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Autumn 1998
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A global operation with 30,000 employees and revenues of some $4 billion, ADP is perhaps best known for its Human Resources and payroll software, but it is also the world’s largest supplier of computing and consulting services for auto and truck dealers, with over 160,000 pieces of installed hardware.
Their systems manage accounting, inventory, factory communications, scheduling, leasing, sales and service activities. ADP has installed customised systems in over 200 dealerships in the UK alone, and has signed an agreement with Peugeot to supply its fully-owned dealers with state-of-the-art systems consistent with the car manufacturer’s global IT strategy.
It is this agreement which led to the current successful relationship between ADP and jBASE Software. Peugeot has standardised on IBM’s RS6000 hardware platform, and ADP’s suite of application software was based on ADDS Mentor from EDP and RealityX (Cora) from MDIS, and would not run on IBM’s product. To make it do so could mean a total re-write, from scratch, of some 2 million lines of code. Not a project calculated to inspire the enthusiasm of most managers!
Certainly not Jeff Harrison, MD of ADP in the UK. "It was a daunting prospect," he said, "as it would mean re-tooling the programming team to start with, then an enormous amount of time and energy - not to mention money - in implementing code changes. We estimated that a full re-write of this nature could take as long as 50 man-years!" Clearly, a less painful solution would be very welcome, but viable alternatives seemed thin on the ground.
One possibility was D3 from Pick Systems. But this too had significant drawbacks, especially in the medium and longer term. "We considered moving to D3," said Harrison, "which would leapfrog the re-write problem. But we also wanted the flexibility to offer our customers the ability to manipulate ADP MultiValue data directly using mainstream desktop office tools such as Microsoft Excel and Word. This did not look easy to achieve with D3."
Harrison was immediately intrigued by the migration possibilities jBASE offered. "There were several very attractive aspects of the product," he said, "which seemed to put it in a class of its own. For example not only did the initial migration promise to be fast and painless, but another member of the jBASE technology family, OBjEX, would allow us to easily re-deploy the application with a Visual Basic GUI and client-server architecture without a massive re-write, or a major overhaul of the embedded business rules. jBASE seemed the perfect solution."
The only way for Harrison to find out if it would work was to try it and see. He did so, and the results were superb. "It was really a matter of jBASE performing as advertised," he commented, "as we had working RS6000 code within days. In essence, the product acted as a sausage machine, so to speak. We simply put our code in one end, and after a bit of churning, out came the RS6000 code. Fast, and totally pain-free." This was excellent news to Harrison because it meant his customers could retain all the functionality of their existing system within the context of a more powerful solution, while preserving their investment in hardware.
Naturally, with an exercise of this nature, there were one or two minor glitches, but they were resolved very quickly. Jeff Harrison again: "We experienced some problems with odds and ends - printer drivers for example - but this was hardly a major surprise. In fact, minor problems on the first project were, paradoxically, a good thing for us, because it gave us experience of jBASE Software’s support, and how we could work together to resolve difficulties. It soon became clear that we could work very well together, and that no problem would remain an issue for long. We expect the next Peugeot installation to be a fast ‘turn-key’ installation."
As well as continuing its agreement with Peugeot, ADP is constantly winning new business. Although a large proportion of motor dealers have elected to use the RS6000 platform, there is also a growing tendency towards Windows NT. "We haven’t faced this migration, as yet," said the ADP MD, "but we know the jBASE family can handle NT as well, which is very reassuring. We know that we can maintain our products in BASIC, and be able to port to a new platform almost instantly, and with total confidence."He summed up: "With jBASE as our underlying technology, we can allow our customers to enjoy the best technologies of both today and tomorrow. This is an enviable market position to be in."
jBASE Software Limited
Last Updated: 31 October 1998