Service Merchandise Selects CA-Impact/2000 As The Jewel Of Its Year 2000 Century Date Change Initiative.

ISLANDIA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--October 2, 1997--

Leading Retail Jeweler Uses CA Discovery 2000 Tool To Analyze

Time Required To Convert 6,000 Legacy Programs

To determine the resources required to bring its 6,000 custom-designed legacy software programs into compliance with the Year 2000 century date change requirement, Service Merchandise Company has selected CA-Impact/2000, a key component of Computer Associates' Discovery 2000 solution. America's largest jewelry retailer, Service Merchandise operates 357 stores in 37 states.

For a Fortune 100 retailer such as Service Merchandise, finding an early and economical resolution to the Year 2000 issue is essential. "Retailing applications such as sales forecasting, order management, and inventory automation are frequently date-driven," said Suzanne Speight, Senior Systems Analyst.

From the data center at its Nashville, TN headquarters, Service Merchandise supports the retail operations of its 357 stores. The company relies on an Amdahl 5995-7670-M host, operating under MVS/ESA. Its software portfolio of custom-developed code includes 6,000 programs representing 129 applications and over 6 million lines of COBOL and CA-IDMS database management system code.

Moreover, the estimate of 45,000 hours considers only the time required to convert Service Merchandise's custom-designed code. It does not include any of 140 packaged software products the company leases to help manage such functions as payroll, general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and inventory. As part of Service Merchandise's overall Y2K program, the IT department will be responsible for ensuring that the respective vendors provide upgraded and fully-compliant packages that can be re-installed in a timely fashion.

Service Merchandise had two requirements in selecting a strategic Year 2000 impact analysis tool. First, the tool had to be able to analyze CA-IDMS code. Roughly 40 percent of Service Merchandise's software portfolio is CA-IDMS code. Second, the tool had to be easy-to-install and easy-to-use. After considering and testing a number of Y2K impact analysis tools, some of which proved too difficult to install and one of which failed to handle CA-IDMS code, Service Merchandise installed CA-Impact/2000.

"I had my first reports on the same day we installed CA-Impact/2000," said Speight. "We used the tool to interrogate CA-IDMS code at the sub-schema level."

Shortly after implementing CA-Impact/2000, Service Merchandise determined that to convert its 6,000 programs would require 45,000 hours of effort. A simple scan of the company's software portfolio using CA-Impact/2000 quickly revealed the resources required.

The retailer elected to demonstrate proof of concept by converting a pilot project and then extrapolating lessons learned to the general effort. By selecting the relatively complex Payroll Budget System, a mission-critical trend analysis budgeting application, Service Merchandise expected to encounter as many conversion challenges as possible.

Based on the successful conversion of the Payroll Budget System, Service Merchandise demonstrated that CA-Impact/2000 is a user-friendly tool capable of analyzing a complex, parameter-driven system, which includes a large number of CICS screens, and considerable CA-IDMS code.

The company also learned a number of specific lessons. First, Service Merchandise discovered that the amount of time allotted for testing the pilot project was inadequate. In subsequent conversion efforts, the company will earmark more time for testing. Second, the company found reason to re-evaluate the level of programmer training best suited to the conversion effort. In many cases, a higher level of training is required.

In addition to CA-Impact/2000, Service Merchandise has also installed multiple copies of CA-Realia II Workbench and the Workbench CICS and Batch mainframe options. These tools provide Service Merchandise with superior debugging capabilities. Using the CA-Realia II Workbench as an interface, Service Merchandise programmers can debug programs using datafiles directly from the host without requiring data or programs to be downloaded.

CA-Impact/2000 can execute on MVS, VSE, and Windows platforms. Service Merchandise has elected to operate the program on the Amdahl host because a majority of the programs to be converted are associated with anywhere from 10-50 copybooks. Downloading these copybooks to the LAN would be prohibitive. While many companies prefer to do conversion work on the LAN in order to avoid service level interruptions on the host, Service Merchandise has not encountered any significant overhead penalties from running CA-Impact/2000 on the host.

Service Merchandise has taken a conservative approach in its conversion strategy: only date fields that absolutely have to be updated in order to keep the business running will be converted. The company's conversion strategy calls for the updating only of date fields which are part of a fixed or sort key or sorted set, according to Speight. "Otherwise we are leaving the dates alone," she added.

CA-Impact/2000 has helped Service Merchandise distinguish between essential "must convert now" resources and less critical resources. "There are occasions where we may or may not expand date fields," said Speight. "When we want to know if it's possible to expand the date field and how much time will it take, CA-Impact/2000 easily identifies wherever that field shows up and gives us detailed information so we can make a rational decision as to whether or not converting it is justified.

"At Service Merchandise, CA-Impact/2000 is not geared exclusively for the Year 2000 effort," said Speight. "We intend to use the tool any time we have the need to expand fields. The tool will allow us to quickly identify where the specified fields are and allow us to do a much better analysis of what the impact of those changes will be."

While other companies are using the Year 2000 conversion effort as an occasion to re-engineer or otherwise modify existing applications, Service Merchandise has made a conscious decision to avoid such pitfalls. "We believe the challenges of managing a Year 2000 conversion effort are strenuous enough without adding additional change management complexities," said Sylvia Brallier, Assistant Vice President, Corporate Systems.

However, if programmers encounter hard-coded century date fields, they are authorized to correct those, according to Brallier.

Service Merchandise does have a number of legacy applications that are on target for reengineering after the Year 2000 effort. But Year 2000-compliancy comes first. "By approaching the reengineering projects in a sequential manner, we will have Year 2000-compliant applications that can be utilized until the new applications can be built, without having to be overly concerned with development timelines," added Brallier.

In 1994, Service Merchandise went through a data center conversion from a Honeywell mainframe to its present Amdahl environment, an experience which gave the retailer considerable expertise in implementing conversion details. Based on that conversion experience, the retailer has decided to implement the bulk of the date field conversion work on a manual basis using existing staff supplemented by contract workers.

The company started its estimating effort in the third quarter of 1996, suspended it for the busy fourth quarter retailing season, and restarted it in earnest in January, 1997. The retailer plans to have all its custom-developed code fully compliant by the first quarter of 1998.

Service Merchandise, "America's Leading Jeweler," offers an extensive array of fine jewelry and jewelry services as well as a broad selection of name brand products in categories of home furnishings, luggage, electronics, cameras, sporting goods, toys and juvenile products. Headquartered in Nashville, TN, the company operates 357 stores in 37 states, and employs approximately 27,000 associates across the country. Service Merchandise reported sales of nearly $4 billion in 1996. More information is available on the company's web site on the Internet, at http://www.servicemerchandise. com.

Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA), with headquarters in Islandia, N.Y., is the world leader in mission-critical business software. The company develops, licenses and supports more than 500 integrated products that include enterprise computing and information management, application development, manufacturing and financial applications. CA has over 10,000 people in 160 offices in 40 countries and had revenue of $4 billion in fiscal year 1997. CA can be reached by visiting http://www.cai.com on the World Wide Web, emailing [e-mail] or calling 1-516-342-5224.

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CONTACT: Computer Associates International, Inc., Islandia

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