The document discusses the issues faced by a line information systems manager who is not meeting a customer service project deadline. It lists several potential reasons for missed deadlines, such as difficulties adding new functionality, staffing and skills shortages, managing multiple disparate systems, developing projects in small chunks, integrating systems with the web, performance and availability problems, and managing distributed systems. It suggests that these issues could be impacting various stakeholders in the company like the VP of customer service, manufacturing, marketing or sales, the CIO, CFO, and CEO. The document proposes several "what if" scenarios where using capabilities like a flexible open standards-based architecture, visual development tools, interoperable data replication, rapid prototyping

1. Pain: Not meeting c/s project deadline
Situation: Line IS Mgr
Inprise Capability: AppServer & AppCenter
Reasons Impact Capabilities
Is it because…? Today…?
R1: Architecture/New Functionality Issues
• It is difficult to add new functionality to your
systems?
• Is your staff having difficulty developing,
modifying or extending additional
functionality to your production
applications in real-time?
• are you having to purchase additional H/W
to fix architectural problems?
($,#,%)
R2: Staffing Skills/Knowledge Issues
• How do staffing limitations affect your
ability to handle the workload?
• How does that affect timelines and
budgets? ($,#,%)
• Do some of your staff not have the
knowledge-base/tech skills to create apps
quickly?
($,#,%)
R3: Architecture/Multiple Systems Issues
• how many systems are you running
concurrently?
• Are you having to re-enter data onto
multiple systems?
• Do you have difficulty replicating and
synchronizing data across disparate
systems?
• Does that take additional resources?
($,#,%)
Is_________________________ causing…
• cust svc reps to be frustrated by older
tech?
• outdated cust information?
• A decline in customer satisfaction?
• Staff turnover?
• lost customers
• increasing cost? ($,#,%)
Is the VP Customer Service affected?
• Costly mfg processes?
• Can’t meet customer demands?
• Increased outsourcing costs?
• Communication between depts?
• Info not available?
Is VP Mfg/Ops affected?
• maturing product lines?
• unaware of mkt reqs?
• increasing TTM?
• missed opps in x-sell?
• loss market share?
• lost revenue? ($,#,%)
Is the VP of Marketing or Sales concerned?
• is IT/IS head-count increasing?
• Difficulty retaning, recruting & training of
staff
• Difficulty with being locked in by outdated
systems and tech based on proprietary
standards?
• Inability to meet demand for new
apps/objects?
• Difficulty integrating to the Web?
• Increasing TCO, declining ROI? ($,#,%)
Is the CIO impacted?
What if there was a way ….? Would it help
if…?
CV1:
What if you had a flexible architecture that
enabled your staff to develop, modify, or
extend production applications in real-time
because it’s based on open industry
standards?
CV2:
What if your developers had a visual
development tool for rapidly developing
applications so that your current staff could
develop apps more quickly regardless of their
skill and knowledge-base?
($,#,%)
CV3:
What if your architecture allowed you to
synchronize and replicate data across
disparate, multiple systems and applications
because on it’s based on interoperable
standards like CORBA/RMI/IIOP?

2. Pain: Not meeting c/s project deadline
Situation: Line IS Mgr
Inprise Capability: AppServer & AppCenter
Reasons Impact Capabilities
R4: Project Development Issues
• Are your developers able to manage
projects in small chunks?
• Are you wasting time building monolithic
systems?
• Does that mean that you have more
people assigned to longer development
cycles?
($,#,%)
R5: Web Integration Issues
• Are you unable to use the web to access
exiting applications?
• Is your staff having to re-code to web-
enable online services?
• Are they having to manually code html?
• What additional resources has web-
enabling apps required? ($,#,%)
R6:Performance/Availability Issues
Are you or your users experiencing difficulties
with slow system response?
Are there additional demands to the systems
due to growth in the department's user base?
Increased downtime?
R7: Distributed Systems Issues
• Are you having difficulty managing
distributed applications?
• Are you having difficulty identifying and
resolving system availability problems?
• Does the system require extensive user
intervention to manage applications?
($,#,%)
• Are overall company revenue affected?
• Are overall company costs increasing?
• Can’t facilite M&A activity?
• Can’t manage gloval expansion?
• Profitablity affected? ($,#,%)
Is the CFO affected
• Are earning per share declining?
• Is Company reputation/standing suffering?
Is the CEO affected?
CV4:
What if your staff could rapidly create proof of
concept/prototype apps using a visual IDE to
identify the best features for your production
applications?
CV5:
What if your staff could create applications that
kept up with the department’s growth
requirements while maintaining high
performance and availability because they are
based on a scalable architecture?
CV6:
What if your staff could more quickly develop
web applications because your IDE toolkit was
inherently web-enabled and component
based?
CV7:
What if you could manage your distributed
applications visually so that when a problem
occurred you could restore access more
quickly and avoid unnecessary user
intervention?

3. Pain: Not meeting c/s project deadline
Situation: Line IS Mgr
Inprise Capability: AppServer & AppCenter
Reasons Impact Capabilities
R8: Legacy Application Issues
• Are you having difficulty integrating the old
and the new applications services?
• Are you spending increasingly more time
maintaining legacy applications?
• Do you have to manually set up
network/communication services between
system resources and components or
objects?
($,#,%)
R9:Outsourcing Issues
• Is your staff having to regularly
tweak/maintain existing systems?
• Is that diverting resources from new
projects?
• Are you having to outsource or hire more
staff?
($,#,%)
R9: Manual Coding Issues
• Does your staff have to hand-code your
apps?
• Are your current systems component-
based?
• Does it require additional QA?
($,#,%)
CV8:
What if your staff could focus on developing
new functionality and spend less time
maintaining legacy applications because your
new CORBA/EJB architecture allows your
applications to communicate with one another
automatically?
CV9:
What if you could you use commercial of-the-
shelf components to build new functionality
into the network thereby reducing the need to
outsource maintenance on existing systems
and freeing up current staff to develop new
applications?
CV9:
What if your staff could use a component-
based IDE to re-use code so that they spend
more time on developing new applications
functionality rather maintaining old
applications?