Adding IT Value to Evolving Business Models

Executive Summary:
Change has become the new normal across industries. The healthcare industry is dealing with changing market dynamics and is only now realizing the full impact of the Affordable Care Act. The financial services sector is facing growing regulatory challenges on one side and the opportunities offered by the recovering global economy on the other side. The US retail and B2B banking sector is under the impact of changing customer preferences vis-à-vis mobile banking. US Retailers are also dealing with domestic “low price” challengers and the avenues offered by the investment opportunities in the emerging economies, especially in the e-commerce sector. Manufacturers have the need to optimize the production and supply chains in order to lower costs. This article explores how effective IT decision making could help firms deal with the constant flux in their business models.

Healthcare:
The market dynamics in healthcare is changing, as the firms involved understand the true impact of the Affordable Care Act. There is increased competition because of insurance exchanges and the existing market shares are being disrupted (see exhibit 1).The reimbursement models are being updated, the healthcare networks are evolving and the Medicare market is expanding as more baby boomers retire. Hospitals are revamping their service delivery models to better improve patient outcomes and insurance companies (payers) are trying to negotiate better contracts with hospitals (providers) and formulate the most optimal benefit plans for patients. Under such a scenario, it’s critical for both the payers and providers to understand the evolved preferences of the old and new clients/customers. Do customers prefer a high deductible plan with wide coverage or a low deductible plan with narrow coverage? What type of group insurance are the employers demanding with geographically diversified work force? Are more employees telecommuting to work and if yes, have their insurance needs changed?

The second key aspect is to re-evaluate the firm’s business value. How can I drive better business value in the changed landscape? Are we targeting the correct market segment? Are our plans/benefits still relevant? Are our claim adjudication systems capable of meeting the new SLA’s? After deliberating on the above questions, the firms have to assess the capabilities that need shoring up. Creating a rules based, flexible reimbursement, network, contract and benefit management systems and having a better control of the business processes by automating them will help the insurance companies. Since the changes are continuous, it’s beneficial to set up a Service Oriented Architecture within the enterprise and better integrate the disparate source systems. Firms can deal with changes better when a service oriented enterprise is created.

Exhibit 1:

Financial Sector:

As the global economy recovers from the financial crisis of 2008, it presents both challenges as well as opportunities. Various regulatory requirements put in place such as Basel III, Dodd Frank Act, Simpson-Bowles Plan etc., to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis force significant changes to the business model of the financial firms. A KPMG study on the impact of regulations on the financial services sector predicts a high impact on the net income of the firms (See exhibit 2). With these regulatory changes, firms have to update their IT systems to better capture critical data. Firms are better off undertaking an effort to optimize their IT infrastructure, overhauling their enterprise application security, enhancing their digital user experience interfaces to capture additional data and migrating and modernizing their IT applications. These efforts could be staggered to prevent disruptions to the everyday business but are very critical to effectively comply with regulatory requirements. 

The recovery of the global economy also provides new opportunities for growth to the sector. As new business models are discovered and new market segments identified, the firms have to put in place business processes and rules to capture those segments. Digitizing business processes and rules gives better control to the firms and the required flexibility to deal with any future changes.

Exhibit 2:  

Banking:

The new retail and B2B banking customer is increasingly conducting his/her transactions via the mobile application. As per a McKinsey & Co survey, today 65 percent of customers interact with their banks through multiple channels. Human interactions are generally reserved for more complex problems: only 25 percent of agent phone calls are inquiries that could be serviced in other channels. Banks that do not provide the seamless banking experience to customers across various channels – branch, mobile and web – risk the possibility of losing out the customer’s business to other banks that provide a seamless experience. Effective mobile strategy that provides banking value to the customer and also provides banks an ability to cross sell products to the consumer similar to a physical branch is needed. Banks need to adopt cloud mobile development platform such as IBM Worklight to quickly create mobile applications and roll it out to the end consumer.

In a B2B setting, banks that can quickly set up new accounts and add/update financial products to the banking business customer can capture additional market share. The sales representatives should be able to present the product information and capture customer information on a tablet. Designing and selling new financial products that offer convenience to the businesses will provide the competitive edge to the banks.

 

Retail:

US retailers are being challenged over price by “online only” retailers such as Amazon and other competitors that are offering e-commerce channel. The retailers are struggling to reduce high costs due to big investment in stores. A key method to reduce high inventory costs is to have an integrated supply chain visibility and to be able to sync the merchandize ordering with that of supplier inventories. Also retailers can no longer have fulfillment channels in silos. There is a need to integrate the fulfillment channels and provide visibility across – a consumer should be able to add a desired product to their wish list on the website, review that product in store, purchase the product in store or place an order online and receive the product. The product return procedures should be similar irrespective of where the product was purchased. In order to provide the new business value, the retailers need to transform the customer digital experience, better integrate their source systems and modernize their IT applications by moving them into new platforms.

 E-Commerce provides an exciting opportunity in the emerging markets. As per RESEARCHANDMARKETS study, the e-Commerce industry in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 40%, from US $ 5.9 billion in 2010 to US $ 34.2 billion in 2015E. An India based e-Commerce retailer, Flipkart, recently raised $1 billion in fresh funding. Amazon is increasing its presence in India as well. The emerging middle class of the developing economies provides a huge opportunity for the retailers. The new consumers with disposable income favor purchases of latest technology products, mainly electronic goods, over the internet. There is a significant margin that could be captured here. These new markets provide additional area of growth for those retailers with global ambitions. The retailers should fortify their e-commerce offerings and build a strong supply chain integrated with their e-commerce sites both over the web and mobile. The proliferation of smart phones in emerging economies also provides a huge opportunity in the m-commerce space. The mobile development strategy is critical to capture this opportunity.

 

Manufacturing:

With increased competition from global competitors, US manufacturers face a growing need to optimize production and reduce costs. It is more critical than ever to identify the core strengths in manufacturing and outsource any parts that are better off supplied by a supplier with a low cost. The manufacturers need to constantly evaluate available supply chain options and choose the most cost effective option. As per a KPMG survey, many manufacturing executives (49 percent globally; 54 percent U.S.) admit that their companies currently do not have visibility of their supply chain beyond Tier 1 suppliers. Moreover, only 9 percent of the 335 global respondents of the 2013 KPMG survey say they have complete visibility of their supply chains. This number is even lower among U.S. executives, with only 7 percent claiming complete supplier visibility (see exhibit 3). Adopting a robust Business Analytics and Decision Management solution is a key lever in the changed landscape. Using a business analytics and reporting software such as IBM Cognos provides the manufacturers with access to real time data on production capacity, inventory management, supplier inventories, budgeting, forecasting etc., so that  more informed decisions could be made.

Exhibit 3:

Conclusion:

While updating the business model to better deal with the changing landscape is a challenge, overhauling and effectively implementing an IT ecosystem will help smooth the journey to a great extent. Taking the help of advances in IT will help to reduce the productivity disruptions caused while modifying the current business model. Choosing a trusted IT business partner that can provide holistic IT services will also go a long way in alleviating this pain.

To learn about how Prolifics provides business value to clients around the world, visit www.prolifics.com.

N.R. Vijay is a Solution Architect in the Business Process Management division of Prolifics. He has over 10 years of consulting experience across domains such as Retail, Healthcare and Banking. Specializing in technology, management concepts and enterprise strategy, he is focused on change management and process improvement initiatives. He co-authored a whitepaper titled "Improving Customer Loyalty through Business Process Optimization and Advanced Business Analytics"

Client Showcase: Retailer Better Meets Customer Needs with Managed Services

Prolifics is committed to helping our clients create (and grow) competitive advantage in their industry. We are proud to have empowered this well known Retailer to do just that, again. After a successful e-commerce solution, Prolifics and our client teamed up again to bring ongoing managed services to further differentiate from the competition.

Our client is a high-end department store chain based in the United Kingdom. Business leaders previously began a strategic initiative to expand the Company’s e-commerce capabilities by expanding the product lines available online and improving connectivity with their distribution service to shorten delivery times in support of a higher volume of online purchases. Prolifics successfully led the implementation of a centralized Warehouse Management System (WMS) that would serve as the foundation for this project. The Prolifics team continued to provide support as needed to deliver the necessary IBM WebSphere MQ and IBM Integration Bus skills required to troubleshoot issues and make updates within the system. Over time, the Company found that their internal IT staff was spending approximately 60% of their time supporting the WMS production environment rather than deepening the capabilities of the solution. Finally, as ad hoc support service costs for the solution began to balloon during the holiday season, their busiest season for online purchases, business leaders began to explore better long-term support options with Prolifics. Valuing the deep technical expertise Prolifics has with IBM WebSphere MQ and IBM Integration Bus, our client engaged the Prolifics team to provide ongoing managed services in order to effectively maintain their WMS system while releasing internal staff to focus on other critical business issues. Prolifics recommended the implementation of SmartCloud APM and SmartCloud Control Desk to enable real-time alerts and provide a centralized ticketing system for submitting and addressing IT issues. Prolifics experts then led the implementation of these tools and developed reasonable service level agreements (SLAs) for the ongoing services that would meet the Company's needs. With managed services now in place, the Company is assured of timely, knowledgeable support for the more than 50 workflows in their WMS solution, with dedicated Prolifics staff available during regular call center hours to rapidly address issues and provide development support as needed. Further, with the new monitoring tools in place, staff can more proactively identify and address potential failures to ensure functionality and ultimately create a better user experience for online consumers.

To learn more about Prolifics Managed Services, visit: http://www.prolifics.com/managed-services

Implementing an Enterprise Services Layer - Reusable Lessons Learned

Technology implementations can be challenging. When the implementation involves several teams, multiple business units and requires a different approach than the one that is in place currently, the process can become even more demanding and at times daunting. However, if done right, the results can deliver significantly positive results for an organization.

In this article, we will be looking at the implementation process of an Enterprise Services Layer built on Service Oriented Architecture by the Prolifics Integration team and the important lessons learned during the course of the implementation. After all, reusable lessons go hand in hand with the process of developing and implementing reusable services.

This article is divided into three sections:

• Details of the solution and the major decisions taken during project lifecycle
• The lessons learned during the implementation process
• Project Success

Solution Details

The Business Challenge

Due to the lack of an enterprise wide integration layer, business units were unable to easily consume the services offered by other units and share business data. This prevented the organization from providing new and value added services to consumers resulting in lost market opportunities and revenue growth.

The Business Requirements

1. Develop a common service hosting layer that various business units can utilize to access enterprise services
2. Build a highly available, scalable and flexible solution that provides maximum throughput and 99.999% uptime
3. Implement an effective service governance framework
4. Implement a platform and services monitoring and reporting solution

Project Kick-Off Approach

The Prolifics team worked with leaders and representatives from customer IT departments and business units to understand the corporate culture in general and team culture in specific. The idea was to understand the way projects typically get done at the customer and customize our approach to developing and deploying the solution by understanding the current processes and practices. 

1. Team Education

One of the first tasks undertaken was to educate the stakeholders involved and bring about a common understanding of the project goals and solution. The goal was to make sure that we clearly communicate the scope of the solution; that is what the solution is meant for and what the solution is not meant for. 

2. Create SOA principles

This project being the first to build an enterprise-wide services layer based on SOA, we established a set of SOA principles in-order to keep the project implementation aligned with the project requirements and maximize the organization’s return on investment in this project.  

1. Consistent service definitions and implementation
2. Consistent and secure access to corporate processes and data
3. Standard-compliant enterprise governance
4. Consistent and well-defined data model
5. Cross-enterprise platform and services monitoring

3. Establish an SOA Center of Excellence

A successful implementation of a large scale SOA initiative requires bringing people from different business and technical areas together to support the implementation goals. The COE team was tasked with creating a solution blueprint to drive the overall implementation tasks and help the organization to adopt, formalize and improve the development process. 

The following were the main responsibilities of the COE team.

The Technology Foundation

To meet the service layer requirements, choosing the right technology foundation to host the solution is an important aspect; this is especially true since multiple components and systems need to integrate and function together seamlessly. It is important to consider not just the current requirements, but rather the long-terms requirements; the future growth, flexibility to add additional services, integrate with new and disparate systems, support additional throughput and at the same time maintaining the performance, scalability and availability. 

The solution comprised of the following products:

Key Factors in Choosing the Technology:

Deployment Topology:

The below diagram shows the solution deployment topology.

1. The service consumers connect to the global Load Balancer which based on the consumer region and load balancing algorithms, connect to one the of the available downstream load balancers
2. The service consumers can use a single endpoint that provides abstraction and high availability
3. The DataPower devices act as a secure gateway, provide additional internal load balancing and SOA policy enforcement point
4. IIB – A Highly available IBM Integration Bus architecture provides the service execution, message flow orchestration, advanced transformation and data enrichment platform
5. Fail-over infrastructure – Multi-node, inter-frame and cross site infrastructure provide advanced fail-over mechanisms 
6. WSRR – WebSphere Service Registry and Repository provides service life-cycle governance features and acts as the service policy definition point

Lessons Learned

Educate the Stakeholders

Ensure that the stakeholders understand SOA principles, project scope and project goals.  This step needs to done right at the start of the project; saves significant amount of time and money during the overall project roll-out and helps keep the project on schedule.

Security 

Plan for security right at the start of the project; this includes determining the protocols, encryption technologies, authentication and authorization processes etc. If the customer does not have an enterprise wide common security standards, it is possible that individual teams use different and at time incompatible security practices and processes that can lead to substantial challenges during the integration process. 

The Center of Excellence needs to provide sample code, documentation and implementation approaches to assist the different teams in pursuing a common security standard.

Make sure service consumers understand the implementation details

Ensure that the service consumers understand the details of connecting to the service layer and consuming the available services. Most often, service consumers face challenges when it comes to connectivity details, security implementation details etc. To make the process easier, have test beds made available for the consumers. Additionally, a functioning and well documented integration environment will further help in this process. 

Follow industry and internal standards

As part of the Center of Excellence enterprise architectural decisions, make sure that the stakeholders agree on the industry as well as internal standards that need to be followed. With limited resources and budget, common standards and practices will help in easier and simpler overall implementation process. This will additionally help in ensuring that the various teams can talk a common language and provide common support and maintenance services. 

Avoid Service Layer Complexity

The service layer complexity needs to be avoided. Additionally, only the necessary operations that directly enable integration connectivity and facilitate associated supporting activities should be deployed on the Service layer. It is important not to task the service layer with an application or service provider specific activity or functionality. The service layer needs to be lightweight, scalable and highly available. 

Iterative Deliverables

When an organization is just getting started with an SOA based service layer approach, identify the services that can be easily and readily hosted on the service layer. By taking a long term and iterative deliverables approach, the return of investment can be maximized and risks can be reduced. 

Performance Testing

Most often, it is difficult to understand the performance behavior of various applications and systems in an Enterprise Service solution. With services hosted by multiple business units and often running on different technologies, performance bottlenecks can be a recurring problem. 

In order to properly understand the performance behavior of the various systems and the overall solution, it is important to do performance testing early and often. Surprises such as a bad network route or a wrongly configured server can be avoided if performance testing is incorporated as part of the development life-cycle and performance engineering best practices are followed. 

Monitoring and Reporting

In a typical SOA based environment, tracking down performance and availability issues can be extremely challenging due to the loosely-coupled design. Additionally, with services hosted by multiple providers, keeping tracking of SLA and performance counters can prove to be even more difficult. 

In order to deal with these challenges, it is important to have an end-to-end monitoring solution. The solution should ideally monitor not just the operating infrastructure (performance, availability etc.) but also the business services (SLAs, service availability etc.). It is also important to have a solution that can provide useful and easy-to-understand reports that will assist in planning for capacity planning and performance analysis.  

Organizational Readiness

• IT departments and organizational units typically find that the process of introducing new initiatives that change the way projects are typically done is difficult. To ensure project success and maximize IT investment returns, strong leadership support for these initiatives is required. It is essential that the leadership team communicate the significance of the project and establish a strong project management team.

Importance of Service Governance 

• In order to provide consistent and standardized development, delivery and implementation of services and reduce risks, a strong governance model needs to be established as part of the project life-cycle. In a large scale implementation involving numerous teams, a strong service governance model that can handle the entire service life-cycle can ensure that the implementation process aligns perfectly with the business requirements and organizational goals.

Project Success

The Enterprise Server Layer currently handles over 6 million transactions per day. With a strong architectural foundation in place, the platform can seamlessly support additional throughput by horizontal or vertical scaling in a highly available environment. Additionally, the solution delivered end-to-end governance, monitoring and performance reporting. 

The solution proves that with proper architecture, design principles and team partnerships, organizations can achieve excellent return of investments and realize project success that can enable new market opportunities and business growth.


Authors:
The team of integration experts at Prolifics enable customers to maximize the return on their IT investments by providing end-to-end integration, governance and monitoring capabilities. To learn more about Prolifics' integration solutions, visit: http://www.prolifics.com/soa-universal-connectivity

Client Showcase: Insurer Wins with Centralized, Reliable and Secure ESB

At Prolifics, our commitment to client success is at the core of our business. Recently, we celebrated a successful solution "go-live" with one of our clients in New York. The solution highlights our team's expertise and technical skill across IBM software.

Our client is a large health insurer based in New York, servicing over 3 million people. Facing increasing challenges to maintain the disparate legacy technologies from the merged providers, the Company sought to integrate their systems under a centralized, reliable and secure enterprise service bus (ESB). Additionally, the Company wanted to move away from their traditional paper-based model by integrating a messaging framework into the new ESB that would enable faster, easier patient onboarding and care. They reached out to Prolifics to lead the project, wanting to leverage our strong ESB capabilities to build an optimal solution. Prolifics experts designed and installed an infrastructure architecture built on IBM Integration Bus (IIB), IBM Decision Server Rules and IBM DataPower to enable a robust ESB and integrated IBM Business Monitor and IBM Tivoli Composite Application Monitor (ITCAM) for Transactions to provide deeper monitoring and reporting capabilities, conducting testing throughout the effort to ensure optimal performance. The Prolifics team also developed a common rules framework to connect the disparate customer enrollment programs to various other internal systems. With the new ESB and rules engine in place, the Company can ensure consistent, secure sharing of customer enrollment information across the enterprise, improving efficiency and ultimately quality of care.

To learn more about Prolifics' integration solutions, visit: http://www.prolifics.com/soa-universal-connectivity

IBM Impact Session Preview: Enabling a Digital Strategy that Fits the Healthcare System around the Consumer Using BPM SOA

Aetna is making connected health care systems a reality and empowering consumers to live a healthier life. The key to the strategy is enabling new mobile technologies and partner integration. To enable this transformation, Aetna is implementing a Business Process Management (BPM) Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Center of Excellence (COE) that will enable their business to rapidly orchestrate and integrate their systems & services in order to seamlessly provide users with data & IT resources with faster integration, lesser cost and higher return.

We will showcase the BPM COE approach and the components being used to build it out. Aetna’s Enterprise Architecture will ensure separation of business rules from data integrity rules and provide enterprise level decision services. This BPM architecture will also enable to integrate with Aetna’s DataPower, Enterprise Bus and mainframe systems to communicate with the Data Access Services layer. The solution involves using IBM tools like ITCAM for monitoring, Service Registry and eXtreme Scale for caching needs.

At IBM Impact, we will be hosting a subject on this topic. In this session, we will focus on how to enable a digital strategy that best fits the Healthcare system around the consumer using BPM and SOA.

Session Abstract: 
Aetna is making connected health care systems a reality and empowering consumers to live a healthier life. Key to the strategy is enabling new mobile technologies and partner integration. To enable this transformation, Aetna is implementing a BPM SOA center of excellence (COE) that will enable their business to rapidly orchestrate and integrate their systems & services in order to seamlessly provide users with data & IT resources with faster integration, lesser cost and higher return. We will showcase the BPM COE approach and the components being used to build it out. Aetna’s Enterprise Architecture will ensure separation of business rules from data integrity rules and provide enterprise level decision services. This BPM architecture will also enable to integrate with Aetna’s DataPower, Enterprise Bus and mainframe systems to communicate with the Data Access Services layer. The solution involves using IBM tools like ITCAM for monitoring, Service Registry and eXtreme Scale for caching needs.

Session Number: ICU-2748
Date/Time: Wednesday, April 30, 2014; 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM PDT
Location: Venetian-Marcello 4401 A

Add this session to your calendar!

To see a full list of Prolifics sessions, visit www.prolifics.com/impact-2014.htm.

IBM Impact Session Preview: How PSCU implemented their Intelligence Platform through a SOA COE

Hear how PSCU implemented a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Center of Excellence (COE) - a linchpin solution that Prolifics has delivered to several customers. The COE ensures viability of PSCU business goals, especially as they relate to credit union connectivity and delivery of PSCU enhanced services such as credit/debit, banking, billpay, and PSCU mobility efforts through 2015.

PSCU worked with Prolifics and IBM to help deliver a seamless integration and runtime SOA governance aspects of PSCU's next-generation "intelligent platform" - a high-performance integration web service and connectivity platform with state-of-the-art integration, interoperability, security, and enterprise SOA governance capabilities. PSCU utilized IBM Integration Bus, IBM WebSphere DataPower Appliances, and IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository as part of this effort.

At IBM Impact, Prithvi Srinivasan will be hosting a subject on this topic with Prolifics' client PSCU. In this session, we will focus on how PSCU implemented their intelligence Platform with a Service Oriented Architecture Center of Excellence.

Session Abstract: 
Hear how PSCU implemented a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Center of Excellence (COE) - a linchpin solution that Prolifics has delivered to several customers. The COE ensures viability of PSCU business goals, especially as they relate to credit union connectivity and delivery of PSCU enhanced services such as credit/debit, banking, billpay, and PSCU mobility efforts through 2015. PSCU worked with Prolifics and IBM to help deliver a seamless integration and runtime SOA governance aspects of PSCU's next-generation "intelligent platform" - a high-performance integration web service and connectivity platform with state-of-the-art integration, interoperability, security, and enterprise SOA governance capabilities. PSCU utilized IBM Integration Bus, IBM WebSphere DataPower Appliances, and IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository as part of this effort.

Session Number: ICU-3358
Date/Time: Tuesday, April 29, 2014; 2:15 PM – 3:15 PM PDT
Location: Venetian-Marcello 4402

Add this session to your calendar!

To see a full list of Prolifics sessions, visit www.prolifics.com/impact-2014.htm.

IBM Impact Session Preview: Extending IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository to Legacy IBM WebSphere Application Server

Almost all organizations today have embraced the concept of SOA and have aligned it to the path of application agility. One such bottleneck comes in the form of legacy applications where the endpoint of the service provider is stored either in a constant or in a property file. This restricts the ability to change both at the service provider and consumer ends.

Applications integrated with IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR) have the ability to select the endpoints based on policy. Not only are they immune to constructive changes at the service provider but this also eases the overall governance process.

At IBM Impact, I will be hosting a subject on this topic. In this session, we will focus on the integration of Legacy Java applications with WSRR using APIs.

Session Abstract:

Almost all organizations today have embraced the concept of SOA and is aligned to the path of application agility. Bottlenecks can come in the form of legacy applications where the endpoint of the service provider is stored either in a constant or in a property file. This restricts the ability to change both at the service provider and consumer end. Applications integrated with WSRR have the ability to select the endpoints based on policy. Not only are they immune to constructive changes at the service provider, but this also eases the overall governance process. In this session, we will focus on: pattern to integrate WSRR with legacy java applications based on Spring framework, different scenarios in which it should be use, deep dive into the development and maintenance aspect, and extending this pattern to make it framework independent.

Session Number: INO-2740

Date/Time: Wednesday, April 30th; 2:15pm - 3:15pm

Location: Venetian-Marcello 4405

Add this session to your calendar!

To see a full list of Prolifics sessions, visit www.prolifics.com/impact-2014.htm

Animesh Jain is a solution architect at Prolifics with over 10 years of experience in application development and maintenance. He has worked on projects of varying complexity and magnitude and has performed in various capacities as Technical Architect, SOA Lead and Senior Developer. Specializing in integration, Animesh takes deep interest in understanding the business issues which helps him to guide and suggest the best approach to our clients. He also has been involved in numerous pre-sales projects and enablement activities. He has mentored several resources and has created enablement documents on Web-Services, SOA, BPM and WESB.

Migrating IBM WebSphere Message Broker v6.1, 7, 8 to IBM Integration Bus v9 on Distributed Platforms - Checklist for a Successful Migration

IBM’s endeavor to offer one integration product capable of supporting .NET, Java, and various heterogeneous integration scenarios resulted in the launch of IBM Integration Bus (IIB). IIB v9 offers a standardized and flexible integration backbone. It allows placement of WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (WESB), Rules Engine, and WebSphere Message Broker (WMB) under one software umbrella. One can expect significant benefits including enhanced support for .NET, improved Global Cache, a new Real-Time Performance Monitoring Tool and many other new features and upgrades such us Policy based WLM and BPM integration.

The below checklist is a compilation of IBM Integration Bus Information Center v9 instructions and offers a guideline to a successful migration of WMB v6.1, 7, 8 Broker Component to IIB v9 on distributed platforms. The checklist is comprised of the following topics: Migration of Broker Components and Migration of Development Artifacts.

Migration of Broker Components

The earliest version of WMB that one can migrate resources from is WMB v6.1. In a case where a migration from earlier versions is required, one must migrate to WMB v6.1, 7 or 8 first, however earlier version migrations are not in the scope of this document.

Migration from Windows x86 product to x86-64 product is not supported as well as migration of Linux x86 product to Linux x86-64.

In addition there are restrictions on migrations of earlier versions to IIBv9 Developer Edition. Supported operating modes are Full Edition, Remote Adapter Deployment, Express Edition and Standard Edition.

Finally, IIB v9.0 requires a minimum WebSphere MQ (WMQ) v7.5.0.1 on distributed platform. If publish/subscribe functionality is utilized by WMB v 6.1, a migration of WMQ Queue Manager is required first, followed by migration of subscriptions and then Broker component.

Remember: back up all of your resources prior to migration!

Migrating WMB v6.1, WMB v7.0, and WMB v8.0 Broker Component

• Back up all resources: configuration repository (WMBv.6.1), Broker database(WMBv6.1),  and development artifacts.
• If using ODBC connections, back up ODBC connection files.
• If using configurable services, back up configurable services properties.
• Install WMQ v7.5.0.1 and up.

In Place Broker Component Migration

Install at least Integration Bus component under new location on the same machine

Remove WMB v.6.1,7.0, 8.0 Broker from the domain configuration

Stop all channels connected to WMB v6.1,7.0,8.0 Broker

Stop WMB v6.1, 7.0, 8.0 Broker

Migrate WMB v6.1 Broker‘s Queue Manager to appropriate IIB v9 WMQ version

Migrate Pub\Sub components if required

Update ODBC connection filesto IIB v9.0 format if required

Set up IIB v9.0 command environment

Run the mqsimigratecomponents command to migrate WMB v6.1, 7.0, and 8.0 Broker (mqsimigratecomponents command migrates configuration data in forward and backward fashion (use “t” option for rollback): broker databases, queues and broker registry are migrated)

Copy environment settings if required

Start IIB Broker

Deploy migrated artifacts

Parallel Broker Component Migration:

Install at least Integration Bus component under new location on the same machine or on another machine

Update ODBC connection files to IIB v9.0 format if required

Set up IIB v9.0 command environment

Create IIBv9.0 Queue Manager on appropriate WMQ version

Create IIBv9.0 Broker

Copy environment settings if required

Start IIB Broker

Create Integration Servers (Recreate WMBv6.1, 7.0, 8.0 Execution Groups)

Deploy migrated artifacts

Migration of Development Artifacts

Development artifacts from all previous versions cannot be shared with IIB v9.0. 

Artifacts developed on IIB v9.0 cannot be deployed to earlier versions.

User Defined Node Jars developed in earlier versions  cannot be migrated to IIB v9.0.

User defined nodes require an extra diligence during migration. 

Resources which are imported into IIB v.9.0 cannot be used in earlier versions of the product.

Message flow projects are replaced with integration projects.

Message sets are “Read-only” once imported and not modifiable. (Modify message sets by

enabling msgset development in IBM Integration Toolkit -> Preferences)

WMB v6.1 and v.70 msgmap can be viewed, compiled and deployed but they are “Read- only” In order to modify .(msgmap) convert (.msgmap) to .map file

 Migrating WMB v6.1, WMB v7.0, and WMB v8.0 Development Artifacts

• Development resources can be imported into IIB v.9.0 as PI files.
• Workspaces can be migrated into IIB v9.0.
• Migrate Development Artifacts

PI Import:

Export development artifacts from a previous WMB version into a PI file

Import PI file into an IIB v.9.0 workspace

Convert integration projects into applications or libraries if required

Workspace migration:

Point IIB v.9.0 IBM Integration Toolkit to location of an existing workspace

Click OK

In case of errors during migration apply “Quick Fix” by right clicking task list warning or error in the Problems view, then click Quick Fix.

Resources:

*Figure 1, 2: Migrating to IBM® Integration Bus v90

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27038933&aid=1

*All Content: IBM Integration Bus Information Center

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/wmbhelp/v9r0m0/index.jsp

Eva Khalil is a middleware solutions designer with more than 12 years of experience in systems and applications integration area.   She has been working with Prolifics for the past five years.   Eva has successfully led many integration projects for various business industries: financial, government, healthcare, insurance and utilities. She is especially fond of WMQ and IIB.

Is SOA Working for your Company?

When SOA became popular in the early 2000s, companies had very high hopes that it would solve many of their integration problems and would deliver a huge ROI given its benefits, which include loose coupling, reusability, greater business agility, lower time to deployment, and more. But after so many years and spending millions of dollars, many companies are yet to fully realize the advertised benefits from the SOA initiatives. In this article, let us take a look at few of the key problems that affected the success of SOA.

1. Lack of Experience/Support in Implementing SOA
The single biggest challenge against the success of SOA, in most cases, is simply the fact that companies still do not have the skillset or experience to take the SOA from vision to a successful implementation. Numerous factors, such as depending on project-based funding for building enterprise services, time and budget constraints, poor planning, lack of focus on data architecture and poorly implemented services, all result in a sub-optimal implementation of SOA.

The right experience/skillset are required across Business, PMO, Architecture, Infrastructure and Development teams for a successful SOA implementation.  Everyone should realize that SOA is not about building a bunch of services. The discipline, support and investment required to build a successful SOA requires a consolidated effort across the various teams.

2. Lack of Service Governance
Many times, companies fail to invest in building a centralized service governance system for managing the services. Service governance is highly essential for enforcing runtime aspects of the services like verifying SLAs, policies, managing endpoints etc and management aspects like cataloging services, tracking services from vision to implementation to sunset, maintaining versions etc. Without an effective service governance system in place, the quality of the services takes a hit. There can also be other problems like lack of visibility of the currently available services, duplication of efforts, services not being flexible enough for client application needs, etc.

This shows that it is extremely important to invest in service governance tools and methodologies as much as in building the services itself.

3. Misunderstanding on Investment Needed for SOA to Make it Successful
There is a prevailing misconception among the senior management that investing in SOA equals investing in a good product for building services. Although investing in a good product is highly essential, expecting the product alone to deliver the benefits cannot be further from the truth. Building a successful SOA involves significant investments in effort and money. In fact, success of SOA has almost as much to do with executive support as much as to do with building the services itself. Sometimes, it takes years to start seeing the real benefits of investing in SOA. Therefore, it is imperative that management understand these realities and stand behind this initiative to make it a success.

A realistic understanding on the effort and cost for implementing SOA can help companies come up with an effective action plan for implementing a successful SOA initiative.

4. Adoption Across Business Units (BU)
It is very common to see business units within the same company acting in silos for its IT needs.  Even though many of the companies keep a dedicated SOA team across the BUs, the services that they end up building become focused on the BU needs and cannot be readily consumed across the enterprise. This hinders service reuse. Project timelines, differences in service contract expectations (too much data / less data / performance considerations, etc), challenges with extending a current service vs ease of building a new service, lack of understanding of the enterprise needs, etc. all contribute to this challenge.

Benefits of SOA can truly be recognized only when synergies across LOBs are fully realized. This has real world challenges and it is extremely important to overcome these challenges to make SOA successful.

5. Challenges with Service Versioning
On the other side of SOA adoption problems, we also have to deal with challenges in enabling services for reuse by multiple client applications.  When an existing service is considered for reuse, minor differences in expectations are to be expected from the new client application. The required enhancements can get tricky to implement at times without impacting the existing client applications. Schema changes, logic changes, security implementations, etc. are some of the more common changes required in the services to cater to a new client application.

Service interface definition and versioning strategy should be carefully approached for effective service reuse.

6. Architecture Complexity
Integrating a complex IT landscape is no easy task. Coupled with fragmented IT approaches (differences in standards, data models, systems, protocols, etc.) across the company, the challenge becomes very daunting to provide the seamless experience expected from SOA. SOA is far from a plug-and-play approach that many people tend to believe it is.

Creating an SOA Reference Architecture and religiously following it is extremely important to get the best out of SOA.

7. Product Complexity
Lastly, we will also need to take into account the complexity introduced by the products used in implementing SOA. These products tend to be pretty complex since they try to abstract complex integration scenarios from the developer. But still, there will be times where it seems like these products fail to deliver. These instances might make it look like the product is not working for the company while the root cause can be the difference in expectations and an inherently complex IT system.

An in-depth understanding of the product's configuration options, standards support, monitoring support, integration options with other systems, product roadmap, etc. can reduce many of the challenges in implementing SOA.

References:
http://apsblog.burtongroup.com/2009/01/soa-is-dead-long-live-services.html
http://www.cio.com/article/438413/Top_10_Reasons_Why_People_are_Making_SOA_Fail?page=1&taxonomyId=3016

For more information about Prolifics' SOA solutions and recent customer implementations, visit www.prolifics.com.

Emil Thomas is a Technology Manager at Prolifics with more than 12 years of experience in various top tier consulting companies.  He specializes in SOA and BPM related concepts and technologies. He is an expert in providing guidance and implementing end-to-end solutions for clients.  He has worked in a variety of verticals like Travel & Leisure, Health Care, Health and Life insurance, Retail, Energy and Power, Banking, Finance etc.  He has presented at various forums including IBM Impact.  He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Calicut University, India.

API Blog Series Part 2: API Management – The Platform

In my last blog entry, I introduced the concept of API Management and how this area has evolved over the last decade to where it stands today. In this blog entry, I will focus on what are the key components of an API Management platform, what are the different deployment models for the API Platform and who are key players in this space.

What makes up an API Platform?
An API Platform needs to provide the following key components:

• API Builder: Tools for providers to define create and configure an API.
• API Portal: User Interface platform for API providers to socialize APIs with the consumers to enable adoption.
• API Gateway: Manage controlled access to the API layer and protect the services from security threats.
• API Analytics: Provide insight into API usage – operational, technical and business metrics that can help API providers to customize and improves the services they provide.

API Platform – Deployment Models
The following table describes the three common deployment models that are available for an API Management platform.

The Vendor Ecosystem
The recent Forrester report published on Feb 5th 2013, titled ‘API Management, Platforms - Q1 2013’ shows the key vendors who provide the leading platform for API Management today. Another vendor who did not participate in the Forrester survey but that is a strong player in this space is Apigee.

IBM’s API Management Platform [Cast Iron Web API Services] is a strong contender in this space and in my next blog entry, I will focus on how to build an API using Cast Iron.

Rajiv Ramachandran is the Vice President of the SOA & BPM Practice at Prolifics and an IBM Champion for WebSphere. He has 15 years of experience in the IT field — 3 of those years at IBM working in the development teams at its Object Technology Competency Center in Bangalore, India. He was then a Solution Architect implementing IBM WebSphere Solutions at Fireman's Fund Insurance. Currently at Prolifics, he manages a 100+ member worldwide team that focuses on BPM, SOA & Decision Management. An author at the IBM developerWorks community, Rajiv has presented at IBM Impact and IBM WebSphere Services Technical Conference. He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.

API Blog Series Part 1: APIs – The Next Evolution of Service Oriented Architecture

Talk technology trends today and you cannot complete the sentence without referring to SCM [Social, Cloud and Mobile]. These three domains have changed the way businesses use technology. In this blog series I will focus on the fourth key emerging area in the technology space – APIs - the foundation on which the Social, Cloud and Mobile revolution gains more adaption. In this blog entry I take a look at the evolution path of what is called API Management today.

Remember the SOA books or articles in early 2000. The most common picture I saw in every book –Provider, Client and UDDI [Yes, I still remember that acronym]. I refer to that era as SOA 1.0. The buzzword was ‘Web Services’. The standards (WS-*) were still evolving, the big technology vendors – IBM, ORACLE, TIBCO were still struggling to get mature tools and products to market and enterprises were still trying to understand this value proposition of services.

Then came the age of SOA 2.0 – the standards were formalized, interoperability was achieved, ESB was no longer a pattern – it was a product, it was no longer about Web Services – it was all about a disciplined approach called Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the new buzzword was “Governance” - UDDI was gone and an Enterprise Services Registry & Repository became the norm. However SOA 2.0 focused more on the Enterprise - services were more for internal consumption or to be consumed with key business partners outside the enterprise.

The innovation that changed the SOA world again did not happen at IBM or at TIBCO or at ORACLE – it happened first in Apple [iOS App Platform] and then at Google [Android] – The World was now Mobile and the new buzzword was ‘App’. Millions and Millions of developers who build mobile apps entered the ecosystem and they needed a standard way to access data and logic. Enterprises saw this as an opportunity to get into new business models to generate new revenues by tapping into these developers who could build new applications for the capabilities that an enterprise already provided. However they needed a standardized way for the development community that was completely outside their control to interact with their services. The world of SOA could no longer be confined to the walls of the enterprise – ‘It had to go public’.

Enter API Management and Welcome to SOA 3.0
While the acronym API is as old as technology itself, in today’s world, API Management is about publishing and promoting the core business capabilities of an enterprise as publicly available services. The intent of doing this is to allow the vast development community out there to consume them in a secure and scalable manner and use them to build new applications that will bring new business and revenue models for both the provider and the consumer of the API.

In the next set of blog entries on this topic, I will delve more into the key features of an API platform, the competitive landscape and will focus the IBM API Management Platform to build an end to end API Solution.

Next month, I will be attending IBM Impact. Prolifics, a Gold Sponsor, will showcase our BPM, Integration and Mobile solutions across various speaking sessions and at booth #G-1 on the Expo floor. To learn more about Prolifics' expertise, visit www.prolifics.com.

Rajiv Ramachandran is the Vice President of the SOA & BPM Practice at Prolifics and an IBM Champion for WebSphere. He has 15 years of experience in the IT field — 3 of those years at IBM working in the development teams at its Object Technology Competency Center in Bangalore, India. He was then a Solution Architect implementing IBM WebSphere Solutions at Fireman's Fund Insurance. Currently at Prolifics, he manages a 100+ member worldwide team that focuses on BPM, SOA & Decision Management. An author at the IBM developerWorks community, Rajiv has presented at IBM Impact and IBM WebSphere Services Technical Conference. He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.

The Messaging Whisperers: The Zero Downtime Series

A retail organization I recently worked with had a simple explanation for why downtime is bad. They do a billion dollars a year of business on the web and so one day’s worth of business is a loss of several million dollars. But that isn’t the problem. The real problem is that downtime means losing customers forever. (They’ll try another retailer and they may never come back).

The Zero Downtime Series is all about avoiding outages with IBM WebSphere MQ and WebSphere Message Broker. Multi-instance queue managers and brokers are a great way to achieve high availability at a low cost. (There will be another blog entry on idle standby licenses for MQ and Message Broker, which can help make high availability more affordable).

The first part of the series is a comparison between active / active and active / passive.

Active / Active vs Active / Passive vs Active / Active / Passive:
Multi-instance queue managers can be arranged in several configurations with different costs and benefits. Three of these configurations are:

1. Active / Passive (One queue manager on two machines. During a failure the queue manager runs on the standby machine).
2. Active / Active. (Two queue managers on two machines. During a failure both queue managers run on the same machine).
3. Active / Active / Passive (Two queue managers on three machines. During a failure the failed queue manager runs on the third machine.)

In order to compare costs and benefits, lets consider a case where CPU intensive transformations are being done and that four CPUs are required to meet expected response time.

1. Active / Passive Case

Both the primary and standby machines are quad core. The primary uses regular MQ licensing and the standby machine uses idle-standby licensing (which is only 20% of the cost of regular MQ licensing).

• Total cost:
• 2 Quad core machines (or VMs); plus
• Licensing for 4.8 CPUs: 4 for primary and .8 for standby (20% of 4)

2. Active / Active Case

There are two variants of the Active / Active Case:

• Need to meet performance requirements during a failure
• Performance requires do not need to be met during a failure

If performance requirements need to be met during a failure then, two quad core machines are required for the active / active case. Both machines need to be fully licensed.

• Total cost:
• 2 Quad core machines (or VMs); plus 
• Licensing for 8 CPUs (4 for the first machine and 4 for the second machine)
• Active / Active is good for IO bound message handling (since the traffic is spread over two machines).
• If performance requirements do not need to be met during a failure, then two dual core active / active machines could be used. This case requires caution. Having performance cut in half (at best) is a significant penalty. (Also be sure to check memory etc). This requires careful capacity planning (as does everything).

3. Active / Active / Passive Case

All three machines are dual-core. The first queue manager runs on the first machine. The second queue manager on machine two. Either Queue Manager can fail over to the 3rd machine.

• Total Cost:
• 3 dual core machines (or VMs); plus
• Licensing for 4.4 CPUs - 2 for the first machine and 2 for the second machine and .4 for the 3 machine (20% of 2)
• The active / active / passive case has even lower licensing cost than the active / passive case, while having the same ability to handle IO bound messages as the active / active case

Next week, I will be hosting a live webinar titled: Message Broker as your Enterprise Service Bus. During this webinar, I will discuss Message Broker approaches and techniques to reduce complexity by dividing challenges into smaller, more easily manageable pieces. To register, click here.

Have a question? Want to connect?
LinkedIn: AJ Aronoff
Email: aj@prolifics.com

Additionally, I would like to share some excellent articles and walkthroughs for mult-instance queue managers:

• Unix Walkthrough
• Infocenter
• The Testing and Support Statement
• IBM Education
• Staged Upgrade

AJ Aronoff is the Infrastructure and Messaging Practice Director for Prolifics and an IBM Champion for IBM WebSphere. AJ first joined Prolifics as a Developer, then specialized in WebSphere MQ. He has 25 years experience in the IT field — 17 of those years at Prolifics. As a Prolifics consultant, he has done MQ design, implementation, infrastructure, monitoring and security assignments at several large financial, insurance, retail and communication firms (Bloomberg, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, DTCC, Fidelity, ITG, JPMC, Och Zif, Tokyo Marine, Pep Boys and British Telecom). He has presented on security and infrastructure at Impact, Hursley comes to Minneapolis and Palisades, and MQ User Groups. His customers use Omegamon to monitor over a thousand systems across the globe.

Viva Las Vegas!

It's almost IMPACT time and for all of us in the IBM community – it is our version of “March Madness." Starting on the 29th of April, Las Vegas will play host to the largest gathering of professionals that use the IBM WebSphere platform to build solutions that power Fortune 500 companies to the latest start up in the Silicon Valley.

For us at Prolifics, this is our largest event of the year and a great opportunity for us to get together with our customers, IBMers and peers in the industry. It’s our chance to discuss all of the great work we have done over the last year and learn from everyone in this community on the challenges facing us and the direction this industry is taking. However 2012 is very special for us in multiple ways – This year our customer Steve George from Huntington National Bank (HNB) will be a keynote speaker at IMPACT. On every occasion that Steve and I have met in Columbus, we have had very interesting conversations on what Steve’s vision for implementing SOA at the bank. He is one of those thought-leaders who clearly understands the opportunities and challenges that HNB faces. We at Prolifics are proud to have been and continue to be part of the journey at Huntington National Bank as they build their agile service-oriented enterprise and take their next steps to process-oriented excellence. I am really looking forward to listening to Steve and speaking with him again in Vegas. In addition to Huntington we will have Apple Vacations, CIGNA, IDP and several of our other customers presenting their success stories and how Prolifics helped them achieve their business needs. While you are in Vegas and enjoying the conference, please make your way to our booth and our sessions – this consolidated list should help you make Prolifics part of your IMPACT plans:

Visit www.prolifics.com/impact-2012.htm to see a complete list and read more about our upcoming speaking sessions.

For me personally, IMPACT 2012 adds another milestone to my professional career. I will be part of a panel of IBM Business Partners who will be discussing our success stories with the broader IBM community. I am really looking forward to hearing from my peers on the panel and adding value by providing my insights into what IBM and its Business Partner community can do together to help our customers and make them successful.

I’m looking forward to a great week and seeing everyone at IMPACT - "Viva Las Vegas!"

Rajiv Ramachandran first joined Prolifics as a Senior Consultant, and today is Vice President of the BPM & Connectivity Practice. As the leader of the BPM & Connectivity Practice, he leads a global consulting team at Prolifics that is responsible for helping our customers implement successful Enterprise Integration and BPM solutions. He has over 14 years of experience in the IT field having worked at IBM and at many of our key customers as a Solution Architect for several years implementing technology solutions in the Insurance and Healthcare sectors. An author in the IBM developerWorks community, Rajiv has presented at IBM Impact and IBM WebSphere Services Technical Conference.

The 3 levers of Business Agility in Action. Prolifics Weighs In!

In October, IBM hosted a Business Agility Executive Forum in New York City that was streamed live around the world. The event was focused on how organizations can transform their businesses for continued growth in today’s marketplace. During this information-rich forum, those of us in the audience and streaming the video live, were able to hear how successful companies are improving agility through interconnected business processes supported by a flexible infrastructure.

The Business Agility launch was focused on three key levers – decision management, process management and technologies. Another key theme of the event was how organizations should “Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast.” All of these themes resonated well with Prolifics and our customer, IDP, who was the keynote client speaker at the event in NYC. Prolifics also had the opportunity to participate, as our VP of BPM and Connectivity, Anant Gupta, was chosen to speak on the panel with IDP. We were pleased to be a part of such a highly informative and interactive panel discussion.

I’d like to discuss IDP’s solution in greater depth, which is a great example of the three levers in action.

Achieve better decisions driven by analytics and business rules - IDP incorporates a sophisticated business rules engine (via ILOG JRules) which is insurance carrier specific and involve algorithms that determine policy rates in real time. Not only does JRules provide the complex logic behind the ratings, but its ease of use allows business analysts, not programmers, to create the rules for each carrier. Another key feature is the governance around the rules. Each configuration can be versioned, and the auditability feature means that it is easy to show compliance with any regulatory needs.

Take a smarter approach to process and integration - IDP integrates data through its usage of IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus across the platform and can deliver data via Web 2.0 on desktops and mobile devices. IBM WESB mediates between the Agent Portal and the third-party Web services carriers use, such as credit reports, payment processing, and claim history repositories. The beauty of the enterprise service bus is that it enables each carrier to link to Web services without affecting the core SaaS solution. No matter how customized the user experience is, the SaaS solution doesn’t have to know anything about the back-end systems it is calling.

Accelerate application, service and information delivery with SOA and extend reach to cloud and mobile – IDP’s solution is a SaaS-based insurance agent portal. Since SaaS is administered by the provider on a one-to-many basis, it’s easier for the provider while also freeing carriers and agents from software administration. Additionally, SaaS is future-proof by scaling and allowing for growth. IDP also offers 24/7 access from anywhere in the world thanks to its mobile component which requires zero architectural changes to the platform. That means that companies can immediately increase efficiency by having insurers, agents and customers all have access to the tools they need and be self-serving.

Another key theme at the launch, “Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast,” is a philosophy that Prolifics has always adopted helping customers move toward SOA and BPM. In previous years we won the Impact award for work that we did at customer, Equinox Fitness. I recall for that account we created a 3-year strategic plan and roadmap for them, yet we created quick wins to help them realize value immediately while moving them toward fulfilling their long term vision. This is definitely an approach that I would recommend, combining both strategic and tactical activities.

For a video replay of the Business Agility Executive Forum, please click here. I would also like to share some photos from the event. You can read about Prolifics' solution at IDP in this case study. To learn more about how Prolifics is helping companies with their SOA and BPM initiatives, visit our website: www.prolifics.com.

Devi Gupta, Vice President, Marketing for Prolifics

Integrating MQ FTE with WebSphere Process Server/WESB

Ivan Smirnov, Senior Consultant

WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition (known simply as MQ FTE) is a robust managed file transfer solution built on WebSphere MQ transport backbone. Product page is here: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/integration/wmq/filetransfer/index.html

This product is a recent addition to the storied and extremely stable WebSphere MQ – it came out after MQ version 7. I was excited to hear about its release because it creates new possibilities in file transfer that FTP, SCP and the like never delivered – like reliability and tolerance of transient network failures. Immediately a question arose: how can we take advantage of these new capabilities in IBM’s middleware. What is the best way to integrate IBM’s premier integration platform, WebSphere ESB (and by extension, WebSphere Process Server) with MQ FTE?

Integration between WESB and MQ FTE will occur on 2 ESB boundaries: module exports that receive files from MQ FTE and module imports that send files to a remote destination via MQ FTE. I argue that the simplest integration approach is also often the best.

On the SCA export (send files via MQ FTE) side, we will configure MQ FTE file transfer using the tool’s native interface (command line or GUI). We then will use Flat File adapter in outbound mode to create a file on local file system where it will be picked up by MQ FTE. Protection from incomplete file pickup is provided by using staging directory, which is built into Flat File adapter.

The following alternatives are possible:

1) Construct the whole MQ FTE messages on the fly in WESB (for instance, by engineering an MQ FTE import binding)

2) Put file on file system the same way, using Flat File adapter, but initiate transfer by putting a request message on MQ FTE agent queue.

The first alternative approach requires duplicating a lot of code that is already in MQ FTE while providing minimal savings in terms of disk I/O. It is not a worthy alternative.

The second alternative approach is close to the original design. However, there is no need to predefine file transfer – this will be done by sending an XML message to administrative queue of MQ FTE. Its benefit is zero administration effort, but it requires some upfront custom development.

On the SCA import (receive from MQ FTE) side, we can configure MQ FTE to transfer files to a local WESB file system. Files will be picked up by Flat File Adapter in inbound mode. MQ FTE has built in protection against picking up incomplete files.

As an alternative, it is certainly possible to receive MQ messages in WESB instead of letting MQ FTE create files on file system. This alternate solution will require complex code largely duplicating existing MQ FTE functionality to extract file payload from MQ messages and handle file-level acknowledgement and auditing. The only upside would be avoiding disk I/O by skipping writing file to file system by MQ FTE and reading it in by Flat File adapter. There is not much value in this, since at such high volume WESB will reach capacity much sooner then disk I/O becomes a bottleneck. This alternate solution is all cost and no benefit.

Conclusion: when integrating MQ FTE and WPS (WESB), simplest solution is very reasonable and will work best in many situations.

Ivan Smirnov is a Senior Consultant at Prolifics with extensive hands-on experience with the WebSphere family of products (including WebSphere Application Server and Process Server, WebSphere Studio/Rational and WebSphere MQ), Tivoli security offerings (including Tivoli Identity Manager and Tivoli Access Manager for e-business), DB2, XML and Web Services. With strong technical skills both in development and administration, as well as deep troubleshooting skills, Ivan handles aspects of implementation installation, configuration, securing and tuning/troubleshooting to development and architecture within a J2EE environment. He also possesses key Application Server migration skills and has helped several customers’ transition to the WebSphere platform from other J2EE platforms.

Human Centric Processes: A Fresh Perspective

Anant Gupta, SOA Practice Director

With BPM gaining so much attention, any workflow product worth its salt provides a lot of flexibility when it comes to definition and execution of processes specifically when it comes to human centric processes, both structured and unstructured. This flexibility however comes at a cost, cost both in terms complexity and clarity of definition of processes and performance in runtime. Also, making changes to workflows always remains a challenge. Simple changes like making steps execute in parallel instead of sequentially are a nightmare to implement and are most often simply not taken up.

It does not really need to be that complex if we take a somewhat hybrid approach to structured and unstructured processes. There are certain steps that have to happen in a particular order and then there are others that can be done at any time if certain pre-requisites are met. We have to start thinking of processes as steps where each step has a set of pre-requisites. These pre-requisites could be related to the steps in the workflow or can be content / context related. Instead of workflows, human centric processes can be defined as a set of steps with pre-requisites. For eg, a step X can be executed only when Step A and Step D are completed, when the status of a document is accepted and if the flow was initiated by a gold client.

This approach should be extended with user experience simulation to come up with the typical paths the workflow will take and this should be visually depicted. This will provide both clarity in terms of the definition and flexibility to change the workflows in an extremely simplified fashion.

Call it pre-requisites or workflow rules, the idea is to provide extreme dynamicity to human centric processes, an area that has not been addressed by most of the so called dynamic BPM products which cater almost always to system centric processes.

Anant Gupta was recently named the SOA Practice Director at Prolifics after serving as a Senior Business Integration and J2EE architect Anant has with extensive experience in IBM's SOA software portfolio and specializes in delivering business integration and business process management solutions. He has worked for major clients in the banking, insurance, telecommunications and technology industries.

Planning and Scheduling SOA/BPM Development - DO NOTS!

Jonathan Machules, Technology Director

As the momentum and understanding of BPM and SOA has increased, the projects have followed. IBM WebSphere Process Server and ESB (WPS/WESB) are common products that organizations start with when moving towards BPM/SOA/Web services. Many organizations are new to this type of SDLC. This discussion is in the context of my experience on WPS/WESB projects and certainly can be applied to other workflow and ESB products/technologies.

DO NOT:

• Delay Data Model and Data Design efforts
• Plan integration validation between systems/apps/services scheduled toward the end of the project
• Assume a Sr. Developer with no experience on WPS/WESB will design/develop a functioning application
  

DO NOT Delay Data Model and Data Design efforts. The reality here is that in development there are more than likely to be changes to the data model. Some will impact your Service Message Interfaces and create a domino effect on the Consumers of that data in design and development. Try to plan as much up front as possible and reduce the costs of changes the must happen later in the SDLC.

DO NOT plan integration validation between systems/apps/services toward the end of the development SDLC. On one recent project the customer was not familiar with WPS/WESB or integration projects in general. They planned all their integration testing toward the end of the SDLC in the Testing Phase. I am not saying integration testing shouldn’t be done in the testing phase but it should NOT be planned at the end of the SDLC. A common project plan will include a ‘Vertical Slice’, ‘Prototype’, ‘Wire-frame’ or whatever term you are familiar with, the has goal to validate the integration of the various systems early on in the SDLC.

DO NOT assume a Sr. Developer with no experience on WPS/WESB will design and develop a functioning platform. WPS/WESB are enterprise platforms that have multiple layers of technologies (e.g. Java, JEE, BPEL, WS, XML, XSLT, etc…). As a proud successful Sr Developer you may very well be able to create an application on these platforms that functions in non-production environment. However, there are number of nuisances that impact performance that should be addressed by design patterns depending on the requirements. Large business is one concern that comes to mind. Acceptable object size is dependent on business transaction volume, CPU Architecture, RAM, HEAP and other dependencies. Design patterns to deal with large business objects can be applied thus giving you better performance.

WPS/WESB is a product I’ve worked with extensively. It has seen major enhancements and improvements on usability/consumability but this doesn’t mean anyone can create a well functioning app.

Jonathan Machules first joined Prolifics as a Consultant, and is currently a Technology Director specializing in SOA, BPM, UML and IBM's SOA-related technologies. He has 12 years experience in the IT field — 2 of those years at Oracle as a Support Analyst and 10 years in Consulting. Jon is a certified IBM SOA Solution Designer, Solutions Developer, Systems Administrator and Systems Expert. Recent speaking engagements include IMPACT on SOA End-to-End Integration in 2007 and 2008, and SOA World Conference on SOA and WebSphere Process Server in 2007.