Project at a glance: U.S. Postal Service's Product Tracking System upgrade
Organization: U.S. Postal Service
Project: Product Tracking System upgrade
Challenge: To address growing demands from customers for increased visibility of their packages as they travel through the Postal network, USPS needed to upgrade its Product Tracking System to increase the number of packages the system could process, ensure low-cost scalability to meet future demands, and provide more detailed information capabilities for customers.
Solution: After considering several options, including replacing or rewriting the application, IT chose to deploy portions of the Product Tracking System on Linux, running the Cobol application through modernization software – minimizing the amount of code modifications required.
Impact: After successful completion of this modernization approach, the new environment is reducing the future costs by allowing the system to grow on a low-cost Linux platform. The solution also significantly limited any risk involved in upgrading the system by minimizing application changes.
About the Author
Rutrell Yasin is senior editor for Government Computer News. Follow him on Twitter: @Yasin36.