Case Study - ABAS Software AG

ABAS Software AG

abas-EKS, the product of ABAS Software AG, is a production planning and scheduling as well as merchandise management system. It contains integrated modules for business departments such as sales and buying, calculation, production, stock control and availability, financial accounting, cost accounting, workflow management, and others. The latest version, abas-EKS 8, contains an integrated connection to e-mail and the Internet, with direct access from within the software. The product is also well equipped for the new millennium and the introduction of the Euro currency.

abas-EKS was originally created for UNIX-based systems. In recent years, market demand has grown for a Windows version of the software system. The number of prospective buyers was rising steadily. ABAS Software AG had to react swiftly in order to benefit from this quickly emerging market opportunity and meet the challenge - and they did. Above all, a fast, cost-effective solution was therefore needed for porting abas-EKS from UNIX to Windows.

Time-to-market was an important issue for the software company. It needed a Windows product available in time to maintain customer loyalty and to stay ahead of competitors. But even without competitive pressures, ABAS Software AG sought a porting solution that could save time without high costs.

The Solution
The German software engineering company selected MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers (formerly NuTCRACKER) to automate its UNIX to Windows porting process. Interestingly, the abas project team found the information they needed about NuTCRACKER over the Internet at http://www.unilab-pb.de, the site of the German NuTCRACKER distributor. According to product manager Peter Forscht, "After looking at several possible tools, NuTCRACKER seemed to be the product best suited for the job."

For the Windows solution, the abas project team had to port approximately 350,000 lines of C source code from the overall system abas-EKS. Using NuTCRACKER, they needed about 3 months. The porting process began in November of 1996. One month was required to validate NuTCRACKER and another two months to conduct the port. The actual porting process took 20 staff-days, followed by a quality assurance period of about 3 months. Testing, installation procedures and optimizing the software environment for Win32 rounded off the project. The Windows solution of abas-EKS is now available.

Advantages and Benefits of Using NuTCRACKER
ABAS Software AG has been able to quickly bring its new Windows version of abas-EKS to market: It is now available, in time to benefit from the growth of the Windows sector of the production planning and scheduling marketplace.

NuTCRACKER has played a significant part in making this possible.

"NuTCRACKER met our expectations fully," says project head manager Erich Sartori. "Our ported Windows application demonstrates the same, full-scale performance as our UNIX installations."

In addition, NuTCRACKER dramatically cut the time required for the port. One advantage: The developers could use the run-time libraries and the shell environment that NuTCRACKER employs. Without them, many run-time functions would have had to be adjusted, taking up valuable time. Erich Sartori estimates that the company saved approximately nine
staff-months. The bundled UNIX commands and utilities saved at least another man-year.

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