One foot in mainframe, one in client-server

The University of Wisconsin (Madison, WI) is piloting new information technology to bring its info distribution out of the mainframe era, while still maintaining that legacy.

With a new install of PeopleSoft (www.peoplesoft.com) for Higher Education for various records, the university has recently purchased Cypress' (www.cypressdelivers .com) Integrated Document Server to help on the distribution end.

"Cypress stores and retrieves documents, which may have been initiated on disparate platforms, sends them to any printer and also creates and automates custom report assembly," said Mary Hinz, Cypress president.

All the university offices that need to provide reports or do mass mailings will likely have the option to use Cypress for at least print distribution, according to John Peterson, director of production services at the university.

Cypress will be used first to handle mass mailings--for starters from the Admissions Office--by the middle of this month, said Peterson.

The university's immediate need for the tool is high-volume printing.

Before moving to Cypress, "our report distribution (was) mainframe only," said Jerry Gerber, assistant director for applications processing. Only character data was accepted, and anything else had to be added outside the system, which was not efficient. Cypress will deliver the ability to distribute from multiple sources at multiple locations and print out in different formats.

Within six months, Peterson expects that all the major printing needs of the university will be handled through Cypress, but it may be a while before Cypress is used to its fullest potential.

Beyond the report and output management functions, the Cypress tool offers archiving and search and retrieval functions.