Kenco uses automation to streamline development

Customer Case Study Kenco

The Customer

Woman-owned and financialy strong, Kenco has built lasting customer relationships for more than 60 years. Kenco’s focus is on common-sense solutions that drive uncommon value.

Kenco logo

Context

Kenco wanted to accelerate the delivery of its custom-developed software. Its existing software development tools did not meet all of the company’s needs. In addition, issues with the existing processes for software configuration management, builds and deployments caused software deployment failures and random outages. “Some of the biggest problems we had were related to deployments”, says Don Johnson, senior solutions architect, Kenco. “When you deploy RPG programs that are compiled incorrectly, the application will have errors.” As a result, testers would spend time troubleshooting issues with the deployment rather than testing the code.

Solution

To resolve these challenges, Kenco wanted to create a more collaborative application lifecycle management process. The company believed that adhering to such process would accelerate software delivery, reduce outage frequency and ultimately help improve product quality.

The company implemented a solution consisting of a suite of IBM Rational software along with the ARCAD Pack for Rational solution.

Case Study Highlights

  • Company: Kenco
  • Industry: Logistic
  • Characteristics: Kenco provides integrated logistics solutions all engineered for operational excellence on the IBM i system.
  • Challenge: To eliminate deployment failures and outages, Kenco wanted to create a more intelligent and collaborative application lifecycle management process for its IBM i team.
  • Solutions: IBM Rational Developer for i, IBM Rational Team Concert
You don’t have people working in two or three different tools to get the job done. It’s difficult to tell where Rational Team Concert stops and ARCAD starts.”
Scott Lancaster, Director, IT application development, Kenco