From Software Futures, a sister publication…

You’ve never heard of them – well, you might have, but we’d be surprised. Visible Systems? Name ring a bell? I-CASE (Integrated Computer Aided Software Engineering) company, been in the business since 1981? No? Well, neither had Software Futures – and we’ve only been writing about I- CASE for a combined ten years, so what would we know? But it’s true, a Waltham, Mass., headquartered company of that very name does in fact sell I-CASE tools under the tag line Engineering the Enterprise for Excellence. And more’s the point, it’s somehow acquired over three thousand corporate and government customers and fifteen thousand educational institutions worldwide. It operates in the banking, healthcare, transportation and insurance fields, with names like Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the IRS, the US Army, TRW and Citibank on its roster. Not bad for a company whose marketing is so low key as to be detectable only by instruments of the most ultra-sophistication and sensitivity – like those machines in the Post Office which reject your dollar bill if it has a crease the size of Kate Moss’s beer gut.

By Gary Flood

Anyway. Visible’s personable (and non-marketing type) marketing manager Stewart Nash came to visit us here in New York to talk about his operation, taking an hour out of the Application Development Trends show to do so, and we enjoyed his laid back approach. We decided that the world of lower price I-CASE tools could probably do with more competition and action, so we decided to talk to some of his customers and find out what the secret of his non-headline- grabbing success was. Visible’s pitch is based around an incremental approach to software tools, claiming it’s mastered the cycle of integrating customer feedback into its products so it can continue to be a reliable, productive and visible component of [our] clients’ projects. It further claims to be able to implement technology and process improvements at a rate that makes it one of the most competitive companies in the I-CASE marketplace. It sells two major products: The Visible Analyst Workbench (VAW) and the Application Browser. VAW is a I-CASE tool purportedly for both classical and object-oriented application analysis and design. It has a file and record locking system that manages change, allowing multiple users to access and use information simultaneously. On the OO side, it includes highly integrated Rumbaugh object/class and state transition modeling. It’s directed at three classes of potential users; those who are now working in the classical (for that read Information Engineering?) environment but who want to move to OO analysis and design at some point, organizations developing enterprise-wide client/server systems such as data warehouses and repositories, and (not surprisingly) those mounting fully caffeinated OO projects. VAW can support diagrams, a rules engine and a repository- based approach, generating C and Cobol source code and SQL for the usual suspect relational databases. Application Browser, on the other hand, is a PC based tool for aiding the analysis of Cobol programs, graphically representing the thing’s design, structure, control flow and logic. Visible says it can be used to help in maintenance, functional enhancements, architecture and technology changes and migration to new platforms. (We never got to speak with any Browser users, so we won’t say any more.) VAW has won some praise from analysts. [It] increases overall developer productivity by capturing data and process information only once in the repository. VAW is a powerful, highly productive tool that addresses all of an organization’s development, design and analysis needs, thinks the Hurwitz Consulting Group. Version 6 is also likely to win attention as it moves into objects with more conviction – with Visible thinking it has a fair stab at winning some proportion of the 200,000 to 500,000 OO A&D I-CASE tools seats Nash thinks are out there. Well, as you know, we don’t commit to believing anything a vendor says – no matter how touchingly honest they may seem – until we check them out with a few customers. Software Futures could only connect with two – Automation Research Systems, Ltd, of Alexandria, Virginia, and the information services department of McHenry County, Illinois.

Dollar for dollar

Ralph Wiley is technical director of Automation Research Systems’ Tampa Division. The company is a privately held information systems integrator and solutions provider, mainly targeting the Federal Government, state and local government, as well as various commercial clients including financial institutions, public utilities, and larger corporations. ARS, Ltd, currently makes around $40m from these businesses. Wiley told Software Futures that he’d been looking for a I-CASE tool around 1992 that would offer multi-user capability, be up to doing a good job on data modeling, and also be inexpensive. He also needed a tool that would work well with his Oracle rdbms, but before you ask, at that time Oracle’s own I-CASE solution was not down to the desktop. In fact, he ran across Visible at an Oracle user conference in Orlando, and after factoring in what he felt were then comparable products from the likes of LBMS’ System Architect and Silverrun from Computer Systems Advisers. Price was a factor, but that consideration applied to all these tools, he says. What won through was the fact that he felt this product offered the best functionality, dollar for dollar. Wiley wants to stress that while he feels he has a good support relationship from Visible, he sees the tool fulfilling an important but narrowly defined role. I-CASE tools have been misunderstood, but here this one suits my requirements very well. I wasn’t looking for a I-CASE tool to do my engineering for me. It’s kept up with our needs, and has migrated well from being an MS-DOS to a Windows tool with no problems. I want a tool that does the job I need it to do; I’m not that impressed with bells and whistles features that don’t help me get the finished product out the door. If he has any possible negative comments on Visible, they certainly don’t lie in the meek marketing; he finds that a bonus. They don’t bombard me with a lot of marketing, and I like that! Maybe larger companies can generate product direction through hype, rather than through the needs of the people who pay for it. But on that front, he does point out something surprising – Visible seems a little behind on its user group endeavors. I’d like ’em to convene a conference like that so we can be sure they’re keeping their ear to the ground as to what the developers are up to out here [in the field]. All in all, he classes himself as a satisfied customer.

No rigorous startup required

Carl Pohrte is information services administrator of McHenry in Woodstock, Illinois, just northwest of the Windy City. He’s been a key part of a project called McSIP (McHenry County Strategy Information Plan) to integrate 21 different offices in order to build a new data communications infrastructure aimed at linking the local cities, municipalities, and county offices. The idea is to save taxpayer money by enabling residents to dial up various services from their telephone or PC and check on what’s on file about traffic violations to taxes and pay up if need be. Another aspect will be a GIS (geographical information system) application for potential developers. Indeed, so comprehensive will the full system be that data from the 1800s will be available. That matters because you don’t want to buy some land and find that Farmer Joe put in an underground water drainage system 75 years back just when you send the bulldozers in. In all, five mission-critical systems are to be rolled out, covering land use, document management, finance, election management and information communication. Anyhow, the bottom line is that to do all this good stuff the team felt it needed a solid repository, and chose the VAW. Visible won’t be embarrassed if we tell you that price was definitely one of the reasons. It’s inexpensive and doesn’t require the rigorous startup and training of other tools like [Sterling Software’s] ADW or [Texas Instruments’] IEF. That was important [to us] because we’re doing things in this project that have never been done before. Interestingly, those 21 different systems that the repository needed to co-ordinate weren’t the consequence of years and years of mainframe development, but a recent rash of client/server dating from only 1989. So in a way McHenry had already learnt that new development pans out best with some degree of overall control, or at least vision. As he says, Pohrte knows the aircraft carrier version of I-CASE, previously being employed by consulting firm Arthur Young, developers of the high-powered Navigator development methodology. But he knew that in this I-CASE no way could he afford what he calls the monolithic Information Engineering style attack. So it was a definite plus that he found he could buy a four person license to VAW for what seems in contrast to the big tools the risible sum of $9,000. A plus-plus was that he found he could link nicely to the PowerBuilder and SQA TeamTest tools he was going to use on McSIP. And the plus-factorial – Everything I thought was necessary [for an I-CASE tool] in my Arthur Young days is here [in VAW]. So it’s not just a cut-price approach – it’s the fact that the tool can deliver functionality as well? Pohrte seconds that emotion, adding that it’s in the JAD (joint application development) sessions that he’s finding the product winning big. VAW is used to create a context diagram in these meetings that leads to a process chart to an entity relation diagram for the PowerBuilder/Sybase schemas. (Of course McHenry has spent a lot more than $9,000 on the project – it’s upgrading all its PCs to at least 486s, and over 1,000 staff have had to be trained to date – but obviously it feels it’s getting real bang per buck here). So what are we to make of Visible? Just the very fact that it’s survived this long makes us think it’s worthy of some respect. It kept its head below the parapet during the whole AD/Cycle barrage, and has quietly, unassumingly, continued to win business. That being said, it’s hard to see what the company is up to with its marketing. We got the distinct impression from Nash that it’s not exactly lining up Madison Avenue ad agencies to help splash its name from billboard to billboard nationwide. Still, for an inexpensive and, according to its customers, proven product, we recommend you include Visible on your procurements list from now on. These guys are all about getting the job done, so don’t expect any free trips to Hawaii to clinch your signature. Maybe that’s another thing in its favor?