Mainframes are integral to card processing functionality within the financial services, insurance and retail sectors. The Logic Group currently provides mainframe solutions to some of the biggest names in these areas, including Tesco, Asda, The John Lewis Partnership, GE Capital and TUI.
Our mainframe solution comprises a powerful and versatile transaction monitor which runs two applications – Solve/2 and SNA Protocol Converter – and a service characterised by the skills of a highly expert team with over one hundred man years of experience working on mainframe solutions.
Context of our products
With SNA increasingly being seen as a thing of the past, and TCP/IP as the future, there is a real need for businesses with mainframes to be able to convert data packets to IP. Creating IP messaging in the mainframe, however, is not at all straightforward. Currently, businesses with mainframes are trying to compromise by pushing batch files onto Windows or Unix servers. This is problematic because batch files do not comply with PCI DSS – they are difficult to encrypt on a mainframe – nor should they store the 3 figure credit card security codes, which have increasingly become a mandated fraud prevention requirement for many companies.
We know that our customers need to be able to export transaction data (including data for credit and debit card authorisation) from the mainframe in a way that is secure and which meets industry standards. To meet this need we have developed the SNA Protocol Converter, a resilient and hard working transaction monitor which enables current and legacy applications to communicate from the mainframe using up-to-date communications protocols such as TCP/IP.
| Benefits of Our Products |
| 1. SNA Protocol Converter |
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Highly flexible: allows protocol conversion from MQ or SNA to IP, MQ or SNA to X.25 and X.25 to SNA terminal |
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Provides more expansive functionality and flexibility than IBM’s CSFI mainframe solution, in supporting IP Streams and LU6.2 |
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Enables organisations to implement and utilise modern network facilities with hard-to-change 'legacy' applications
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An off the shelf, dependable, value for money product which is quick and easy to deploy
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Implementation Example
The Logic Group has many customers who utilise a product call Solve/SE to process online authorisation requests for credit and debit cards. In the past these companies have communicated real time authorisation messages from a mainframe by SNA to copies of Solve/SE running on AIX Unix servers. Alternatively individual transaction files or batch transactions files have been FTP'd to specific directories which have then been polled by a file based input driver before being processed by Solve/SE.
By implementing SNPC, Mainframe applications can communicate to Solve/SE by TCP/IP. The copy of Solve/SE can be deployed in the client data centres on either Windows or Unix servers (not just AIX) or as a PCI Certified managed service from The Logic Group's data centres.
| 2. Solve/2 |
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Ideal for mid-tier and tier one businesses |
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Full APACS 30 Switch |
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Can host its own acquirer transaction, enabling authorisation input for store cards, for example |
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Hot card file functionality |
| Benefits of Our Mainframe Solutions Service |
| Our mainframe solutions service is characterised by expert, highly specialised skills, rapid results and response, and flexibility. The team offers these specific services: |
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product implementation |
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product deployment |
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product integration |
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bespoke development
including IBM Assembler Programming for MQ Unix System Services and general applications |
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