http://ibagroupit.com/print/en/case-studies/technology/other/ses-case.html

Support Electronic System

Industry

Manufacturing

Customer

Our customer is a global IT service provider, one of the most recognized companies in the IT community.

Project Overview

The Support Electronic System (SES) project is designed to support and enhance the functionality of a system that accumulates and processes data from the end users of our customer. The data are collected from numerous locations distributed all over the world.

The Service Agent Software installed on each system of our customer gathers configuration data and sends them to the Support Electronic Data Center where the data are saved. Using the configuration data, it is possible to upgrade all systems, as well as introduce new requirements to software configuration, and apply the needed fixes.

SES tracks all contract–based deliveries to the system and jointly with the Service Agents Software performs necessary updates, as well as generates and sends reports to the relevant departments of the customer.

Based on the SOA approach, SES processes data from the Service Agent Software and interacts with various external systems using the following web services:

  • Service Data Receiver (more than 70 types of transactions) interacts with the Service Agent Software on every system to process and save configuration data.
  • Service Data Distributor gathers data from eService Database, and generates and sends reports to relevant departments for analysis.
  • Customer services including profile service provider, inventory service provider, status report service provider, bulk data service provider, and upload/download services.
  • A set of service monitors including EED, SNAP, Megamouth, ECC asynchronous monitor, Hydra monitor, pSeries manual upload service monitor, Hyper–PE monitor, CUoD processor, NetApp processor, Software Policy provider, and security certificate service provider.
  • Client Installed Inventory, a web–based portal for clients.

SES is a part of the general architecture that integrates various external services of our customer into a single IT system. The SES services are distributed to all components and closely cooperate with external web services and systems including:

  • SAP (RS3 system) through web services and SSL socket tunnel
  • Remote web services: Web Identity, Entitlement, MRDP, Goldwing, Hydra, Squadrons
  • Remote MQSeries hosts: MRPD, Megamouth support, IES system, and RETAIN system.

Built on the SOA–based J2EE technology, SES complies with customer's standards and requirements. All applications in this project provide multi–language support, the basic languages being English and Spanish.

Project Execution

The full cycle of project development and support was performed at the sites of IBA and of our customer in cooperation with the customer's clients located all over the world. The IBA team had a full access to the development and test environment, and received training on the SES business processes.

IBA was responsible for a detailed system/requirements analysis, application modules design, application development, functional and system testing, quality assurance, and document preparation.

The development process followed the RUP methodology with the use of Agile Scrum principles.

The project implementation included the following stages:

  • 24x7 Level 2 application support
  • Level 3 support: enhancing Support Electronic Architecture through development of new functionality or/and modification of the existing modules
  • Expansion of the Support Electronic Architecture functionality through development and deployment of new application modules and new web services in the production environment.

Most of the work was done on–site in the USA. However, about 30 percent of the work was done offshore. The offshore IBA project team and the onsite team communicated through email, daily status reports, conference calls, and occasional video and audio teleconferences. The Lotus/Domino team room database served as a repository of requirements, design and a number of solution documents. IBA was provided with a full access to the customer's development environment to upload deliverables.

Environment and Technologies

Programming languages: Java 2, Java Script, XML, HTML, SQL, WSDL

Application servers: IBM WebSphere Application Servers versions 5.1.1.3 and 6.0.2.33, AIX 5.3, IBM WebSphere MQ.6.0.2.1, IBM Web–Portal v5.1, Lotus Domino Server 7.0.3

Development environment/frameworks: IBM Rational Application Developer v6 and v7, SOA, Web Services, JSP, Log4J, IBM DAO framework, Hibernate 3.2

Database server: IBM DB2 v.8.2.2 on AS/400

External systems to interact with: SAP (RS3 System), external web services (Web–Identity, Entitlement, MRDP, Goldwing, Hydra, Squadrons), external MQSeries hosts (MRPD, Megamouth support, IES system, RETAIN system). Interaction with IBM Web Portal (Client Install Inventory) using web services

Version control: CMVC, Rational ClearCase

Project management tools: IBM Rational Portfolio 6, Lotus Notes databases for groupware

Browsers: IE6.0 and Firefox 2.0.0.11

Project documentation: MS office, UML diagrams.

Project Results

From 2003 to 2007, IBA provided the customer with Level 2 support in the 24?7 mode and enhanced the Support Electronic System functionality. The clients of our customer praised the high quality of IBA services with numerous excellent references.

To date, SES includes the following metrics:

  • eService architecture accumulates and processes data from different client platforms including xSeries, pSeries, iSeries, zOS, HMC, SHMC, Netfinity, MPSA, and OEM
  • eService architecture supports more than 70 transaction types including enrollment, inventory transactions, and problem management transactions
  • eService architecture follows the SOA standard and provides more than ten web services for service agent applications of the customers
  • eService architecture works remotely with six distributed web services
  • eService architecture processes more than 120,000 transactions a day from the service agents
  • eService architecture transfers more than 30,000 files a day via FTP to/from various remote systems
  • eService architecture processes more than 20,000 MQ messages a day of average 500K to/from remote systems
  • eService architecture sends about 1,000 eMail notifications and a number of reports a day to numerous customer divisions
  • eService architecture processes from 30 to 50 GB data a day
  • eService architecture supports more than 5,000 database entities with full redundancy/reliability
  • Client PCs connect to eService architecture from distributed locations around the world
  • eService architecture supports data processing in 24/7 mode
  • Development team performs on average three enhancements of eService architecture functionality a year.