Orbis Systems Creates Web Opportunities

Orbis Systems quickly became Web application development experts by using Fujitsu's Web support. This has enabled them to show their clients how to take advantage of the Web to enhance their operations. The lack of Fujitsu run-time charges helped Orbis provide competitively priced solutions and made Fujitsu stand out from the competition.

Company	Orbis Systems, a consulting company based in the Chicago area, focusing on the medical, dental and laboratory industries. Established in 1983, with a history of specializing in COBOL.
Application	Variety of Internet applications including: - Dental insurance inquiry - Medical laboratory report browsing
Environment	Windows NT, IIS 4.0
Software Used	Fujitsu COBOL, Fujitsu COBOL CGI, PowerMail, PowerCOBOL
Fujitsu COBOL Advantages	1. Development in COBOL 2. No run-time fees. 3. Excellent debugging support for Internet applications.
Benefits to Orbis Systems	Ability to offer clients competitive applications, bringing the benefits of the Internet to their operations. Fast development times through reusing existing COBOL code and working in a familiar language and environment.

COBOL + Web = Orbis Opportunity
Time Savings from Web Dental Benefits System
Laboratory Reports Brought to the Web
The Fujitsu COBOL Experience

COBOL + Web = Orbis Opportunity
Over the last 16 years, Orbis has been developing applications, mostly in COBOL, for the medical industry. For many companies that might have been how the story would have continued, but Randy Kriz, the company's entrepreneurial president, saw a big opportunity when he found out about Fujitsu COBOL's Web support. Kriz said "We used to focus only on the medical industry, but now we are offering all kinds of Internet applications."

Kriz enthusiastically describes two of the applications that have been implemented using Fujitsu COBOL products.

Time Savings from Web Dental Benefits System
"One of our clients, Affiliated Network Services, is having a lot of success with the ANS-LINK system we helped them develop. You have probably observed the challenges dental offices go through in verifying benefits for different patients. The office often has to make several telephone calls to get through to the insurer and exchange faxes before being able to determine the appropriate benefits. For participating insurance companies, ANS-LINK provides offices with the ability to check this information over the Web, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This gives big savings in time for both offices and providers.

"A couple of years ago I didn't think we would be able to provide this sort of application. However, we got there very quickly by using Fujitsu COBOL and the COBOL CGI support. Also the prototype HTML feature allowed us to break up pages into customer-specific and generic pieces - this makes it easy for us to tailor the application for our different customers.

"The ANS-LINK system runs on a dedicated server installed at a local ISP. It's running IIS 4.0 on Windows NT. ANS has another NT machine in their office that they are able to use for testing. We have provided them with maintenance utilities written in PowerCOBOL to run on this machine.

"The next step is to provide ANS with the myriad reports they'd like to see, so we've been excited to test the latest support for feeding data definitions and data into Crystal Reports from Fujitsu COBOL. Fujitsu is certainly making it easy for us to deliver great solutions to our customer."

Laboratory Reports Brought to the Web
"Another opportunity we saw was speeding the communication from medical laboratories. We have been able to adapt an existing filing system, to make reports available on-line. Users of these reports can now quickly see the latest results and, if necessary, compare past results with the click of a few buttons.

"We wanted to add an email capability to this application which we thought would be a challenge, but Fujitsu's PowerMail product made this a relatively painless enhancement."

The Fujitsu COBOL Experience
Kriz concludes, "We assessed a couple of COBOL vendors when we realized that there were COBOL options for Web applications. Fujitsu won hands-down when it came to the costs of distributing the applications. On top of this, we've found that the Fujitsu products are well designed and reliable, with just the add-on features we need. The Debugger has been excellent for working with Internet applications - I haven't had a problem that I couldn't debug.

"The only downside we've experienced is that a number of people are cautious about putting any new software on their servers. We've had our applications running for five months without any lock-ups so we have a lot of confidence in the Fujitsu run-time. If anyone is looking for a server on which to run Fujitsu COBOL applications, they can talk to us, as we'd be happy to help them.

"As you can see the Web support in Fujitsu COBOL has opened doors for us and is helping us position our business for the 21st Century."