Understanding Terminal Emulation

For the most part, running a successful company is easier than ever before. The digital age has provided an almost limitless collection of resources in order to get more done, faster and for less money. However, at times, these assets can also be very challenging. You have to make sure you’re managing them or they could quickly become a burden. One way of making the most of your virtual toolbox is with something called terminal emulation. At some point or another, this will become essential for just about every business out there, so it’s definitely worth understanding.

“Terminal” here refers to the specifics of a computer, usually a PC. Generally, updating your company’s computers with newer programs and operating systems is considered a good thing. However, moving forward like this can also mean that legacy software gets left behind. You can’t simply access it from your updated PCs because of the difference in programs.

In the past, this was a real problem. Like we said at the beginning, it’s one that essentially every company runs into, though, as eventually every business gets to the point where their legacy software is no longer accessible.

With a terminal emulator, though, a computer can basically take on the important traits of older versions that will allow it to access the essential legacy software, other programs, and/or data.

It’s important to understand that emulation software doesn’t change a computer permanently. Instead, it’s very much like any other form of software. You install it (often, it’s installed across a LAN server) and then bring it up when necessary. Modern versions are extremely convenient to use, making it possible to grab information from a decade ago at the drop of a hat.

The one big difference is that this software does not produce content that has a graphical user interface (GUI). Instead, the program shows a specific mainframe OS application that has a text-only interface.

Depending on your terminals, you’ll need various forms of software to emulate them. However, in many cases, these platforms can emulate more than one kind of terminal, making it easy to extract data from various sources at the same time and cross-reference them if necessary.

One thing that often draws companies to terminal emulation software is the need to produce more powerful analytics. Without being able to go back and grab data from prior systems, you’re greatly limited in what you’re able to do, as far as data is concerned. You can only call upon figures from the current operating system your company is using.

With emulation software, you can leverage all kinds of data from years and years ago. Furthermore, you can pull that data from several different sources, making it possible to create reporting that really packs a punch.

Furthermore, you can use your platform to make that reporting something you can pull up at a moment’s notice, so you’re not going through laborious steps to extract data every time you need it. This will come in handy when clients or business partners decide they need to see analytics at a moment’s notice.

Of course, all that reporting wouldn’t be very helpful if it didn’t make any sense to others. This is yet another example of how emulation programs can benefit your company. First, you can customize the textual layout however you wish. Change the background and font color, highlight specific areas, increase the size of characters, etc. Do whatever is necessary for your data to be easier to make sense out of.

When it comes to presenting the info to others, you have even more opportunities to customize it so that your audience won’t struggle to get a handle on the numbers. Again, this real-time capability makes all the difference when you’re dealing with people outside of your organization who may not be familiar with the data you’re presenting.

Another huge advantage is the ease with which you can index your data. As with reporting, the software wouldn’t be a lot of help if you went through a bunch of steps to harvest the information you needed and then it was gone the moment you moved on. Going through all those steps again wouldn’t be a very efficient use of time. Instead of having to take a screenshot though, emulation software gives you a convenient virtual location to index it.

You can then make it available to whomever you like or simply leave it there for a future date when you may need that data again.

Obviously, terminal emulation may make you nervous if you’re thinking about the unintended consequences that could occur from gathering all that information and then housing it in one central location. The good news is that modern platforms take this into consideration and therefore come with a ton of security features. Aside from the obligatory protection from outside parties, emulation programs can also give you the power to limit who in your organization is able to access certain information, when they can see it and what they’re able to do with it.

If all of this seems a bit too good to be true, then you’re probably waiting for the other shoe to drop and expecting that it will be in the form of an exorbitant price. Fortunately, this isn’t the case. Emulation platforms are subscription based and thus easy to cancel should you ever want to. Furthermore, when you consider the alternatives, this software is a bargain at any price.

Trying to maintain separate terminals on your site to access old data would be a clumsy way to go about doing it, yet it’s really the only other option. You’d have to spend a lot of money and space keeping those machines running too.

With terminal emulation software, the entire breadth of your enterprise’s information, from day one until now, is available to you. More than that, though, you can harvest and review it in a number of convenient ways.