Sandy Carter: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) -- Off the Record

Cape Horn is one of the most beautiful cities in the world! And they are also embracing SOA in their growth!

For instance, the Professional Provident Society (PPS) is a South African provider of insurance products to a highly-specialized market: graduate professionals such as doctors and lawyers. The company has been in existence since 1941 and is a leader in its niche.  They wanted to improve their ability to bring new products to market in order to respond to changing customer demands and stiffening competition. 

PPS replaced all of its legacy systems with a completely new, modular application infrastructure based on the principles of the IBM Insurance Application Architecture (IAA) which is based on SOA. The common IAA-based platform unified several previously disparate policy systems.  

This solution has enabled PPS to bring nine new insurance products to market in less than one year, allowed rapid modification of new products in response to competitor actions, reduced application development costs by 50 percent, decreased audit findings by approximately 80 percent, eliminated more than 90 percent of system code, and significantly improved controls for collecting premiums.

Awesome results for South Afrcia!

I love flowers!   I love Valentine's day partially due to the flowers I receive! 

My colleague Georgina Castanon has taken some amazing pictures of flowers!  Check them out!

So of course, one of my favorite references, is 1-800-Flowers.com.  To realize its vision of synergy among its 14 brands and meet ambitious growth goals, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC.—the world’s largest florist and gift shop—is deploying a new e-commerce solution.  Running on System p servers, WebSphere Commerce (built on SOA) is the singular front end for all the eCommerce sites and WebSphere MQ and WebSphere Message Broker comprise an enterprise service bus that through service orientation, coordinates messaging and integration between WebSphere Commerce and the company’s disparate back-end systems.  

The solution makes it easy to launch (and less expensive to maintain) new eCommerce sites, in weeks rather than months – or even years.  The solution enables more rapid creation and deployment of retail Web sites, allowing 1-800-FLOWERS.COM to try out new offerings with very little investment and risk. 

It also facilitates cross-selling between brands by unifying the underlying technology.  The solution provides the potential for information sharing across business units, opening up the possibility for more effective marketing to customers. 

It also provides a rich, differentiated customer experience with reduced maintenance and development costs.

I hope my hubbie tries it out again!!!

Wow!!!!

Super Secret blackberry!  So cool!

Over the last week, I have been asked a dozen times if an SOA approach requires that you start over.  So today I thought I would show another example of reusing current applications and systems to achieve results toward the SOA approach.

Meyer Werft is a shipbuilder basd in Germany. Their IT infrastructure—based on siloed, heterogeneous systems that the company had inefficiently weaved together over time—no longer supported Meyer Werft’s need to run an adaptable, integrated business. To boost its competitive advantage, the shipbuilder needed to transform its IT infrastructure into a modern environment that would support the integration and automation of enterprisewide business processes as a set of linked services. 

The service-oriented architecture (SOA) solution gives Meyer Werft an overall picture of the entire shipbuilding process and allows employees to quickly implement changes at every stage of the production process.  Meyer Werft is now able to react quickly to customer needs, build its ships to even higher standards of quality and deeper levels of customization, and compete dynamically in the global marketplace. The company used IBM WebSphere Process Server and IBM WebSphere MQ  to integrate with the company’s back-end Dassault Systèmes ENOVIA product lifecycle management (PLM) system. 

Using Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) the new system provides an overall picture of the entire shipbuilding process.  In addition to using the SOA approach to help it switch from a siloed IT infrastructure to an integrated IT environment, Meyer Werft is using the SOA approach to transform how various divisions conduct business.

Had the company not embraced the SOA solution, Meyer Werft estimates that it would have closed its doors within five years.

Read the full story!

We are running out natural resources. I am passionate about making sure that the planet is set for the next generation..my 2 precious girls!!!!

So today we are highlighting DTE Energy -- a 150-year-old company with $9B in revenues that manages $23B in assets.  

DTE Energy operates non-regulated businesses in 38 states.  With the utility business becoming more competitive by the day, Midwestern energy giant DTE Energy needed to position itself for the future. Disparate systems and process fragmentation across nearly 200 different business units prevented the company from realizing all of the underlying synergies from acquisitions.   DTE Energy undertook a massive consolidation of its business systems, which made possible the complete redesign and standardization of its business processes across all business units.  DTE Energy can now drive optimization efforts as an enterprise—not a collection of business units.  

Unlocking the potential efficiencies embedded in utility business models requires a level of operational orchestration across the entire business, whether it’s common processes, common resources or supply-chain integration. In the wake of industry consolidation, many utilities have assembled a business portfolio that looks synergistic on paper, but still faces tremendous challenges in aligning with their acquired or merged businesses.   Like most utilities that have grown through acquisition, DTE Energy’s efforts to consolidate the business were constrained by a proliferation of IT systems, which—by keeping information confined to pockets within business units—made it difficult to gain insight required to make critical business decisions. Disparate systems across the organization provided difficulties with a number of activities, from financial reporting to spare parts inventories. 

DTE Energy used SOA to improve the management of all business units and functions, link them together and make them best-in-class.   The project eliminated more than 400 legacy systems and interfaces.  The broad theme of the DTE Energy story is how flexibility and integration enable even the most complex companies to think, act and optimize as a single company. It’s seen in the way process standardization and flexible, SOA-based integration enables DTE Energy’s business units to share and adopt best practices for the benefit of all, and how these same attributes enable DTE Energy to rapidly and fully integrate future acquisitions

http://w3-01.ibm.com/sales/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=RF&subtype=CS&htmlfid=JSTS-7HGL68&appname=crmd

I love my iPhone.  My husband would say it is my best friend!  I use the iPhone apps from it to see the movie times, the weather (yes all that snow up here in the NE!), and even work!!  (If you know of  great iPhone apps please let me know!!) So it is exciting to see mobile providers using SOA to even provide more capabilities!

mBlox, the world’s largest mobile transaction network, enables businesses to deliver mobile services and content around the world. Specializing in global operator connectivity and mobile billing, mBlox maintains connections to more than 500 mobile operators in over 180 countries through its carrier-grade network.  With the increasing maturity and standardisation of the mobile messaging market, mBlox wanted to simplify its IT platform to deliver greater efficiencies, accelerate speed-to-market, and reduce the costs of change.

Replacing its custom-developed billing system with an off-the-shelf solution and integrating it across the enterprise was a first priority.  mBlox built a service-oriented architecture around 3rd party billing and accounting software.

The services are orchestrated by IBM WebSphere Process Server and surfaced through an IBM WebSphere Portal server front-end. The solution was created using a suite of IBM Rational requirements management and software development tools.  Billing runs that used to take up to 10 days can now be completed within just 36 hours. Process-driven service-oriented architecture enables rapid development of new applications by reusing and orchestrating existing components, allowing mBlox to set up services for new mobile carriers within half a day.

Check out more details at  http://w3-01.ibm.com/sales/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=RF&subtype=CS&htmlfid=STRD-7MDMUK&appname=crmd

This is in honor of the great job done by the US Air pilot and crew and to the Ferry and rescuers.  As a frequent flier, I was very thankful for their courage and safety awareness.    Thank you!!!

For our SOA reference today, we will focus on Atlas Air, who is the world’s largest cargo airline and the world’s largest fleet operator of Boeing 747s.

Over the past several years, Atlas Air’s operations had become increasingly complex and process-intensive. Its infrastructure was also complicated, comprising a variety of “homegrown” messaging applications that did not integrate well with its back-end systems. 

Atlas Air needed to simplify this infrastructure and coordinate the various moving parts, and it decided to do so by implementing a middleware solution that was based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).  They replaced their existing messaging system with a true enterprise service bus (ESB) through which all messages flow.

They now have the ability to integrate real-time information with process workflows, improving efficiency, reducing costs and enhancing their ability to respond rapidly to customer needs.

As many of you know, AirBus is also a big SOA client reference!

I love helping universities with their opportunities because I believe that education is so important.  Education is important because it equips us with all that is needed to make our dreams come true and opens doors for all of us!! 

Ball State University (BSU) is a multidisciplinary university located in Muncie, Indiana, with a current enrollment of more than 20,000 students. 

Prior to adopting a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform, BSU had applications that were up to 30 years old. They worked extremely well, but difficulty in making changes was inhibiting the adoption of modern-day applications. A seemingly minor complaint from the parent of a student unleashed a storm of activity that has resulted in BSU’s implementing an SOA platform to pave the way to the future. 

The first SOA project employed services to resolve name and address inconsistencies across multiple databases. The university has now leveraged its new SOA infrastructure to streamline and automate the entire online student enrollment process. 

In addition to improving student satisfaction and reducing adminstrative costs, this project helped the University recapture lost revenues by increasing the number of successful enrollments.

Go Ball State!!

Yes, I have now lived in NY for 4 years!  Coming from Texas, I don't think I have ever thawed out!  And definitely not this year with the temperatures falling daily!

My SOA reference today is the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon), the world’s largest securities servicing provider.  If you remember, back in 2007, it was formed through the merger between The Bank of New York Company, Inc. and Mellon Financial Corporation of Pittsburgh. 

We saw something then, that we are seeing now which is the new entity, BNY Mellon, needed to integrate the operations of the two organizations—including their cultures, business processes and technology infrastructures. Equally important, the company needed an IT solution that would take into account the complex and rapidly changing nature of financial services and deliver the flexibility needed to support the bank’s business strategies as they evolved. 

A driver of SOA value today is mergers.    Merging two complex IT infrastructures in a dynamic business environment is an ideal setting for a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach .  

The company started its SOA journey by employing shared, reusable IT services as a primary strategy for achieving its stated objectives.  Through the use of shared services, the bank can integrate disparate systems, processes and data, and streamline the resulting operations for maximum efficiency. 

By taking a services-based approach to its integration needs, the bank has been able to hone in on application details, which has allowed the elimination of extraneous or redundant components. Taking time at the outset to clearly define its principles and standards has helped the bank ensure that future development efforts will support the company’s present and future business strategies and objectives.

I think most of you know that I went to India for the first time last year.  It is a fascinating country!! I had the pleasure to meet with one of our customers while there in Bombay!  Tata Sky is part of TATA Group which is one of India’s oldest and most respected business conglomerates, recognized the significance of the opportunity in the broadcasting business, when the government decided in 2004 to grant a precious few licenses for direct-to-home satellite TV broadcasting. 

TATA Group wanted to become a pioneer in the country’s newly opened direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television market. To reach its ambitious growth and market penetration goals, the company needed to gain the first-mover advantage by launching its offering faster than its competitors. 

They thought long and hard about what approach to use for their next venture and chose to build a robust, flexible business model and service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based IT infrastructure to launch its Tata Sky satellite broadcasting service.

This “green field” project, in which a business is built from scratch, was the first of its kind in India.  As a result of their SOA approach that drove business and IT alignment, they launched the business in a short time—about six months after work began. 

The results they told me was that that just crossed the one million connections mark in its first year of operations and achieved their goal of in-home installation within a specified time limit with immediate service access.

Check this out from YouTube showing the value that SOA can generate value for businesses, not just for IT!

I'd love your thoughts on it!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6aUIFOl5UI

Go long horns!  The Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) is a large and complex operation that supports many people, from employees to citizens to partners. In conjunction with the four other agencies that make up the health and services system for Texas, HHSC is responsible for approximately 8 million clients, 40,000 employees and a bi-annual budget of $54 billion. 

The mandate from the State legislature required that theTexas health services structure transform into a consolidated, responsive “enterprise” that would provide greater accountability, improved service delivery and substantial cost savings. I

n order to support its new agile, multichannel CRM system, the HHSC utilized reusable services and business process management as part of an SOA transformation.  They service enabled existing legacy applications and added an ESB layer and a process layer to allow choreography of business tasks.

Thus they deployed SOA while leveraging what they had in their infrastructure!   Way to go!

If you want me to highlight your company, let me know!!!! I am trying to do one a days until Valentines!