Kansas City Life Insurance Switches to BARR/CHANNEL for SNA Server
For more than a decade, Kansas City Life Insurance has said, "We'll be with you. We're Kansas City Life." This is much more than a slogan - it's a philosophy. And, it's one that Barr Systems is proud to be able to share in.
Kansas City Life's plan was to connect 600 users to their mainframe. With the help of BARR/CHANNEL for SNA Server, they have accomplished their goal allowing all their home office personnel to access the mainframe through one Microsoft SNA Server.
The insurance company switched from their previous gateway product to the SNA Server plus BARR/CHANNEL solution. They've found it was a positive change. The host currently has 600 LUs defined for the BARR/CHANNEL and SNA Server products, and typically 400 users are active at any one time. Fred Dischman, Systems Manager, stated that he was amazed that as he increased the number of LUs there was no degradation in performance. Terminal emulation software (3270) communicates through SNA Server to an insurance package (Cybertek CK4) on the host. Response times achieved are excellent.
Founded in 1895, Kansas City Life today relies on an IBM 3090-400J MVS/ESA mainframe. Their network is 99% ethernet-based and runs TCP/IP and IPX. They use TCP/IP everywhere they can and IPX for some of their DOS clients.
In addition to the local users, Sunset Life personnel connect through routers to the home office and utilize the SNA Server as well as Netware for SAA gateways which also connect to the host with BARR/CHANNEL products.
"We like everything about Barr," Dischman said, "We are happy with Barr and are glad to see quality products like BARR/CHANNEL." Kansas City Life was one of Barr's initial test sites for the BARR/CHANNEL for SNA Server product. They were also the first site to volunteer to test our new PCI version of the channel adapter which offers data streaming. The PCI adapter is currently in the beta process and is expected to be released 4Q96.
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