PHFA and Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise Make a Good Team

A few months ago, Chuck Losinski, one of our Product Support Managers, interviewed Kevin Wike from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA) about his experience with Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise. PHFA provides the capital for decent, safe, and affordable homes and apartments for older adults, and people of modest means, or with special housing needs. Kevin has been with PHFA for about 25 years and today he manages a programming staff of IBM i and Microsoft .NET developers and a partitioned IBM i POWER6 server. Here’s the story he told Chuck...

A High-Tech, IBM i-Centric Environment

“Our developers have multiple skill sets. We’ve written approximately 80% of our software because we need specialized, custom business applications. There are only fifty state agencies like us in the country [one per state], so it can be difficult to find what we need off the shelf. Around 2001, we started using our Microsoft environment as another platform for applications we’d developed in conjunction with IBM i. We use one Microsoft server for our Windows 'batch' server. We’ve written a lot of apps for that environment—we have about fifty different batch-type applications and monitor jobs running. Originally, we used the Microsoft Task Scheduler to control that environment. When we starting using more advanced scheduling, it wasn’t robust enough for our needs."

Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise Joins the Party

“Then, Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise hit the scene. We already used Robot/SCHEDULE for scheduling the IBM i server. When we saw the capabilities of Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise, we thought, ‘Let’s keep everything IBM i-centric.’ We use the IBM i server to support the websites, so we decided to make it our standard for scheduling. Now, we control all jobs, on all platforms, with Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise."

A Fast Smooth Conversion

“I was very impressed with how smoothly the conversion to Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise went and how easy it is to use. When we started Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise, we took everything from the Windows Task Scheduler and converted it in two days. Basically, in two days, the new production environment was running. I really like how easy to use Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise is—it’s very intuitive."

No More Auditor Concerns

“A nice thing about automated scheduling becomes obvious when the auditors come calling. It’s great because it’s self-documenting. With all the Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise reporting, job history is easy to track. We can really satisfy auditor demands. For example, I think the Good Morning Report is worth a million bucks. You look at it, and you can know what ran normally and what didn’t. The auditors like that."

Automation Payback: Dollars and Sense

“I’m pleased because there’s both a financial payback and a quality of service payback. We’ve never had a dedicated operator, so there’s financial savings. Automation makes things simple and Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise is a great product.”