E-Business Gains "Momentum"
By John Tyler
Last year, the Bureau of Information Services (BIS) was presented with
several requests to automatically transfer files between our systems and several of our
customers. We had already been providing this service for some customers, but those
systems were a mix of hardware and software. Several of the existing systems were out of
date and were no longer supported by the vendors.
After much discussion, it was decided that a single system should be
established that would provide automated file transfer services for all of the state
agencies. All new file transfers would be through this system and legacy file transfer
systems would be converted to the new system. Several vendors were considered and Momentum
Systems, Limited was chosen in August of 1998. The name of the product is Intelligent
Network Gateway (ING), and I invite you to access http://www.momsys.com/
to learn more about the company and its products.
Here at BIS, the system consists of two IBM servers connected to the state
Wide Area Network on one side, and a bank of modems and the Internet on the other.
Momentum can send and receive files using dialup async protocols, ftp over the Internet,
and as e-mail attachments. You can send e-mail with an attached file to the Intelligent
Network Gateway. The ING with take the attachment and send it as a file transfer. The
reverse is also true. The ING can take a file, attach it to e-mail and send it to its
destination. The Intelligent Network Gateway is configured for out-going e-mail.
Outgoing files may be transferred to the Intelligent Network Gateway from
any agency server or the IBM mainframe by using a profile of this file. Instructions
within this profile tell Momentum how and where to deliver the file. Incoming files are
handled the same way.
The first agency to use Momentum was Maine Revenue Services (MRS). MRS
wanted to receive Maine state income tax returns from tax preparation companies, such as
H&R block. These files are sent from the customer to MRS and processed. An
acknowledgement is then sent to the customer’s mailbox on Momentum, where the
customer can dial in and retrieve the mail. During our inaugural season, MRS projected
20,000 Maine state tax returns would be processed by Momentum; 38,830 tax returns were
actually processed this way!
Our current projects include the Automated Medical Claims System for the
Department of Human Services, encrypted file transfers for MRS, and several automated file
transfers for Accounts and Control. The Intelligent Network Gateway system is available
for any state agency to use. Feel free to e-mail john.c.tyler@state.me.us with questions or
comments. Momentum may be just what your agency needs to conduct its e-business!
John Tyler is a Senior Technical Support Specialist in the Bureau of
Information Services Production Services Division. He has been a State employee for eight
years and has twenty-two years of experience in information technology.
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