Joe Brown, the president of Roanoke Manufacturing, requested that Jack Jones, the MIS department manager, investigate the viability of selling their products over the Web. Currently, the MIS department is still using an IBM mainframe as their primary deployment environment. As a first step, Jack contacted his friends at IBM to see if they had any suggestions as to how Roanoke Manufacturing could move toward supporting sales in an electronic commerce environment while keeping their mainframe as their main system. His friends explained that IBM (www.ibm.com) now supports Java and Linux on their mainframes. Jack has also learned that IBM owns Rational (www.rational.com), the creator of the UML and the Unified Process. Jack’s friends suggested that Jack investigate using objectoriented systems as a basis for developing the new system.

They also suggested that using the Rational Unified Process (RUP), Java, and virtual Linux machines on his current mainframe as a way to support the move toward a distributed electronic commerce system would protect his current investment in his legacy systems while allowing the new system to be developed in a more modern manner. Even though Jack’s IBM friends were very persuasive, Jack is still a little wary about moving his operation from a structured systems approach to this new object-oriented approach.

Assuming that you are one of Jack’s IBM friends, how would you convince him to move toward using an object-oriented systems development method, such as RUP, and using Java and Linux as a basis for developing and deploying the new system on Roanoke Manufacturing’s current mainframe?