Speedware offers time shifter for migrations
September 14, 2010
A software tool which helped 3000 sites during the last great migration -- the transition from 1999 to 2000 -- is being pressed into service for migration and legacy modernization projects, according to Speedware's Manager of Strategic Alliances Christine McDowell. Speedware is reselling Solution-Soft's Time Machine, a popular tool during Y2K work.
“The addition of Time Machine is a natural fit and a great value-add feature for our legacy modernization projects,” said McDowell. "Financial institutions, insurance and government are examples of industries where transactions occur that are event-based critical. Now Speedware customers can benefit from simplified and faster testing by using Time Machine."
The Solution-Soft utility was introduced in 1997, an era when adjusting the system time beyond Dec. 31, 1999 was a crucial test of application and system rewrites. It provides virtual clocks to facilitate app testing, what-if analysis and time zone adjustment.
Speedware identifies its mission as modernization of legacy apps, as well as migration. It notes that "as legacy modernization projects involve an organization’s business-critical applications, testing becomes an integral phase of the project, ensuring that the applications run seamlessly after modernization. Transaction events triggered by system time are one of many basic elements used in testing application validity."
Using Time Machine "lowers risk when migrating applications by demonstrating the actual performance of the application at whatever date and time is chosen." The deal between Solution-Soft and Speedware gives the latter firm worldwide reseller rights.
The director of business development at Solution-Soft, which has been selling HP 3000 products since the early 1990s, sees a link between Speedware's mission and the time-shift tool. "There is a natural fit and synergy between Solution-Soft's product and Speedware's customer base," said Michael Morrison. "We are excited to be working with Speedware to introduce our software application to legacy modernization and migration customers."
During the heavy IT demands of Y2K, Time Machine was popular among the customers who didn't want to create their own test suites in such detail. Testing is usually the largest part of a development project the size of Y2K. Many consultants and migration companies will report that migration off the HP 3000 is a much larger project than Y2K was for most companies.
Time Machine returns a specified date or time whenever the application gets the system time without changing the system clock. Only the applications designated by the developer are affected by Time Machine. Each application can travel to a different point in time by specifying a different date. SolutionSoft's founder Paul Wang said in '97 his utility makes it possible to simultaneously test a month-end application for the date 7/3/2009 and a year-end application with the date 1/4/2010, while normal system processing is running using the current date.
In a NewsWire review by John Burke when Time Machine was introduced, we summed up by saying the tool was likely to outlast Y2K needs. "Although Time Machine was probably first conceived as a tool to help in Year 2000 projects," Burke wrote, "it can do much more. Its usefulness will outlast any current and future Year 2000 compliance projects."