Boston Edison improves software development - Boston Edison Co. uses LBMS Inc.'s Process Engineer process management software - Cover Story

Software Magazine, Dec, 1993 by Michael W. Bucken

"I believe that this methodology has been successful because the people now believe that it is the right thing to do", he added.

Boston Edison fully expects the LBMS offering to aid the firm in its move to a client/server architecture, according to Giroux. "We think the methodology can go a long wawy toward giving us a good foundation to move in that direction," he said. "We still do most of our development on ]IBM MVS-based] mainframes, but we expect to go to client/server [development] by the end of 1994."

Giroux noted that Boston Edison has no plans to abandon CA-IDMS, even as the utility moves into client/server architectures." "We are a strong IDMS shop and we're committed to IDMS," he said. "We plan to use IDMS in a LAN [local-area network] environment."

Giroux said he expects Boston Edison to start implementing corporate-wide client/server applications during 1994 and 1995 -- all built using the LBMS development process.

Kloss noted that her group installed a new version of the Process Engineer with additional client/server capabilities this fall. The new version allows end users to develop applications with the Power-Builder tools from Powersoft Corp., Burlington, Mass., Oracle Forms from Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif., and others.

And when users of IS developers look at other tools, the process should support them, Kloss said. "We certainly could plug in anybody's Case tool," she said.