Allport 'moves forward' with CONNX

Allport, the UK’s leading independent freight forwarder since 1963, handle 5m kilos of global freight every day by air, land and sea providing supply chain and logistics solutions to 2,000 clients, from Sainsbury’s to Siemens. The company, which recently moved its headquarters to Uxbridge, has 25 branches in the UK, 22 overseas and partners in a further 70 countries.

The Business Challenge

Central to Allports business is an in-house developed application called Jubilee running on an HP OpenVMS cluster 24 * 7 using RMS data files to store their business critical data.

Ian Hunter, IT Director from Allport - describes their situation:

“Development of Jubilee started in 1975 and now has 1.5 million lines of HP BASIC code. Its suite includes Job raising, Air export management, Warehousing, Delivery management, Purchasing, a web interface, full accounts, and much more.

“With the introduction of PC’s we wanted to enable direct access to our RMS data files as though they were a relational database using more modern development tools and techniques.

“We also wanted to ensure that we would be able to take advantage of future technologies.”

The Solution

“CONNX was first implemented in 1997. The first PC based application was quickly achieved allowing the raising of Jubilee jobs.

“Over the years we have extended our use of CONNX to integrate a document management system. Recently we enabled users to write their own reports using IBM Cognos business intelligence tools to access both real-time and offline Jubilee RMS data.”

Benefits Achieved

  • CONNX enables Allport to retain and exploit the significant investment in their existing business systems using modern high productivity development environments.
  • CONNX provides seamless integration between non-relational data and IBMs Cognos business intelligence tools.
  • CONNX provides a fast, scaleable and easy to maintain solution.
  • CONNX empowers our users enabling them to facilitate informed and faster business decisions.

The Future

CONNX continues to help us meet the ongoing demands of the business by using in-house knowledge and skills with current technologies.

CONNX is also HP Integrity ready should we decide to move to this platform.

“Support from Generix has been excellent throughout our many years use of CONNX. Of particular note was during the initial setup of Cognos BI. Anthony Lightfoot our account manager was available throughout the set-up providing both technical help and also an on the day service pack to resolve a Cognos connectivity issue to get us up and running.”

- Ian Hunter, IT Director from Allport

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