Small Business Awards 2018

14 Corporate Vision / 2018 Small Business Awards , bw-fcc GmbH Best Business Support SME – Switzerland & COBOL Applications Designer of the Year - Switzerland Drawing on the vast experience of its Founder BerndWilkens, bw-fcc GmbH is an innovative SME focused on providing unique software solutions for a range of clients. As part of our overview of a selection of winners of this year’s Small Business Awards we profile the firm to find out more. After a 35-years IT carrier working in different development and management positions for client IT departments and providers like Software AG, Oracle, and IBM, Bernd Wilkens founded bw-fcc GmbH in 2016. Following his studies in business- oriented Information Technology (Dipl-Informatiker FH) he spent about 20 years of his carrier with COBOL education, development and deployment on various platforms. Today, bw-fcc is focussing on COBOL software modernization, an approach to avoid risky re- development of existing COBOL applications by integration of the implemented business logic and processes into a bunch of ready- to-use functions and features (fccFrameWork) covering all aspects of a modern, state-of- the-art application environment. There are many reasons for clients to enhance their existing COBOL applications: redeploy from old and expensive hardware like mainframes or mini computers to commodity IT infrastructure or Cloud Computing platforms, adapt the look and feel of “old-fashioned” user interfaces to state-of-the-art web interfaces including multi- language, open up from the closed COBOL file system to databases, and enable these applications for public web services. fccFrameWork is designed to protect client’s massive investments and proven process know-how by supporting COBOL application modernizing rather than running complex, risky, and long- lasting redevelopment projects. Modernization in this context is related to a bunch of ready-to-use application modules supporting different storage models (Cobol file system, c-treeRTG, Databases), Online Help, multi-language, state- of-the-art authentication models, e-mail, audit trail, job control, and many more. With bw-fcc’s offerings, the team does not force clients to re-develop their existing application portfolio to reach their goals but help them modernizing their COBOL source code by integration into fccFrameWork. As a result, future client development activities can be focussed on maintaining their vital and proven business processes and functions and receive the surrounding application environment from fccFrameWork. And as fccFrameWork is created and maintained with COBOL development environments generating Java bytecode, deployment is hardware agnostic and all functions and features are natively callable from clients COBOL applications but are also provided as methods for usage outside COBOL environments like Java, C#, and others. Ultimately, the implementation of the fccFrameWork is not only a one-time modernization approach but builds the foundation for the ongoing modernization of the client’s COBOL application portfolio. As such, the firm permanently works on integrating new technologies, additional application services, and this will remain bw-fcc’s ongoing focus as it looks towards an exciting future. Oct18650 CONTACT DETAILS: Company: bw-fcc GmbH Name: Bernd Wilkens Address: Zehntenfreistrasse 11, 4103 Bottmingen, Switzerland Telephone: +41 79 352 87 90 Web Address: www.fccframework.com