but of how it is linked to crucial business processes that produce the organization's products. In very limited time, a Year 2000 team must analyze the information system and the enterprise itself, prioritize Year 2000 tasks according to their enterprise value, manage and make the fixes, then test them. All the while, the company's vital products must be delivered without interruption. This is a management problem of the highest magnitude.

To guide the solution decisions, management has to establish high-level business objectives for making the enterprise Year 2000 compliant. Compliance criteria are a key concept that will guide the Year 2000 conversion effort. In an overall business context, compliance constitutes a balance between lower risk and lower cost, measured against the following main objectives:

Elements of the Solution

• A business system engineering methodology developed by Ascent Logic specifically to conquer the Year 2000 problem.

• A highly integrated software tool suite for both engineering and project management.

Ascent Logic engineers have tailored each to fit the unique Year 2000 problem and the mainstream business environment. The methodology and tool suite support each other; neither would be complete or effective without the other. Both tools and methodology are flexible: they can easily be further customized for an individual customer environment.

Business system engineering and the Year2000Plus methodology

Business system engineering is an application of the discipline of system engineering to commercial businesses. Since the 1960s, system engineering has enabled engineers to model and design massive, complex systems for the defense and aerospace industries. Because of many demonstrable successes, its insights and methods have increasingly been applied to understanding and solving large-scale problems in the financial and telecommunications industries, to name only two.

The Year2000Plus methodology addresses the Year 2000 problem in three phases:

Dependency, Triage, and finally Transition.

The goals of Phase I, Dependency, are to prioritize the products to be saved and to identify flawed components in the information system that support these products. To do this, analysts identify and capture in a single database the enterprise's products and their revenue, customers, and relative importance. They establish links between the vital products and the business processes (manufacturing, billing, shipping, accounts payable) upon which they depend, and subsequently to the hardware and software that in turn support the business processes. Thus they identify and prioritize the critical areas that must be made Year 2000 compliant. In the course of this information gathering and analysis, Dependency becomes a detailed model of the enterprise that has value and utility far beyond the Year 2000 problem.

During the Triage phase, the analysts determine precisely how and when the software and hardware will be made Year 2000 compliant. They run automated trade-off reports to compare alternative solutions, weighted with budget and personnel constraints. Finally they transform the best solution into a collection of detailed plans and schedules for conversion and testing as well as managing the project and tracking progress. The plans are designed to be updated based on new data fed back during the actual conversion phase.

The Transition phase involves the actual modification of the critical software and hardware to Year 2000 compliance. This will in most cases involve combinations of re-programming, replacement, and/or re-architecting. The Transition phase includes testing and verification, and allows for flexibility in all plans and schedules.

RDD-100 and the Year2000Plus Integrated Software Tool Suite

The technical foundation of the Year2000Plus solution is RDD-100. RDD-100 is the premier system engineering software tool, a mature product developed and refined by Ascent Logic Corporation and used on hundreds of large projects over the last decade by Ascent Logic's consultants and customers. With this powerful tool, team members can build a large database repository of information that is all appropriately inter-linked. RDD-100 can display abstract models that show in manifold ways relationships that are otherwise impossible to see or understand precisely.

Surrounding RDD-100 is an integrated suite of tools for management and schedule tracking. This integrated environment ensures completeness and consistency between the products of both engineering and management work, and allows for updates and adapting to changes in the project as well as in the corporate environment or structure.

The Bottom Line

The Year2000Plus solution helps management and technical experts to work together to define tasks and schedules, based on saving first the enterprise's most important products and processes. They can set priorities based on true needs, then carry out the work in a software environment designed for ease of use within a methodology customized for each customer.When the Year2000Plus effort is complete, the enterprise will have both a re-usable business system engineering methodology and an intelligent repository of information about its critical products, services, clients and their supporting business processes and information system components.

This storehouse of knowledge can be tapped again and again in the future. With a model of your enterprise and its technology, you can more easily understand how change will impact your organization and its business processes, application systems, and technology. You can quickly assess the impact of changes such as adding new corporate divisions, new applications or services in the information system, or migrating from mainframe to client/server.

This re-usable asset is the Plus in the Year2000Plus approach. The Year2000Plus lays a solid foundation for your business to enter the next mil lennium with a competitive advantage.

Consulting and Partnering

The consulting staff that provides guidance and training to our customers is a critical part of our technology. Ascent Logic's veteran consulting group has many years of experience in varied, complex system design projects.

For more information visit our web site Year2000Plus !

To the Year 2000 Information Center™