CMS Energy finds client/server scalable, cheap - CMS Energy Corp's accounting network

Communications News, April, 1994

Dearborn, Mich.-based CMS Energy Corporation has found that its client/server-based network accounting system has allowed cost-effective and efficient expansion as the company has grown.

A $3 billion diversified energy company, CMS Energy has ownership interests in subsidiaries and partnerships engaged in the distribution of electricity and natural gas storage, transmission and marketing of natural gas, oil and gas exploration management and production, independent power generation and utility services. Consumers Power Company, Michigan's largest utility, is CMS Energy's principal subsidiary.

CMS Energy has added a number of subsidiaries since five years ago, when it first implemented its accounting system built around the Solomon III general accounting package. CMS runs a LAN-based accounting system using Novell 3.11 on DOS 6.0 over a 16 Mb/s token ring topology. A total of fiftyeight

286, 386 and 486 computers are on the network. All the accounting users are equipped with at least a 386 computer.

The server is an IBM 486 model 95 with 2.2 gigabytes of sttorage and 16 MB of RAM. CMS has recently started using a new, highly-efficient NetWare Loadable Moddule (NLM) version of Solomon III which is designed to maximize network speed and efficiency, and to free-up the database server for other tasks.

Client/server

The software's client/server architecture also has helped maximize network efficiency. The software is designed with careful consideration given to how much of the workload is to be performed in the workstation, and how much is to be performed centrally in the database or other server functions.

Network bridges and gateways keep enormous amounts of data off the network, improving performance and reducing data transmission.

Accountants and accounting clerks in Dearborn and at remote sites perform data entry for the approximately 60 accounting databases CMS maintains. During the month-end close, eight or more databases muust be opened simultaneously.

Data from the remote sites is received via modem and processed at the Dearborn headquarters. Ed Falkowski, CMS LAN administrator, wrote a program to process the ASCII text file report generated from the Solomon III Report and Graph Writer module. The report captures GL balances, and the process formats the output into the form needed by a third-party corporate consolidation package.

The third-party package was implemented to help CMS meet reporting requirements, Falkowski says.

Scalability

Client/server computing has made it possible and costt-effective for CMS to link different office locations electronically, and to add more users to the system simply by adding more workstations to the network. Since each workstation has its own processor, the computing power of the other users is not diluted as significantly as in a shared processor system.

Further, if the transaction volume grows to the point that month-end reporting and closing cannot be performed quickly enough, client/server architecture allows the flexibility to upgrade the database server, an inexpensive change compared to the mini-computer or mainframe platforms, where running out of processing power may mean six-figure upgrade costs.

"So, far, we are pleased with the over-all results," Falkowskii says. "Given the size and complexity of our organization, ours is a relatively inexpensive system."

For CMS, Solomon III has been a good choice for other reasons as well. The package offers a solid general ledger along with a well-designed user interface including time-saving data entry features, pull-down menus, pop-up windows, on-line help, and a wide range of reporting options. Using a new information management module called SolomonNotes, Solomon III can be easily customized without changing source code.