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GT Software today announced deployment of its Ivory Data
Access solution by Region 20 of Texas’ Educational Service
Centers. A quasi-government business, ESCs provide services
in the areas of administration, business support,
certification and recruitment, curriculum, instruction and
assessment, health and safety, professional development,
specialized services and technology across the state.
Among the many administrative requirements is the reporting
of grades and attendance, a seemingly obvious function that
nonetheless can distract teachers’ attention from their main
mission of preparing students for their proper roles in
adult society.
The student information is maintained on a CA Datacom
database management system on ESC’s IBM z9 series mainframe
in San Antonio. Thousands of users enter information
period-by-period, resulting in a tremendous amount of
information flow with frequent peaks and valleys.
The mainframe database system has served a valuable function
over the years, providing essential information to the
front-end student system and other educational applications.
With the increasing workload and updating becoming a
challenge, maintaining user loyalty mandated a better
approach to data access. Keeping all the mainframe data
centrally available to all users was a requirement, and the
decision was made to extend data access from widely
dispersed PCs within the districts using the Grade Book
application on teachers’ desktops.
After a thorough search, Region 20 contacted GT Software,
providers of the Ivory Service Architect solution that
web-enables legacy systems while maintaining the investment
in mainframe resources. Ivory Service Architect consists of
Ivory Studio, a graphical modeling environment; Ivory
Server, a high performance SOAP processor with runtime
service orchestration; Ivory Data Access; and Ivory Server
for Batch.
“Ivory Data Access installed easily and did not require any
re-training of personnel, an important aspect for Region 20,
which was able to take full responsibility for the
implementation,” said John McCauley, associate director for
IT. “Automating these processes and extending them to
anytime access is making administrative processes easier and
more straightforward, contributing to teachers’ available
time for responsibilities that are critical to the daily
performance of their jobs,” said McCauley. “The success in
Region 20 has resulted in a turnaround, and now increasing
numbers of customers want to be added to the Grade Book
application.”
Region 20 is running Ivory Data Access on the mainframe in
CICS. Teachers can log in via the Internet any time, any
day, to perform important reporting functions. Region 20 is
also fiscal agent for the Texas Computer Cooperative (TCC),
which develops the software.
“There is no higher calling than education,” said Rob
Morris, chief strategy officer at GT Software. “Allowing
teachers to update information at any time, even during
their school day, makes them more productive and effective
in their calling. It is very rewarding to be a part of this
success, and we look forward to helping the Educational
Service Centers spread this improvement across Texas and
beyond.”
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