ABSTRACT

This chapter sets out to help future adopters of Web-to-host integration technology by describing in detail six salutary case studies – each using a different type of Web-to-host solution. Each of these case studies clearly demonstrates the viability, potency, and stability of today’s Web-to-host integration technology. The Lafayette Life and The Farmers Mutual Protective Association of Texas case studies, both from the insurance sector, dramatically highlight the incontrovertible cost benefits of using the Internet as the means of providing remote access to data centers. Lafayette Life

reduced its remote access costs by more than 90 percent by moving from a public Frame Relay network-based access scheme to a Web-to-host solution that enabled it to securely and reliably realize the same host access — but this time across the public Internet. Although a very successful, 98year-old insurance company with 300 sales agents, The Farmers Mutual Protective Association of Texas could only justify online, remote access for these 300 agents when it discovered a Web-to-host integration solution that supported unrestricted AS/400 access across the Internet. The remaining four case studies demonstrate other advantages of Web-to-host integration, such as the cost savings of thin-client access, business-to-business E-commerce over the Internet, and the “zero-lead-time” attribute of using the Internet as a means for host access.