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JCS Technologies (Click to see details)

• Web Site
• JCSZip and JCSPhone Databases for Subscription
• JCSExcel
• JCS Canadian Data (JCSCan)
• JCSAll
• Future Expectations.

JCS expected transformations

• Initially not expected: JCS (Base) subscriber user installed products will continue to be Office 2003 based, at least until we are forced to move from the technology either by lack of support or by compulsive technology innovation by Microsoft. Office 2003 is an awesome product! We expect our customers to demand support for what they have installed into the future.
• Server NT4 and ASP1 have got to be replaced, simply because NT4 is no longer supported and the later ASP technologies, especially ASP.net are so compellingly superior.

GreatData has Great Data, and Superior Support, and JCS has done well to emulate them. Customers have observed, however, that, while GreatData and JCS have been cooperative in their support, the customer needs to work with two independent software vendors in both purchasing and technically interfacing, and the customers have asked JCS to develop its own product.

GreatData’s Canadian Database has been relatively expensive in comparison to other similar products. JCS’ new product will supply a one year subscription to JCS’ customers for approximately 40% of the cost of a Greatdata annual subscription. In fact, JCS will supply subscriptions to all three of its databases (JCSZip, JCSPhone, and JCSCan) for 75% of GreatData’s subscription cost to just its Canadian Data for one year.

• We have received many requests over the years for some capability to provide on-line query access to JCS database contents. Up until now, methods have been largely "home-grown" and kluge, and JCS has not considered such offerings
• With the maturity of Web Services and the widespread acceptance of XML technology, such offerings are now possible with reasonable efforts. JCS certainly is giving consideration to such implementations later in 2006.

• Microsoft Office will go through a major upgrade during 2006, and JCS will need to migrate their products to that new version. We do not see that we will have significant difficulty migrating our current 3 databases to the new designs, capabilities, limitations at least for the data portions. There may be some minor changes necessary for the forms and queries supported, but these are considered minor.
• Where we see major problems is in transitioning the JCSExcel product. The DLL which supports JCSExcel depends heavily and almost irreversibly on VB 6 level instructions and data constructs that did not make it into VB .net. We suspect that JCSExcel as we know it will instead need to be transitioned to get its data from web services from our central server, and/or will need to work more closely with the JCS databases on the customer’s site. In any case, we see JCSExcel requiring a major transition of an as of yet unknown nature in the future. Because Office 2003 is projected to be supported for at least a few years, and maybe for a number of years, the needed transition may be a long way off.

The reader of this document may be becoming concerned with JCS future and actually the future of many companies similar to JCS, and well you might. I shared that concern when I realized what it was going to take to transform JCS into the future.

Historically, systems designers designed systems, programmers wrote code, integrators tested and integrated, marketers sold, and users used, and most of the time, things went very well. In time, however, if something had to change, the whole process had to be redone.

Under .NET and the present Microsoft vision of the future, great thought and effort has gone into giving the ability to bring legacy software and systems to the new environment. If anything, the major problem is taking out enough code and logic to take advantage of the powerful functions and subroutines now available. The learning curve to .net is extremely significant, but again Microsoft has cushioned that blow and effort by their benefits offered through their ISV program.

.Net is arguably the most significant developmental and operational environment ever available as it tends ever more close to a programmer-less environment. In many cases, code does not need to be written as some subroutine or "call" is available to accomplish the needed task. If that "call" is understood and used, then future versions of the software only need to change that one instance of the "call" and the change will propel itself throughout the system. Certainly .Net shortens development cycles. I suspect that history will treat it very kindly. I further suspect that history will find that other, competitive environments will not be treated so kindly. JCS appreciates the assistance received from Microsoft and, largely because of the support, JCS will exist a long time into the future before, during, and after its transition to .NET

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JCS has been a dynamic organization, sensitive to its Users needs, and with a true desire to continuously meeting those needs. We don’t know what the Nth transformation might be, and likely, we have users already preparing to ask us to help them meet their needs into the future. The only fixed rule is that we will always listen and support any need which can be applied to the user base and be economically justified.

Let the changes begin!