ITS realized that mainframes are still essential part of today's business. Many applications still run on mainframes and it is cost prohibitive for many to upgrade to newer technologies.

Many mainframe applications were built on having an interactive session with a user typing a way and looking for feedback on the screen. These mainframe screens are often inflexible and lack modern screen design.

Application designers utilizing newer technologies have created great GUI, user friendly applications and wish to interact with the mainframe to handle the complicated business functionality.

ITS created a C++ class library utilizing HLLAPI to automate mainframe screen access and to get around the need to have somebody retype information or wait for a a batch to start processing.