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EGL case studies: Who's using EGL?

  
When people first find out about EGL, one of the questions we usually get is "Who's using EGL?" The EGL community, also known as the EGL Cafe, is a great way to find out who's using it and share with other EGL users. In particular, the EGL community has a list of Business Partners that provide offerings and services related to EGL and there's a list of EGL Success Stories showing how companies from around the world are using EGL and getting great results.
 
At Innovate this year, I attended many interesting sessions showing EGL in action. It was so exciting to see the variety of projects and hear directly from partners and customers who are happy about how quickly and easily they are able to accomplish their goals with EGL.  Here's a list of some of the EGL sessions at Innovate 2012 in Orlando (session numbers included for reference) :
  • On Sunday, Aaron Allsbrook and Jim Bouquet from ClearBlade presented "Application Development Got You Down? Address Complexity with Enterprise Generation Language, an Open, Extensible Programming Language" (DR-2279). This session gave attendees a good overview of EGL and how it can be used in a wide range of environments. Plus, they showed a neat customer case study using EGL to convert from mainframe application to EGL Rich UI. 
  • On Monday, "Feeling Trapped? Application modernization that can move you from 'green screen' to mobile and beyond" (SZ-1595), Mike Connor and Will Smythe from IBM and Slavik Zorin from Synchony Systems discussed Rational Migration Extension and EGL as one modernization strategy that can help reduce risk and cost by reusing existing logic while moving your applications to more modern technologies. Again, a customer case study was included showing a migration to EGL Rich UI. It was amazing to see the before and after screenshots. (You can see some of them on the Synchrony Systems home page.)
  • Also on Monday, Lars Andersen from XACT Consulting A/S (see Lars' picture below) and Kim Reinert from VP Securities showed how they migrated VP Securities from propriety software with high license fees to EGL resulting in a considerable cost savings and more flexible and agile system in "Simplify Multiplatform Application Development with EGL" (SZ-2286). A great case study directly from the partner and client that implemented it.
Lars from XACT talks about EGL
  • Wednesday, Aaron from ClearBlade (see Aaron's picture below) showed how they are using EGL (including the Dojo mobile widgets and custom widgets) and Worklight for a mobile solution for one of their clients in "Modernizing Host Applications for Mobile Devices" (PWR-1382). He talked about how much data exists on System z and Power systems and how EGL can provide new UIs for access that data.Cutting-edge, really cool stuff.
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  • Also Wednesday, "Smarter Computing with Enterprise Modernization" (PWR-1344) was jam packed with EGL success stories. Syed Basheer from Royal Cyber talked about how they helped Gulistan Carpets to combine several green screens into a single Web UI and usea dashboard to consolidate data for performance improvements resulting in more users though fewer service calls. Walter Larry from Aon Integramark talked about how they also worked with Royal Cyber to reuse RPG business logic with EGL to save time and increase performance resulting in lower cost to run their applications. Zhan Wen Chen from China Merchants Bank talked about a migration project for their credit card systems involving many developers using Rational Developer for Power Systems. Jim from ClearBlade (see Jim's picture below) showed how they helped GE Capital use EGL to more easily track their railcars using Web 2.0 UI. 
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  • Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I was in the User Experience Zone discussing how folks use Rational IDEs, including Rational Business Developer and our open-source project on Eclipse, EGL Development Tools (EDT). Thanks for the folks that dropped by to tell me about their experiences. 
  • Thursday In "Modernize IBM i Applications with Open Access (RPG), EGL and Web 2.0" (PWR-1703), Bill Smith, product manager for Rational Developer for Power Systems, talked about how people that use EGL love EGL. (A sentiment I've heard many times over the last few years.) He covered the different packages that can be used for EGL development including RBD, EDT, RDi for SOA and RDzEnterprise.
  • The EGL community even got a plug in the Birds of a Feather session "Engineers can be Social: A Look at Collaboration without Traditional Boundaries." Here's a picture of Susan Peich from developerWorks showing the EGL community as a example of a good online community where IBMers, partners, and customers collaborate. 
susan peich shows EGL community

 
Innovate always has great sessions where clients share their experiences. Plus, it's great to see folks in person and have a little fun. This year we went to SeaWorld and enjoyed dolphin and killer whale shows, rollercoaster rides, and a concert by Foreigner. I'm still singing "Juke Box Hero" in my head. Long live 80s rock!
 
In addition to the information about EGL usage on the EGL community and at Innovate, people are sharing their EGL success stories on their company web sites and places like ModernizeIT.eu and the EGL group on LinkedIn.
 
And the EGL forum is a great place to ask questions and help out other EGL users. There's a lot of great discussion on the forum so I'd encourage all EGL users to use the Watch Forum feature to keep up with the latest threads.  
 
So to answer the question of "Who's using EGL?" ...a wide variety of folks around the world from banks to carpet manufacturers to railcar companies. We'd love to hear your success stories with EGL and for you to share it on the EGL community! Contact Hong Ge Gao (hgegao@cn.ibm.com) with your EGL success story!
 
Theresa