ABSTRACT
COMPARED TO OTHER DATA CENTER TECHNOLOGIES, WEB-TO-HOST integration solutions, which only came into being in mid-1996 with the introduction of the first 3270-to-HTML conversion product, are a very recent entrant into the rather conservative mainframe and AS/400 arena. Nonetheless, the appeal and applicability, not to mention the return on investment (ROI) of these TCP/IP-centric solutions, are so cogent and obvious that by mid-1999, nearly a thousand corporations around the world had successfully adopted Web-to-host integration-this despite the major distraction of Y2K concerns. Many of the early adopters of Web-to-host integration were well-known blue-chip companies such as General Motors, FedEx, American Airlines, Trans World Airlines (TWA), Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Nestlé, and Del Monte Foods. Charles Schwab, the world’s largest discount brokerage, now does over 60 percent of its trades online, across the Internet, using Web-to-host technology coupled to six IBM mainframes. The adoption rate of Web-to-host integration will increase even further when data center professionals, around the globe, recover from their Y2K travails.
