A+ Network

A+ Gives SoftVelocity an A+ on Clarion for Windows

Clarion Makes Honor Roll

The grades are in and SoftVelocity's Clarion for Windows has passed with flying colors. A+ Network, one of the largest providers of paging services in the United States, has rated Clarion for Windows A+!

"After evaluating the competition, we found Clarion the most efficient and easiest to use," said Chris Smith, CIO of A+ Network and cofounder of Saber Software Corporation.

From its inception, A+ had run its corporate computing environment on a PC-based local area network with Novell Netware servers. The billing system, purchased from a third-party vendor, is Btrieve-based. As the company has grown, so has the computing infrastructure. Currently, A+ has more than 30 Netware servers tied together that all access the billing system's Btrieve data files, which now totals more than 20 gigabytes of on-line storage.

Prior to the Switch

Prior to selecting Clarion for Windows as the primary development environment, A+ used a number of products including FoxPro and dBase. These tools were used to access dBase format files that were exported from the billing system, as well as to read the Btrieve files directly using third-party add-ons. Since attempts to roll out programs for end-users were unsuccessful -- due to user interface and performance problems -- the programs created with these tools were exclusively for internal Information Systems use.

The Selection Process

As a result of a number of limitations of their billing system, A+ determined that new front-ends to the corporate billing system had to be created. These systems would replace the existing Microfocus COBOL front-ends and would be easier to use, enhance, and validate data entry. At the time, A+ did not have any dedicated software developers on staff, so there was no existing standard to consider. To select the new development environment, A+ decided to consider the check list of primary needs displayed in the left column.

A number of vendors and products were reviewed for consideration, including Foxpro, Visual Foxpro, Visual Basic, Magic, Visual C++, Clarion for Windows, and Delphi. After careful review of the four primary requirements, Clarion was voted the best choice and was selected as the new development environment. Like many other Clarion users, Smith agrees that Clarion for Windows™ slashes development time by 70 percent.

"Additionally, Clarion for Windows applications are much faster than that of competitors," Smith said

The Benefits

Short Term

"The payoff that resulted from selecting Clarion for Windows was almost immediate. Projects that had languished for several months — or never gotten off the ground — became realities in short order," said Michael Ledet, Director of Strategic Development. A few examples:
• an internal point-of-sale system was prototyped and tested in two months
• an inventory management system was running in three weeks after a specification was drawn up
• a developer produced a successful commercial software product in two months — without formal Clarion training

Long Term

A number of third-party templates have supplemented the solution and the default Clarion templates have been customized to enhance the development process. The strategy of slowly replacing all of the front ends to the existing billing system is now near completion.

"Clarion has resulted in increased efficiency and lower costs. For example, our order fulfillment process has gone from 28 minutes to four minutes per unit utilizing a system that took only six man-weeks to complete," Ledet said.

Select the Best

If your looking to move ahead of the competition, the choice is simple: Clarion for Windows.

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