ASNA is now an official reseller of IBM's Rational Open Access RPG Edition, the company has announced. By reselling RPG Open Access, ASNA can make it much easier for customers to acquire the product, according to ASNA.

RPG Open Access, which was released by IBM in the spring of 2010, is perhaps the most fundamental change that IBM has made to the IBM i platform since it was introduced. RPG Open Access provides an i5 API that enables ILE RPG programs redirect file IO to third-party "handlers." Since February 2011, ASNA has been shipping its Open Access-based product ASNA Wings. Wings provides a browser-based alternative to the IBM i's traditional character-based green-screen user interface. With Wings and Open Access, the ILE RPG logic and file IO remains on the IBM i but you get the benefits of a dramatically improved user interface. Wings lets you selectively modernize your display files; the display files you choose not to modernize are rendered with the ASNA 5250 emulator which is built into Wings.

Despite the power and importance of Open Access, its distribution and availability from IBM has been a sore point for many.

"It's true that initially IBM was a little clumsy with the marketing and distribution of Open Access," says ASNA U.S. President Anne Ferguson. "But by making ASNA an Open Access reseller, IBM is resolving the problem in the best way possible," she says. "All a customer needs to do now to get Open Access is give us a call! We are the one-stop shop for acquiring Open Access and getting Wings, the best Open Access-based product on the market," says Ferguson.

Another source of Open Access friction for potential customers had been that IBM, until recently, hadn't made trial copies of Open Access available. According to the IBM party line, you had to buy Open Access to try it. To help resolve this issue, ASNA has a test bed IBM i with the latest version of Open Access installed ready for customers to use remotely to give Open Access and Wings a test drive. ASNA's Ferguson continues, "Our mission is to make it easy for our customers to understand and appreciate the power of Open Access with ASNA Wings. We think that once you experience Wings with your programs you will be impressed very quickly. We're invested in your success at ASNA and here to do what it takes to make improving your IBM i applications as easy as possible."

In its fifth decade as a market leader and innovator for IBM midrange systems, ASNA provides comprehensive and flexible solutions for modernizing IBM i applications.

ASNA enables companies to integrate and extend their RPG green-screen solutions to .NET, .NET Framework, the Web and Mobile, while preserving investments in IT and human resources.

Our solutions are distributed worldwide and used by more than a million end users.ASNA holds a Microsoft Gold competency in Application Development, is a Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner, and a Gold level partner of Microsoft's Platform Modernization Alliance, and a member of IBM's PartnerWorld for Developers.

To find out more about ASNA and its products see their listings in the MC Showcase Buyer's Guide.