IBM Corp, having invested in the Israeli company last May (CI No 1,915), is making use of Sapiens International Corp NV’s eponymous product in a key re-engineering effort. IBM says it is re-engineering the systems supporting elements of its parts logistics operations at a main US Maintenance Services division distribution facility with the Sapiens rapid application development tool, and reckons that the effort will increase productivity and reduce costs – it expects significant cost savings over the next five years from applications developed with Sapiens. The unit controls the distribution of IBM maintenance parts across the US and has already used Sapiens Gateway to create a working prototype of an application containing 260 tables and more than 500 screens by converting a KnowledgeWare Inc ADW data model in less than a day. IBM Mechanicsburg has also used the rule-based, object-oriented Sapiens to build part of a line-item receipts application in one day; IBM reckons each task would have normally required several weeks. By year-end, IBM says it will use Sapiens to do an application that makes it easier to track parts ships.
