JBOSS MiDDlEwARE SOluTiOn SHOwcASE

Transcription

RED HAT
JBOSS Middleware
Solution Showcase
A collection of business solution success stories from customers
around the globe.
introduction
To succeed, your organization needs software applications that connect users to the information and processes
needed to transform into a smarter business. You need an application infrastructure that is flexible, integrated, and
able to evolve with your business needs. That’s easy to say, but harder to achieve. Why?
Because existing application infrastructures are complex. Hard-coded business processes are baked into inflexible
applications. Disconnected data silos make it hard to see all your business information. Integration of diverse
heterogeneous legacy applications is often required. Development is slowed by complex tools, unpredictable
processes, and disconnects with the operations department. These barriers make it hard to create solutions that
truly meet the needs of the business.
Red Hat® JBoss® Middleware removes these barriers by providing IT with the tools needed to build connected
systems that bring people, processes, and information together. These connected, flexible applications create new
and more efficient ways for end users to work and drive organizational success, which can lead to increased
revenues, decreased costs, higher customer retention, and improved partnerships with suppliers and vendors.
Red Hat JBoss Middleware transforms your application infrastructure from one that is costly and hard to manage
to one that is truly dynamic. This improved application infrastructure delivers better productivity, rapid ROI, and
improved business outcomes. Customers around the globe use Red Hat JBoss Middleware to accelerate their
development of modern applications, integrate applications and data services, and automate business decisions
and processes to increase enterprise agility and innovation.
This book showcases how customers use Red Hat JBoss Middleware to develop business solutions and reach their
goals across various industries worldwide. See how Red Hat JBoss Middleware has transformed other companies,
and get ideas for how you can use this innovative middleware technology to transform your own business.
RED HAT jboss middleware portfolio
contact red hat sales
NORTH AMERICA
1-888-REDHAT1
www.redhat.com
2
ASIA PACIFIC
+65 6490 4200
www.apac.redhat.com
[email protected]
EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
00800 7334 2835
www.europe.redhat.com
[email protected]
LATIN AMERICA
+54 11 4341 6200
www.latam.redhat.com
[email protected]
RED HAT
JBOSS Middleware Solution Showcase
Table of contents
5
COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA & Entertainment
46 Education
63 Financial Services & Insurance
127 Healthcare & Life Sciences
152 Public Sector & Government
175 Retail
186 Transportation, Energy & utilities
213 Other Industries & ISV Solutions
North america
Europe, middle east & africa
latin america
asia pacific
3
4
COMMUNICATIONS,
MEDIA &
ENTERTAINMENT
INDUSTRY:
COMMUNICATIONS,
MEDIA &
ENTERTAINMENT
5
mCarbon Utilizes Red
Hat Solutions to Deliver
Technology that Drives
Telecom Innovation
Geography
Pan India
Business challenge
To design a stable, flexible, high-
BACKGROUND
performance, scalable, reusable,
mCarbon is one of the leading product companies in the Indian telecom
sector, primarily working in the areas of telecom value added services
and network applications. It works with almost all leading telecom firms
and enterprises for various technology solutions and products.
The company was established in September 2007 in New Delhi, India.
and cost-effective software
mCarbon works with top operator customers such as Airtel, Idea
Cellular, Tata Teleservices, MTS and Reliance Communications, in
addition to large enterprise customers such as State Bank of India,
Bank of India, ICICI Lombard, and Infosys, helping them to enable their
products and giving them various offerings on services around telecom.
Partnered with Red Hat to build
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
mCarbon’s key business objective is to create a niche in the telecom
Value Added Services (VAS) and network applications space by building
innovative telecom products. “We operate as a bridge between the end
users and telecom operators,” said Rajesh Razdan, co-founder and head
of sales, mCarbon. “We wanted to bridge this gap between the two
entities by designing various utility applications, launching them faster,
and building flexible charging models around them.”
To fulfill this need, mCarbon was planning to build a multi-architecture
platform that would operate in a completely distributed mode and
have the capability to handle multiple vendors. The technical team at
mCarbon started building an innovative delivery platform for network
applications with intelligent call control, multi-access user controls
for applications, such as SMS Center, USSD Gateway, Interactive Voice
Response (IVR), and Call Back Server among others, and a complete
charging framework to handle any protocol and customer charging
scenario. “We call this framework ‘Greenroom,’” said Brij Mohan
Mahendru, chief technology officer, mCarbon.
Choosing the right technology platform for the Greenroom solution
was a major decision for several reasons. The first was the cost-toperformance ratio of the platform. “Greenroom is transaction-heavy, as
it caters to multiple vendors and their millions of end users,” said Brij.
“So, the performance in terms of transactions per second is
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | mCARBON
infrastructure platform for its
solution delivery framework
Solution
a software infrastructure platform
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
Red Hat Cluster Suite on IBM
System x servers
SOFTWARE
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced
Platform, Red Hat Cluster Suite,
MySQL database, JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform
Hardware
Intel processor-based servers from
IBM, IBM System x 3650 Servers
Benefits
Increased flexibility, eliminated
vendor lock-in, reduced TCO,
simplified management, reduced
systems maintenance, increased
scalability and performance, enhanced
reusability, reduced time-to-market,
and increased repeat sales
redhat.com/jboss
6
extremely important.” mCarbon wanted to achieve high
performance while keeping the total cost of ownership
(TCO) down. To keep the TCO on a lower side, mCarbon
wanted to use commodity hardware for running the
software platform. “We needed a platform that was
flexible, so as to be fine tuned to our requirements, and
one that could extract maximum throughput from the
underlying commodity hardware,” said Rajesh.
The second important criterion was the platform’s
scalability potential and its future readiness. “The
platform needed to be able to scale to meet the evergrowing subscriber base of mobile users,” said Rajesh.
Additionally, the platform’s future readiness was also
crucial due to the fact that the product development
life cycle in the telecom domain varies between threeto-five years. “In such a large span of time, technology
can undergo huge change,” said Brij, “So, we wanted a
platform that was future-agnostic and had a substantial
longevity.”
Finally, mCarbon wanted a platform that supported
and further enabled reusability. “Our core offering,
Greenroom’s key component, is its ability to handle a
variety of vendors,” said Brij. “The business scenario
differs for each of our customers, but we wanted to
design the IT platform in such a way that a majority of
the components could be reused.”
SOLUTION
With parameters such as flexibility, scalability, cost,
performance, reusability, and future readiness, mCarbon
decided to build the underlying platform for its
mission-critical Greenroom application on open source
technology, and chose Red Hat as its trusted technology
partner. Red Hat’s open source solutions were an ideal
fit as they not only met these criteria, but also allowed
mCarbon to take advantage of the rapid innovation
from the open source community and avoid proprietary
vendor lock-in.
“Our primary reason for choosing Red Hat Enterprise
Linux was the cost-to-performance ratio and the stability
it offers,” said Brij. Red Hat Enterprise Linux also
provides mCarbon with the choice of a wider ecosystem
of certified software and hardware platforms. “The Red
Hat Enterprise Linux platform has given us broader
acceptability in the market and easy integration with
solution partners like IBM and Intel. Our ISV relationship
with Red Hat has also helped us in configuring and
benchmarking the system for better performance,” said
Brij. Red Hat’s subscription model also provides mCarbon
with a predictable total cost of ownership (TCO), while
also ensuring that mCarbon is able to derive continuous
value even after initial rollouts.
missed call notifications, location-based dynamic discounting,
Global SIM provisioning, and RBT and Reverse RBT. All of
these applications, and the entire framework, are built
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform. mCarbon
also uses the power of Red Hat Cluster Suite to build a
failover cluster for the framework. The applications
running over the framework for the content/information
aggregation space are running on JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform. The Red Hat software infrastructure
platform is running on Intel’s dual Xeon processor-based
servers from IBM.
The entire Red Hat solution has been fine tuned on the
IBM hardware to obtain excellent performance. “Red
Hat allows you to extract maximum throughput from
the underlying hardware platform in terms of peak
performance,” said Rajesh. One of the applications
deployed on the Greenroom framework is the
automated voicemail application, which was handling
about 200,000 Busy Hour Call Attempts (BHCA).
In the past two years, its performance has jumped
to 500,000 BHCA. “The combination of Red Hat’s
software infrastructure with that of IBM’s hardware
infrastructure based on the Intel Xeon processor gives
best-in-class performance,” said Brij. The application is
also has been running smoothly for the past two years
without any unplanned downtime.
In the future, mCarbon wants to evolve the Greenroom
framework to add more applications to serve the needs
of its customers using state-of-the-art technology. “Red
Hat’s robust and scalable open source platform gives us
the necessary confidence to deploy our mission-critical
applications,” said Brij. “It also acts as a comfort factor
for our clients as they know that they are banking on
a framework, which, in itself, is based on enterpriseclass and reliable Red Hat Enterprise Linux,” he added.
mCarbon is also in the process of building a media
delivery framework called Channel99. “Channel99
would be the world’s first composite-rich media product,
which handles all forms of music on the device and lets
the user control his choice for wide variety of music in
both audio and the video format,” said Rajesh. “This
framework would also be completely based on Red Hat’s
open source software infrastructure,” he added.
mCarbon’s flagship Greenroom framework has various
applications deployed on it, including In Call Management,
7
redhat.com/jboss
mCARBON | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
“Our partnership with Red Hat has
enabled us to offer a robust, scalable,
high-performance, flexible, and costeffective technology platform to our
customers. It has helped us to deliver
futuristic technology solutions that
drive telecom innovation.”
– Brij Mohan Mahendru, co-founder and chief technology
officer, mCarbon
BENEFITS
“With Red Hat, we were able to extract tremendous value
from our systems and applications,” said Rajesh. “Red
Hat freed us from vendor lock-in, and gives tremendous
flexibility to choose a cost-effective commodity hardware
platform that delivers flexibility and high performance.”
said Brij. Red Hat’s platform has also helped mCarbon to
reduce the time-to-market for its services and enabled
it to do repeat sales using the same framework. “The
entire platform is designed with reusability as the
key component, so as to support multiple vendors,”
said Brij. The platform can handle unique scenarios
for different customers in different domains, as it is
designed in such a way as to reuse 90 percent of the
components.
Overall, Red Hat provided mCarbon with enterpriseclass solutions to deploy its mission-critical framework
at an affordable price without any compromise on
parameters like performance, scalability, flexibility,
and reusability. “Our partnership with Red Hat has
enabled us to offer a robust, scalable, high-performance,
flexible, and cost-effective technology platform to
our customers. It has helped us to deliver futuristic
technology solutions that drive telecom innovation,”
said Rajesh.
Red Hat solutions also provided mCarbon with lower
IT costs, simplified management, reduced systems
maintenance, and increased scalability and performance
for their Greenroom framework. “Red Hat solutions
allow you to extract more from your systems, enabling
business growth,” said Rajesh.
“With Red Hat, scalability and performance go hand-inhand,” said Brij. While the subscriber base of the end
users have gone up multiple times; the performance
in terms of number of transactions per second has
increased multifold in the last two years. “In the case
of Airtel, which is one of our key clients, the user base
has increased from 10 million to 130 million in the last
few years: the performance of the system has increased
by 250 percent,” said Brij. Such a handsome increase in
performance has led to equivalent reduction in the costs.
Red Hat’s open source systems have imparted flexibility
in mCarbon’s various IT decisions. “In addition to the
flexibility to choose the hardware platform, Red Hat’s
platform remains compatible across architectures, virtual
platforms, or appliances,” said Rajesh. “Additionally,
it also imparts the flexibility to have multiple types of
applications running over it, interacting with multiple
types of vendors without major issues of integration,” he
added. This flexibility and openness also make the Red
Hat platform easier to manage.
The flexibility and freedom from lock-in advantage of
Red Hat’s systems have helped mCarbon to achieve
substantial longevity for its framework. “Red Hat’s open
source platform ensures that it supports our service
delivery framework throughout its development cycle,”
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | mCARBON
redhat.com/jboss
8
9
Rancore Partners
with Red Hat to Build
a Solid Service Delivery
Platform
Geography
Global
Business challenge
To design a stable, flexible, high-
BACKGROUND
performance, scalable, and cost-
Rancore Technologies is a technology research and development (R&D)
firm focused on 4G telecom networks and services. A privately held
company and a fully owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited
(RIL), a Fortune 500 firm, and one of India’s biggest corporate entities,
Rancore’s product line ranges from LTE and WiMAX Base Stations to the
LTE Evolved Packet Core (EPC), which is the IP Multimedia Subsystem to
the company’s Service Delivery Platform (SDP).
effective software infrastructure
Rancore has close to 350 engineers comprising core 4G product
designers, systems QA engineers, 4G telecommunication subject matter
experts, and business analysts.
to build its mission-critical service
delivery platform for 4G telecom
networks
Solution
Partnered with Red Hat to build a
mission-critical service delivery
platform with JBoss® Enterprise
Application Platform and Red Hat®
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Enterprise Linux®, running on Intel
In telecommunication technology, 4G standards have the power to
transmit voice, video, text, and television data at the same time on a
mobile network. In February 2008, when 4G standards were still in a
nascent stage of standardization, Rancore launched its ambitious SDP
project to deliver 4G telecom services.
Xeon processor-based HP servers
SOFTWARE
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss
“This project is targeted at one of the largest 4G deployments ever--and
in the world’s biggest telecom market, India,” said Aayush Bhatnagar,
manager Software Development, Rancore.
Operations Network, and MySQL
The biggest challenge for this project was the fact that Rancore was
working on a state-of-the-art but very new technology. Therefore, the
platform of choice had to be flexible enough to cater to ever-changing
standards and requirements in order to remain competitive.
Hardware
Moreover, working in the services space also presented new business
requirements which had to be considered in the project implementation.
The platform development required a very strong ‘concept to
realization’ capability.
“This situation presented the need to be standards-based and still
provide open interfaces to enable speedy systems integration and
reduce time-to-market,” said Aayush.
In short, the platform needed to be built with open architecture to
database
Intel Xeon processor-based servers
from HP (HP ProLiant DL380 G7
servers) with ATCA Chassis
Benefits
Achieved a low-cost/high-throughput
platform, eliminated vendor lock-in,
reduced total cost of ownership (TCO),
simplified management, increased
scalability and performance, and
created a competitive edge, which led
to exceptional market share
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | RANCORE
redhat.com/jboss
10
simplify and ease integration with other third-party
products and vendors. Last but not least, the solution
required a feature-rich GUI for seamless operations and
maintenance of the platform.
“Our partnership with Red Hat enables
us to offer a robust, scalable, highperformance, flexible, and cost-effective
technological platform which has the
potential to drive telecom innovation in
the future.”
During the first phase, the SDP deployment will scale out
to cater to 10 million subscribers. The open source MySQL
database is being used as a database server. The entire SDP
stack was ultimately powered using Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5 on HP servers to achieve economies of scale.
Overall, the project has been hugely successful because
of the performance and flexibility of the Red Hat suite
of products—right from concept, design, and development
to QA and finally towards deployment readiness.
– Aayush Bhatnagar, Manager, Software Development, Rancore
BENEFITS
SOLUTION
With the goal of achieving parameters including flexibility,
scalability, usability, performance, and future readiness
in front of them, Rancore decided to build the underlying
service delivery platform for its mission-critical 4G
telecom applications on open source technology and
selected Red Hat as its trusted technology partner. Open
source solutions from Red Hat were an ideal fit, as they
not only met Rancore’s list of qualifying criteria, but
partnership also allowed Rancore to take advantage of
the rapid innovation from the open source community
and avoid proprietary lock-in.
Rancore evaluated several similar products, but selected
JBoss solutions after extensive technical evaluation.
Therefore, from the very beginning of the project, Rancore
leveraged JBoss Enterprise Application Platform as the
base product of the SDP implementation. JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform provided Rancore the unique capability
to couple the features of J2EE with telecommunications
to solve business problems and challenges.
“For instance, GlassFish/SailFin from Sun was not
multiprotocol enabled at the time we started the
project, and we required multiprotocol and multiinterface support for our applications,” said Aayush.
“Another competing option, the Oracle OCCAS Server,
had a greater learning curve,” he added. Moreover, with
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Rancore had
the advantage of monitoring all products using JBoss
Operations Network in a centralized manner—an option
that was not available in OCCAS and GlassFish.
Currently, all parts of the SDP including customer
portal, managed services portal, telecom services, and
instant messaging services, are deployed on the JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform. Rancore leveraged the
standard JBoss Enterprise Application Platform stack
11
features—JBoss cache for replication, transactions for
ACID properties, clustering to scale out, and JBoss
richfaces for the GUI—to create a robust and complete
solution. Integration with third-party systems was
realized through the use of web services (SOAP).
redhat.com/jboss
By leveraging open source solutions from Red Hat,
Rancore’s small but dedicated team of engineers
achieved amazing results and significant cost savings.
The competitive advantage was partly because Rancore
was also an in-house IMS solutions provider and having
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform as the base for
the services layer provided an extra edge when rolling
out new services.
“Reusable components of JBoss Enterprise Framework
were extremely helpful, and provided easier and faster
production of our offerings,” said Aayush.
The fail-proof, scalable, and high-throughput platform,
coupled with lower operational costs, has given Rancore
a competitive edge in the telecom industry.
With this project, Rancore became the first company in
India to utilize open source technology to build a SDP
based on 4G standards. This project is poised to
represent the largest scale possible on open source
technologies used in the telecom industry—scaling from
10 million subscribers to a volume of almost 500 million
subscribers in the near future. “The SDP project has
illustrated quite clearly that a low cost, high-throughput,
mission-critical, fault-tolerant system can be built with
the right use of open source technology,” said Aayush.
Overall, Red Hat provided Rancore with enterprise-class
solutions to deploy its mission-critical SDP at an
affordable price without any compromise on crucial
factors such as performance, scalability, flexibility, and
security.
“Our partnership with Red Hat enables us to offer a
robust, scalable, high-performance, flexible, and costeffective technological platform, which has the potential
to drive telecom innovation in the future,” said Aayush.
RANCORE | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Accarda AG Increases
Customer Acquisition
Rate and Enhances
Customer Service
with Red Hat
Geography
Brüttisellen, Switzerland
Business challenge
To establish additional incentives
BACKGROUND
for customer interaction and
Accarda AG is an established supplier of integrated customer
relationship management. The company was founded in 1970 under the
name NCR Data Center and has been growing steadily ever since. It
has been operating under the name Accarda AG since 2005. In 2007,
Accarda was taken over by the Maus Frères Group (70 percent) and the
Aduno Group (30 percent). This joint venture significantly increased
both Accarda’s range of services and plans for future growth. Today,
Accarda AG has more than 200 employees and its loyalty cards are
used by the majority of Swiss households.
further develop strategic customer
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Attracting customers and developing customer loyalty are Accarda’s
core competencies, combined with a dedication to provide transparency
to its customers’ needs. A wide range of information is required to
develop innovative solutions and strategies in customer relationship
management, and Accarda has this information at its disposal.
A powerful IT infrastructure is key to successful implementation and
support of sustainable customer loyalty programs. “It plays a central
role in the implementation of sophisticated customer retention
programs, customer interaction processes, and payment and financing
solutions,” explained Philippe Pulsfort, head of IT Operations at
Accarda AG. “Our solutions incorporate innovative ideas, concepts,
and strategies to efficiently solve the challenges of new customer
acquisition, customer development, and retention.”
As demands from its clients significantly increased, Accarda looked to
provide its data warehouses and data marts with the ability to analyze
data more accurately and to arrange more targeted marketing campaigns.
The objective was to enable clients to access data via secure web
interfaces, critical for market segmentation and determining product
trends. Due to these web interfaces, Accarda’s customers are now able
to prepare their data with the help of extensive business intelligence
functions and can analyze, for example, the effectiveness of specific
activities such as campaigns and promotions.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ACCARDA
relationship management (CRM)
activities in the field of customer
loyalty card management
Solution
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat
Network Satellite, JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, JBoss Operations
Network, and Red Hat Consulting
Hardware
Two HP BladeSystem c7000
Enclosures, each with six HP ProLiant
BL465c G7 boards (AMD Opteron 6136,
two sockets, each with eight cores and
128 GB RAM)
Migration path
Development of new web interfaces
and web applications to access data
warehouses and data marts
Benefits
Enhanced reliability, flexibility, and a
robust enterprise-class open source
software stack
redhat.com/jboss
12
BENEFITS
SOLUTION
To support its web interfaces, Accarda selected JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform from Red Hat on the
basis of the company’s wide-ranging Java expertise. The
platform includes extensive open source technologies
for creating, supplying, and operating Java-based
applications and services. Furthermore, JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform supports a wide range of standards
for Java EE and web services.
“We have been working with Red Hat for
several years now and we plan to grow
our open source-based infrastructure with
Red Hat in the future. For us, adopting
open source solutions is part of the overall
strategy to keep abreast of technological
progress. Our experience with Red Hat
solutions has been extremely positive.
Red Hat provides us with everything we
need, including first-class support.”
– Philippe Pulsfort, head of IT Operations at Accarda AG
The initial manageable solution was just a few
servers running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and
was scaled rapidly into an extensive IT infrastructure
for web interfaces and web applications. Almost all
new applications run on an open source stack. The
infrastructure consists of two HP BladeSystem c7000
Enclosures, each with six HP ProLiant BL465c G7
boards (AMD Opteron 6136, two sockets, each with
eight cores and 128 GB RAM).
For the management and monitoring of the JBoss
Application Server, Accarda uses JBoss Operations
Network. Several resources can be managed
simultaneously by creating groups in JBoss
Operations Network. By using the command-line
interface, an experienced administrator can create
scripts for frequently recurring tasks, which makes
day-to-day work much easier. In addition, JBoss
Operations Network can be used as an “early warning
system” for live systems by means of definable alerts.
Possible abnormalities, like the actual availability of
JBoss and the number of messages in the JMS queues,
can be detected and corrected effectively. As a result,
Accarda has seen enhanced reliability and availability
across the Java infrastructure.
13
redhat.com/jboss
While the platform was only used for selected projects
at the beginning, the advantages of standardization
on an open source platform quickly became clear.
“JBoss Enterprise Application Platform allows us to
combine stability, reliability, certified environments,
and professional support with the advantages of
rapid innovation and the vibrancy of the open source
community,” said Pulsfort.
Accarda used the services of Red Hat Consulting
primarily for the configuration and deployment of Red
Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform. “Red Hat Consulting services fully met our
specific requirements and have been crucial in ensuring
that we achieve maximum safety and efficiency,” said
Pulsfort. “At the same time, we have benefited from a
knowledge transfer which has shortened the learning
curve and has helped maintain and, in many cases,
increase our high performance levels.”
The administration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers
is carried out with Red Hat Network Satellite system
management solution. Accarda is now in a position to
maintain its Linux landscape at every stage, from
installation to configuration right through to patch
and security management as well as comprehensive
monitoring capabilities. At Accarda, one administrator is
sufficient to manage approximately 100 Linux servers.
“We have been working with Red Hat for several
years now and we plan to grow our open source-based
infrastructure with Red Hat in the future. For us,
adopting open source solutions is part of the overall
strategy to keep abreast of technological progress. Our
experience with Red Hat solutions has been extremely
positive. Red Hat provides us with everything we need,
including first-class support,” concluded Pulsfort. “The
open source stack based on Red Hat solutions and JBoss
Enterprise Middleware has proven to be extremely
flexible and highly productive, and we are now
considering running other components of our missioncritical infrastructure on our open source stack.”
ACCARDA | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
CLOUD-BASED APPLICATION
CENTER SPURS INNOVATION
FOR FONECTA
Geography
Finland
BACKGROUND
Fonecta is a digital media company based in Finland that provides
extensive directory and search services to four million consumers and
more than 10,000 businesses around the world. It provisions search
capabilities through physical media, online, and mobile devices,
regardless of time and place. Examples of services include 020202
directory assistance, eniro.fi, finder.fi, and fonecta.fi/haku (enriched
Google search).
Business challenge
Fonecta, a digital media company, wanted
to centralize and standardize its cloud
infrastructure to provide its extensive
customer base with a scalable and
secure integration and development hub.
Fonecta selected Ixonos Elastic CloudTM
Fonecta also offers businesses and organizations a wide variety of
marketing services that include customer databases, customer base
analysis, and marketing campaigns online or through mobile devices.
Fonecta is part of the European Directories Group, which has business
operations in eight European countries. In 2011, Fonecta’s revenue was
€193 million.
as its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and
built entirely on Red Hat® technology.
Fonecta can now quickly develop and
deploy new services, with a reduced total
cost of ownership (TCO)—without having
to invest in new hardware or platform
“The certified and supported solutions
stack from Red Hat, from virtualization
technology to operating system and
application engine, is the foundation
of the Ixonos Elastic Cloud service.”
software licenses
SolutionS
Ixonos Elastic Cloud, a PaaS, Red Hat
Enterprise Virtualization 3, JBoss
Enterprise Data Services Platform, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform,
– Jari Kekkonen, Business Development Director, Ixonos
JBoss Enterprise Web Server, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The digital revolution has embraced and transformed the media Industry.
During this time, Fonecta has evolved into a real-time online media
company. To facilitate this change, the company acquired several
businesses in the Finnish online and mobile industries. This change
naturally put a strain on Fonecta’s IT department. Suddenly there
was a patchwork of IT systems and applications from the combined
assets of the original and newly acquired businesses. This sprawling
infrastructure needed a more holistic and centralized approach to IT
architecture that could integrate and manage a variety of systems and
applications. This would help Fonecta structure and channel unique
data from different applications to a host of new online and mobile
services. The company also predicted cost savings with a centralized IT
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | FONECTA
Hardware
Dell PowerEdge 710 HD, Dell Compellent
network storage, NetApp storage
solution with fibre channel (platform for
Ixonos Elastic Cloud)
redhat.com/jboss
14
architecture, including reduced TCO from running its own
IT systems and applications, doing away with overlapping
systems, and using computing resources more efficiently.
AN APPLICATION INTEGRATION HUB IN THE CLOUD
To achieve an overhaul of IT systems and create a more
holistic architecture, Fonecta decided to evaluate a
cloud platform that could serve as an integration hub
for all of its applications and data, as well act as a
platform to develop and run both internal and external
online services. Fonecta evaluated a number of local
and international cloud services available in Finland. In
the end, Fonecta selected the Ixonos Elastic Cloud, a
cloud platform entirely built on an open source stack of
enterprise-ready solutions from Red Hat.
“Ixonos Elastic Cloud was a good technological fit for
our growing IT infrastructure, as several of our in-house
applications run on Red Hat technologies,” said Mikko
Matilainen, director of infrastructure and architecture at
Fonecta. “Ixonos is a Red Hat Certified Cloud Provider, so
we know that we can rely on the Ixonos Elastic Cloud to
provide a scalable and secure platform that guarantees
interoperability with our on-premise systems.”
The underlying infrastructure behind Ixonos Elastic
Cloud is built on Red Hat technology, including JBoss
Enterprise Middleware, a complete portfolio to develop,
integrate, and deploy applications. In addition, the
platform is run in a virtualized environment based on Red
Hat Enterprise Virtualization, a complete virtualization
solution for enterprise IT. Lastly, Red Hat Enterprise
Linux is deployed as the core operating system platform.
Harnessing data resources for online
innovation while lowering IT costs
At an early stage, Fonecta realized the instrumental
benefits of a cloud-based model to achieve a
consolidated IT architecture. By using the Ixonos Elastic
Cloud as an integration hub for all of its applications, it
made data more accessible to other systems and new
online services built on the cloud platform.
“Our acquisitions came with vast data resources that
we now could aggregate for new online products and
services that target both consumers and businesses,”
said Matilainen. “ Ixonos Elastic Cloud and the
underlying JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio
allowed us to easily integrate new online services with
our existing applications. This substantially reduces the
time it takes us to transform ideas into applications and
launch new services.”
The use of the Ixonos Elastic Cloud led to cost savings
when compared to a traditional hosting model, as
computing resources are utilized and paid for on
demand. This means Fonecta could expect high resource
utilization without over-investment in computing
resources. Reduced TCO for applications was another
effect of deploying a cloud model, as the existing IT
infrastructure could be used more efficiently and did not
need to additional hardware or software investments to
launch new services.
“The certified and supported solutions stack from Red
Hat—from virtualization technology to operating system
and application engine—is the foundation of the Ixonos
Elastic Cloud service,” said Jari Kekkonen, business
development director at Ixonos. “It provides the scalability,
robustness, and security that is required by demanding
and globally deployed online services and applications.”
Initially, Fonecta deployed the Ixonos Elastic Cloud
as an integration hub for its diverse IT systems and
applications, utilizing JBoss Enterprise Data Services
Platform. JBoss Enterprise Data Services integrates
data from multiple sources for use by organizations’
applications and business processes.
Fonecta is gradually expanding its use of the Ixonos
Elastic Cloud and plans to launch both internal and
customer-facing applications on the platform.
15
redhat.com/jboss
fonecta | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Glöckle direct GmbH Relies on Red
Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform to Marry Legacy Database Servers with State-of-the-Art
Java Front-end Applications
Geography
Stuttgart, Germany
BACKGROUND
Glöckle direct GmbH is a marketing and call centre services company,
based in Stuttgart, Germany, that provides technical infrastructure and
various management functions to clients within the Glöckle Group.
Companies in the Glöckle Group, a family-owned group of companies
with a history stretching back more than one hundred years, include
lottery companies in Germany and Austria, an electricity reseller, and an
e-commerce company that sells luxury chocolates.
All of these subsidiaries have central business functions provided by
Glöckle direct, including technical and IT infrastructure, human resources,
and marketing. Glöckle direct’s IT and application development
department is also responsible for creating and delivering the software
tools required for successful operations within the Glöckle Group.
Because state-licensed lotteries account for the lion’s share of Glöckle
Group’s business, a large part of its application infrastructure is
managed by Glöckle direct’s IT department, supporting marketing and
customer care functions. Throughout the past decade, Glöckle Group
has gradually expanded its operations beyond managing and marketing
certified lotteries in southern Germany, and added lottery organisations
in Austria as well as northern Germany.
The company’s IT philosophy is “build our own,” meaning that the entire
infrastructure and application environment is custom-developed, managed,
and operated by Glöckle direct’s staff to meet the company’s specific needs.
Business challenge
To build a scalable and highly flexible
middleware infrastructure for a
new Java-based customer care and
marketing application based on proven
database server hardware
Migration path
Legacy IBM AS/400 client-serverbased application to a browser-based
system developed in Java, using JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform
Solution
Network, and Red Hat Consulting
software
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform,
JBoss EJB (Versions 1.1 and 3)
Hardware
“What’s great about JBoss Enterprise Middleware is
that all the components just work together nicely. We
can pick just what we need and keep the total cost of
ownership much lower than with proprietary software.
That also saves us a lot of time and effort when
architecting the system.”
IBM AS/400 midrange servers,
HP RX6600
Benefits
Built a modern and scalable
infrastructure; realised considerable
cost savings; secured its investment
– Uwe Wagensommer, head of IT at Glöckle direct
in a mission-critical, future-proof
infrastructure
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
One of the key business processes for Glöckle Group’s lottery
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | GLÖCKE DIRECT
redhat.com/jboss
16
businesses is the collection and management of
customer data through its call centres. Call centre agents
service existing customer contracts and follow up with
potential up- and cross-selling opportunities. For many
years, the central application used by call centre agents
was based on a legacy “green screen” system, which
used an IBM AS/400 system as the database server and
deployed the application written in IBM RPG directly to
the call centre agents’ computers.
“Our old call centre application was extremely robust and
reliable, but its user interface with keyboard-centric data
entry didn’t meet today’s usability requirements,” said
Frank Breckle, Glöckle direct application developer. “Also,
the company’s expansion into alternative industries
brought about new requirements that the previous
software, with its traditional client-server computing
principles and RPG development, could no longer meet.”
When planning a new application development and
operations environment, Glöckle direct’s IT team defined
two key requirements for the new platform. “First, we
wanted to maintain the ‘build-our-own’ principle in
application development as it would continue to retain
process knowledge in-house and keep our dependencies
on external consultants at an absolute minimum,”
explained Uwe Wagensommer, head of IT at Glöckle
direct. “Second, from a technology perspective, the new
platform should enable us to continue using our reliable
AS/400 database server along with a state-of-the-art
framework for application development and deployment.”
Finally, the new system was required to provide enough
openness and flexibility to quickly and efficiently
accommodate additional business requirements as
Glöckle Group’s operations expanded to new areas.
solution
Early on in the technology evaluation phase, Glöckle
direct decided to implement a Java-based environment
for application development, as it would enable staff to
create all applications and retain expert knowledge about
the company’s business processes.
Initially, the IT team considered IBM WebSphere as the
application server and middleware foundation for the new
system. “We quickly realised that IBM WebSphere would
be too complex and bulky for our requirements,” said
Breckle. “Luckily, a Red Hat Business Partner advised us
to consider JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.”
Glöckle direct now has a number of new applications
running on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform as well
as other open source and JBoss Enterprise Middleware
platforms and frameworks.
17
redhat.com/jboss
The main call centre application is still based on the IBM
AS/400 database server, but now JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform channels user requests and sends the
responses to a browser-based application that runs on a
Tomcat web server within the architecture.
To meet the business requirements of the marketing
department, the IT team also developed a new marketing
and lottery application, Marketing- und Glücksspiel
Anwendung (MGA). Designed to accommodate new
products and processes very quickly, MGA helps call centre
agents serve customers efficiently and with very targeted
offers. MGA was built on JBoss Enterprise Middleware
platforms and frameworks. The Oracle database component
of MGA runs on HP-UX.
“What’s great about JBoss Enterprise Middleware is that
all the components just work together nicely,” said
Wagensommer. “We can pick just what we need and keep
the total cost of ownership much lower than with
proprietary software. That also saves us a lot of time and
effort when architecting the system.”
BENEFITS
With the strategic choice of JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform as the foundation for its new application
development and deployment framework, Glöckle direct
developed a highly flexible, cost-effective solution that
meets the growing business requirements of the customers
within the Glöckle Group.
The EJB layer of the JBoss Enterprise Middleware within
the system architecture was instrumental in joining the
proven and reliable IBM AS/400 database server with
state-of-the-art, browser-based Java applications at the
front-end. In addition, it simplified the integration of the
new MGA application with more than 100 million sets of
customer data.
“Compared to alternative solutions such as IBM WebSphere,
we have probably saved a high five-digit Euro figure in
license costs per year,” said Wagensommer. “In addition,
we were able to develop and maintain our infrastructure
predominantly in-house.”
Over the past three years, Glöckle direct has relied on Red
Hat Global Support Services to help resolve operational
issues. “You can do a lot on your own because it’s all open
source software and there’s a very vibrant JBoss Community
out there,” said Breckle. “However, when it comes to missioncritical stages of a project, speed matters, and we were
certainly able to rely on fast response times from Red Hat
Global Support Services. Even the lead developer of a Red
Hat product has called us to help, which is really impressive.”
GLÖCKE DIRECT | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
HEIDELBERGER DRUCKMASCHINEN
AG, ENHANCES ONLINE SERVICES
AND IMPROVES CUSTOMER
RELATIONSHIP BY STANDARDIZING
ON JBOSS
BACKGROUND
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg), the world’s leading
solution provider for the print media industry, built an interactive
customer portal, www.MyHeidelberg.com, using JBoss Enterprise
Portal Platform to create an interactive site to enhance its customer
relationships and provide a unified global brand presence. With the
successful portal project, Heidelberg has since migrated its proprietary
application platform to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, in order to
reduce costs, and increase the performance of its web applications.
Based in Heidelberg, Germany, with development and production sites
in seven countries and around 250 sales offices across the globe, the
company supports around 200,000 customers worldwide. Heidelberg’s
printing products and software enable its customers to print high
volumes, quickly, at high quality, and in color at an affordable price, and
convert the printed material into the desired format.
Heidelberg, with a global market share for sheetfed offset printing
machines of more than 40 percent, develops and produces precision
printing presses, units for imaging printing plates, postpress equipment,
and software for integrating all the print shop processes that produce
everyday items such as brochures, magazines, folding carton boxes, and
product labels. It also provides general and consulting services ranging
from spare parts and consumables to the sale of re-marketed equipment,
in addition to education and training at the Heidelberg Print Media
Academy.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Heidelberg launched a corporate-wide web initiative to develop a
strategic architecture and customer-centric web portal, to strengthen
customer relationships, consolidate information and services, provide
easier access to information, and increase revenues through improved
communications with customers.
“Previously, we had a solid web presence for our customers, but it was
more of an online brochure and lacked interactivity,” said Mathias Berg,
Director, Global Web Systems at Heidelberg.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | HEIDELBERG
Geography
US and EMEA
Business challenge
Establish a new customer-specific
portal to enhance its customer
relationship and provide internal
business units with valuable customer
insight; evaluate and deploy an
application server platform for its Javabased environment
Solution
With the help of Red Hat Consulting,
Heidelberg built an interactive customer
portal using JBoss Enterprise Portal
Platform and migrated its proprietary
application platform to JBoss
SOFTWARE
JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, Oracle
10g database, SAP R/3, Autonomy search
engine, Interwoven TeamSite 6.5 (CMS),
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 64-Bit
Hardware
Virtualized servers and F5 load balancer
MIGRATION PATH
Proprietary portal platform and application
server to JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform
and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
Benefits
Improved customer web presence with a
central portal that increased services and
information available; provided ability to
use applications based on open standards
in order to interact better with customers,
suppliers and partners; reduced costs;
gained excellent support and continuous
advancements of its portal software, and
reduced vendor lock-in.
redhat.com/jboss
18
Heidelberg also anticipates the ability to lower its costs
by offering more self-service options, reducing the effort
and cycle time for developing and deploying new services
and applications, and simplifying support and operation of
its applications and infrastructure. It also wanted the new
portal to provide its customers with a central and secure
repository for sharing data and communication.
“With MyHeidelberg.com, we have created a unified,
central customer portal that can be rolled out and adapted
to local markets, thus increasing our interaction and
providing us with valuable customer insight,” said Michael
Neff, chief information officer.
“We evaluated proprietary and open
source solutions, and we selected JBoss
Enterprise Portal Platform on JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform due to
its ability to deliver an agile, reusable
framework, coupled with the benefits of
open source to reduce costs, and freed
us from vendor lock-in.”
– Mathias Berg, Director, Global Web Systems, Heidelberg
SOLUTION
In order to further its edge in the market, provide
customers with more features, and enhance its webpresence, Heidelberg decided to evaluate a number of
proprietary and open source solutions for the customer
portal project, MyHeidelberg.com, in addition to an
application platform solution to set up and restructure its
global web presence.
“We had a great experience with Red Hat
Consulting. They worked closely with our
teams in the US and Germany to mentor
and demonstrate product features,
providing documentation, and ensuring
our team was prepared for success
after the engagement. We view Red Hat
Consulting as a trusted advisor to our
team.”
– Mathias Berg, Director, Global Web Systems, Heidelberg
“In addition to JBoss, we evaluated proprietary and open
source solutions, but we selected JBoss Enterprise Portal
Platform on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform due to
19
redhat.com/jboss
its ability to deliver an agile, reusable framework, coupled
with the benefits of open source to reduce costs, and
freed us from vendor lock-in,” said Berg. “Although we
had limited open source experience, we made our decision
confidently due to JBoss’s established technology
platform,
flexible architecture, highly regarded enterprise support,
and the expertise of Red Hat Consulting.”
JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform, based on open standards,
was selected for its ability to meet the key requirements
of the project, including: the ability to integrate seamlessly
into the existing infrastructure based on VMWare ESX
3.0 and Oracle 10g, and the content management systems:
Windows Server 2003 and Interwoven TeamSite 6.5.
The MyHeidelberg.com customer portal needed to be
flexible and reliable in order to adapt to Heidelberg’s local
websites requirements, while at the same time, it had to
scale for a steadily increasing number of users, which
initially tallied more than 5,500 registered users and has
been growing monthly by approximately 5-10 percent.
At an early stage of the customer portal project, Heidelberg
made the decision to work with Red Hat Consulting in order
to facilitate knowledge transfer, have a closer relationship
with JBoss, and to have access to the engineers and
developers behind the open source technology. Heidelberg’s
IT teams in the US and Germany worked with Red Hat
consultants to enable a smooth integration of JBoss
technology into the existing global infrastructure.
“We had a great experience with Red Hat Consulting,” said
Berg, “The Red Hat Consultants worked closely with our IT
teams in the U.S. and Germany to ensure a smooth
integration of JBoss technology into the existing global
infrastructure, by mentoring our team, demonstrating
product features, providing documentation, and ensuring
our team was prepared for success after the engagement. We
view Red Hat Consulting as a trusted advisor to our team.”
“The MyHeidelberg.com portal, based on JBoss, creates
a true value-add for our customers, and has enabled us
to grow our business and serve our customers in a better
way. MyHeidelberg.com provides a centralized web portal
with tailored information for each customer with one
gateway, one URL, one password, and one login.”
After successful testing and fine-tuning, the production
environment and infrastructure for the MyHeidelberg.com
customer portal went live.
“We now offer our customers an interactive portal, which
can be adapted to every local market and is integrated
with more than 45 websites worldwide.” said Berg.
HEIDELBERG | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
BENEFITS
Heidelberg’s use of JBoss for its customer portal and web
application server has resulted in: improved customer web
presence with a central portal, reduced costs, gained
excellent support and continuous advancements of its
portal software, and reduced vendor lock-in.
“All over the world, the name Heidelberg is synonymous
with state-of-the art technology, top quality, and closeness
to the customer, so we set the benchmark high for ourselves
and we expect the same level of quality from all of our
vendors,” said Neff. “JBoss absolutely delivered what we
needed, by providing high availability, performance and
scalability. Due to the Red Hat subscription model, we
realized significant cost savings, faster ROI, and freedom
from vendor lock-in.”
The introduction of JBoss has helped simplify IT
administration: with only one portal infrastructure to
manage, one platform and one brand for the company’s web
presence, helping to strengthen the brand of Heidelberg.
The new self-service capabilities provided by the
MyHeidelberg.com portal give customers fast, convenient
access to critical information whenever they need it,
increasing customer satisfaction and the credibility of
Heidelberg as a valuable business partner.
“JBoss was always willing to work with us, as partners, to
ensure the success of the project,” said Berg, “A prime
example is when we identified the need for a unique
feature for our customer portal. With any other vendor, we
would have had to develop a custom feature with no
vendor support. But with JBoss we discussed our need,
and they worked with us develop a new feature into the
product, which will be fully supported by JBoss. This kind
of commitment and performance is something that I have
never seen before, from any technology vendor.”
“All over the world, the name
Heidelberg is synonymous with top
quality, and we expect the same from our
vendors. JBoss absolutely delivered.”
– Michael Neff, Chief Information Officer, Hiedelberg
“In addition to the enhancements for our customers, the
MyHeidelberg.com portal based on JBoss Enterprise Portal,
offers valuable customer insight and behavioral information
that is being leveraged internally by our marketing, sales,
and product development teams, which will allow us to
make informed and targeted business decisions and
increase company sales,” said Berg.
The cost of developing and deploying new services and
applications has been reduced now that Heidelberg has a
simple way to integrate content and information into the
portal. The IT team can index content and expose it through
the search capabilities, and can manage single sign-on. Also,
JBoss has drastically reduced costs, as the subscription
model has freed Heidelberg from the cost constraints
associated with proprietary software licensing and support.
“We were especially impressed with the performance and
product features of JBoss, and the quality of support,
advice, and knowledge contributed by our Red Hat
consultants,” said Neff, “The JBoss Enterprise Portal
and JBoss Enterprise Application Platforms went into
production and performed extremely well, and this is a
great benefit for our customers and internal users, who can
now access their data securely and without restrictions.”
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | HEIDELBERG
redhat.com/jboss
20
21
Telecinco Migrates UNI X
Systems and Java Platform
to Red Hat Enterprise Linux
and JBoss Enterprise
Middleware
Geography
Spain
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Over the last few years, Telecinco has established itself as the leading
commercial TV channel in Spain. A combination of programming for the
general audience; a high level of in-house production; extensive coverage
of national, foreign, and independent news; as well as an advertising
strategy that meets the communication needs of its advertisers have all
made Telecinco one of the most profitable broadcasters in Europe.
Telecinco has recently expanded its broadcasting portfolio by setting up
new digital channels La Siete, Factoría de Ficción, Boing, and, most
recently, Cuatro and Gran Hermano 24h, with the aim to attract new
viewers and expand the audience reach of its main channels.
Telecinco is owned by the Italian group Mediaset (50.1%) and is listed on
IBEX35 on the Madrid Stock Exchange.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Telecinco operated an infrastructure based on Sun Solaris, which was
supporting its mission-critical applications, including its advertising rates
applications. Telecinco’s platform supports highly dynamic applications that
require a large amount of system resources. The platform is highly critical
with the slightest downtime of services leading to a considerable loss of
income for the company and therefore requires 100 percent availability.
Telecinco carefully approached the complete overhaul of the infrastructure.
This was an extensive project of great significance to the broadcasting
company, and it involved highly mission-critical business applications.
Telecinco was looking for an architecture that would offer comparable or
superior reliability to the Sun Solaris platform.
Telecinco selected Telefónica, a Red Hat partner and one of the world’s
leading IT services, hosting, datacentre consolidation, and virtualization
services providers, as a systems integrator for this complex project.
Telefónica’s proposal integrated Red Hat’s solutions and services and
included implementing a consolidated architectural solution with
availability, reliability, and performance guarantees that exceeded
Telecinco’s requirements. The proposed solution also allowed the
company to increase the flexibility of its IT infrastructure and reduce costs.
To update and consolidate the entire
corporate IT infrastructure, including
business-critical applications and
management tools.
Solution
Telecinco refreshed its hardware and
software infrastructure based on a
combination of solutions from Red
Hat, HP, and NetApp, as well as other
IT solutions certified by Red Hat and
integrated by Telefónica
SOFTWARE
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Red Hat
Network, Oracle 10g, Oracle 11g,
Informix Dynamic Server 11, and NetApp
Snapmanager
Hardware
HP Proliant DL580 G5 servers and blade
servers
MIGRATION PATH
Sun Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux
and Sun One Application Server to JBoss
Benefits
Telecinco benefits from a highperformance, highly reliable, flexible
platform based on industry standards
and has reduced its operating costs by
33 percent
Telefónica has worked on this project as an official Red Hat partner and as the
provider of virtualization solutions, including TCloud. According to Telefónica, the
company has dedicated significant resources to be the leader in virtualization
technology, with a particular focus on the virtual private cloud market.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | TELECINCO
redhat.com/jboss
22
BENEFITS
“Our decision to migrate to Red Hat solutions
has been one of our best technology decisions
in recent years. The project is aligned with a
wider company strategy and has put us ahead
of development in the market.”
Telefónica and Red Hat have provided Telecinco with an
infrastructure that is highly available, stable, and reliable,
guaranteeing all SLAs required by the company. Red Hat’s
standards-based architecture and certification process, which
covers major hardware and software vendors, provides the
broadcaster with an important competitive advantage. In
addition, Telecinco is well-positioned to choose any applications
platform in the future due to the infrastructure’s optimal flexibility.
– María Caldés, Director of Engineering and Systems, Telecinco
SOLUTION
The Telecinco Systems team, in cooperation with Red Hat and
Telefónica, deployed a completely new infrastructure, where
Red Hat solutions are integrated with HP server hardware,
NetApp storage, data network, and SAN communications.
The components of the solution are distributed over two
datacentres that are connected by redundant fibre optic
links for data networks and storage to guarantee availability
and disaster recovery. The solution is designed to reduce
or completely eliminate unique failure points and thus
guarantee high availability of the system.
Red Hat worked closely with Telefónica to design a platform
that met Telecinco’s reliability and performance requirements.
A three-tiered software infrastructure was installed on top of
independent HP rack servers. The first operating system layer
is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The intermediate layer
between the operating system and the applications is JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, which manages the
transactions between the applications’ user interface and the
databases located in the cluster. Red Hat provides high
database cluster availability with its clustering technologies.
The clusters guarantee high availability of the databases that
support specific mission-critical applications as well as
internal applications (online management of television schedules,
advertising broadcasting, financial control, and management, etc.).
To rationalise and consolidate the server base, Telecinco
decided to virtualize parts of its infrastructure. Virtual servers
run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the host operating system
running JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and web frontend applications in production, development, and preproduction environments. In collaboration with Telefónica, Red
Hat also provided consulting services for the architectural
design of the solution. Furthermore, Red Hat Consulting
worked directly at the Telecinco offices to introduce the Red Hat
solutions to Telecinco’s technicians. The technicians completed
various training sessions, which consisted of standard Red
Hat Training courses as well as customised courses.
“People often think open source solutions include spending
endless hours searching the Internet for a solution every
time they come across a problem,” said David Leva, systems
project manager, Telecinco. “After implementing enterprise
open source solutions from Red Hat, combined with Red Hat
Consulting and Red Hat Training, I could not think of anything
further from the truth. The Red Hat team has supported us
at all times with its knowledge and professionalism.”
23
redhat.com/jboss
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and JBoss Operations
Network have been tailored to Telecinco’s business needs,
contributing to the overall flexibility, performance, and
scalability of the platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
JBoss Enterprise Middleware also provide the security of a
stable platform with a clear product roadmap. For example,
the binary interfaces (API/ABI) are held stable for the full
lifecycle of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux release, providing
stability and reliability for Telecinco’s IT systems.
Red Hat’s subscription-based open source business model has
also provided significant cost savings to Telecinco, which was one
of the critical factors contributing to the company’s selection
of this solution. Telecinco’s infrastructure consolidation project
with Red Hat has increased the performance of applications,
accelerating them up to three times for processes involving the
use of heavy resources. Telecinco has also achieved a 33 percent
audited reduction in operating costs and savings of up to 74
percent in hardware maintenance costs. There has also been a
significant reduction of 45 percent in electricity consumption
due to the migration to new hardware. Because of the high
availability of Red Hat solutions, contingency times have also
improved considerably.
“We have made important steps toward our final goal of a highperformance, efficient, highly available datacentre,” said
Faustino Rodríguez Pereira, systems department manager,
Telecinco. “With Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise
Middleware, we have also kept abreast of the current market
trends. The migration from the UNIX operating system to Red
Hat was not a problem, but an opportunity to provide our
company with the best technology available on the market.
An important concern of each IT department is security, and
Red Hat Consulting has successfully addressed this concern by
providing infrastructure management solutions, including Red
Hat Network Satellite, and securing Red Hat Enterprise Linux
and JBoss Enterprise Middleware servers on our extranet. The
consulting services have been truly brilliant.”
“Red Hat Network Satellite allows us to maintain previously
unseen management levels of our Red Hat servers,” said Leva.
“We can keep our hosts updated by programming the application
of patches. In addition, we can also manage our configuration
files and store different versions, which allow us to restore all the
changes made very quickly. Thanks to personalized installations
with kickstart templates, we have been able to homogenize our
environments and create our own software channels for simple
application of patches via the web.”
TELECINCO | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Mobilcom-debitel migrates
mission-critical business
processes with JBoss
Enterprise Platform
Geography
Büdelsdorf, Germany
Business challenge
To migrate more than 12 million
BACKGROUND
Headquartered in Büdelsdorf in northern Germany, mobilcom-debitel
GmbH is a mobile communications service provider and subsidiary of
freenet AG. The company does not have its own network and instead
sells services from mobile network operators such as Telekom,
Vodafone, E-Plus and O2 in Germany under its own name. The network
operator contracts with the aforementioned companies to form the
foundation of its operational business. On the basis of these contracts,
mobilcom-debitel purchases mobile services from the network operators
in advance and markets them to its end customers.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Mobilcom-debitel places great importance on efficient, customised
IT solutions. Its current IT infrastructure evolved from the MobilCom
BillingSystem (MCBS), which was written in Java by mobilcom
developers in 1996. Because Java EE was still around at that time, the
application created was a monolithic system.
Over the years, the system had been repeatedly upgraded, thereby allowing
all of the company’s business applications, such as customer relationship
management (CRM), point-of-sale (POS), and product inventory, to be
gradually extended. The result was a large and cumbersome Java
application where a number of functions and datasets existed
redundantly due to several separate teams working on its development.
Given the rapid growth of the company following the takeover of its
competitor debitel (which had more than 12 million customers at
the time, while mobilcom had around 6 million), the company’s IT
management soon realised that the existing IT architecture was unable
to support the increased data volume. More than 10 billion data records
had to be managed by the newly merged organization.
customer data records following
mobilcom’s merger with debitel while
avoiding user downtime
Solution
approximately 50 systems interact
via the SOA platform ZAP (Zentrale
Applikations-Plattform)
software
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
Hardware
Four Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120s,
each with 32GB RAM and Ultra Sparc
T2 processors
Benefits
Increased flexibility of 25 smaller
business applications, enhanced
performance, eliminated
complexity
“We faced the challenge of replacing our complex system with a more
flexible platform, encompassing applications developed in-house and
merging the databases from the separate organisations,” said Jochen Ohl,
development system architect at mobilcom-debitel. The migration project,
codenamed “Rainbow” due to the different colours of the company logos,
was crucial to the commercial success of the new company, mobilcomdebitel. Project Rainbow is measured by the number of users and is one
of the largest migrations ever undertaken throughout Europe.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | mobilcom-debitel GmbH
redhat.com/jboss
24
solution
Mobilcom’s technology experts had been using the JBoss
Community version since 2004 and were already familiar
with the platform’s advanced capabilities. The first
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) components had been in
operation since 2004 and had satisfactory results. After
comparing the cost and performance of competitive
platforms, mobilcom selected JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform due to the technology’s enhanced
features and cost efficiency.
“Adopting an SOA required developers to think differently,
and we in turn defined services that solved individual
problems. Each problem, for example, how to manage
the name and address data, would be solved only once,
regardless of whether the data referred to customers or
suppliers,” said Ohl. “The redundancy necessary to ensure
the high availability of applications would be mapped
solely in the hardware and no longer in lines of code.”
“Thanks to JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform, we have been able to break down
our complex Java application into small,
easy-to-handle applications. This platform
itself is extremely stable and therefore
provides a reliable basis for practically all
our business processes.”
– Jochen Ohl, Development System Architect, Mobilcom-Debitel
Using this approach, more than 20 services were developed
over time in the form of EJB components, which have been
brought together in a central application platform called ZAP
(Zentrale Applications-Platform). With very few exceptions,
all mobilcom’s business processes are run by ZAP SOA
services, from billing and customer support, basic ERP
functions, and workforce management to complete workflows.
Initially, the SOA platform was based on a JBoss Community
project; however during the Project Rainbow migration, a
switch was made to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.1.
“Red Hat Consulting provided extremely critical support
during the migration from the JBoss Community version to
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. They helped us handle
the transition without any downtime within the shortest
possible timeframe, which was extremely impressive,” said Ohl.
The transition occurred very smoothly, moving from the
JBoss Community version to JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform. “JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and the
ZAP SOA platform have provided us with an easy-tomanage environment,” commented Ohl.
25
redhat.com/jboss
Following the acquisition of debitel, it soon became clear
that mobilcom’s platform was the more flexible and powerful
system. The decision was made to transfer all existing
data for the 12 million debitel customers to the mobilcom
systems. In addition to setting up the SOA platform, this led
to a second, much larger IT project in the company.
“Already during the migration, the SOA approach paid off. More
than 3,000 change requests were accumulated during the
Project Rainbow for the billing and CRM systems alone. If we
still had been utilizing the previous system, we would never
have been able to successfully handle these requests in an
acceptable standard within a reasonable timeframe,” stated Ohl.
Prior to the migration, a Red Hat specialist from Red Hat
Consulting Services had been based on-site for one year to
support the developers regarding any JBoss-related issues
and later set up a JBoss Operations Network server to
monitor the JBoss cluster.
BENEFITS
The seamless migration to the SOA platform and subsequent
easy-to-manage transfer of debitel customer data ensured
mobilcom-debitel avoided any downtime during the project.
By replacing the monolithic Java application, mobilcomdebitel’s IT department was free to select the back-end
system. The ZAP SOA Platform ensures a uniform, easy-touse user interface regardless of where the data users’ needs
comes from. Mobilcom-debitel now has a powerful, resilient,
and above all, clearly structured IT environment.
The SOA platform is also flexible and can be adapted to meet
changing requirements on an ongoing basis. “Because the
acquisition resulted in a new company, various processes
will have to be implemented in the future.
“Thanks to the flexible infrastructure, we can implement new
software requirements easily, without having to reexamine
the complete IT landscape,” said Ohl.
When various business units introduce new requests, the
company’s developers only have to focus on services that are
relevant to the process in question. To further reduce the
interdependencies of services, interfaces that have been
traditionally file-based will be replaced in the future. In the
future, mobilcom-debitel intends to further expand its JBoss
deployment to achieve the ultimate goal: for all of the services
to be able to communicate directly with one another via
messaging. “Thanks to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform,
we have been able to break down our complex Java application
into small, easy-to-handle applications. This platform itself is
extremely stable and therefore provides a reliable basis for
practically all our business processes,” said Ohl.
mobilcom-debitel GmbH | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Leading French Telecoms
Operator SFR Increases
Innovation and Reduces Costs
By Standardizing on JBoss
Geography
France
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
SFR, owned by Vivendi (56 percent share of ownership) and Vodafone
(44 percent), is the second largest telecommunications operator in
France. With 19.7 million mobile and 4.8 million high-speed Internet
customers, SFR is a leading mobile and fixed-line operator in Europe,
offering solutions tailored to the needs of individuals, companies, and
operators. SFR is a driving force in terms of innovation, development of
new services, convergent solutions, and deployment of high-speed fixedline (fibre-optic), and mobile (3G+) networks to better serve consumers.
By owning its network infrastructure and having a wealth of internal
Internet expertise, SFR has all the necessary resources to develop
leadership in innovation and quality of service.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
To replace an end-of-life proprietary
system, IBM WebSphere, with a
standardized infrastructure;
rewrite and deploy business-critical
applications by 2012; and reduce the
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Solution
SFR selected JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform to develop Java
applications based on open source
industry standards while remaining
fully supported by a trusted partner.
SFR has been using proprietary infrastructures for many years to support
its mission critical systems for order management, order entry, promotions
catalogue, and customer service capabilities. These applications enable
customers to see the availability of services as well as manage their
subscriptions and spend.
software
As the SFR business continues to expand, the license and maintenance
fees have started to restrict the company’s cost management objectives.
In addition, the company develops in-house applications, which need to be
updated regularly in order to add functionalities and improve customer
service. In a proprietary environment, these developments can be expensive
as well as extremely time consuming, in turn slowing down innovation.
Hardware
“Implementing JBoss® Enterprise Middleware is part of a larger project
called BIOS, which will eventually result in an overhaul of 50 percent of
our infrastructure by 2012. Due to the complexity and long timescales
of the project, we were searching for technology that would continue to
support our system throughout the project implementation and beyond.
Our infrastructure therefore needs to have the necessary scalability to
evolve in line with industry standards and the expected growth of our
business,” said Pierre Auguste, Engineering Infrastructures Director, SFR.
MIGRATION PATH
solution
As part of the BIOS technology update, SFR explored several available
options for its new application platform. Despite the fact that the
company had very little experience with open source solutions, it
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SFR
Application servers: Solaris Sparc x86;
Web servers: Red Hat Enterprise Linux
and Oracle 10i
6 units HP DL580 G5 for customer
service, 13 units HP DL 580 G5 for
catalogue, and 4 units HP DL 580 G5
for order entry
Migrated from IBM WebSphere and
Oracle WebLogic
Benefits
SFR accelerated Java deployments
compared to the previous Oracle
WebLogic and IBM WebSphere-based
system. The quality of support has
improved through shorter response
times from the support teams.
redhat.com/jboss
26
recognized that open source middleware, and specifically
JBoss Enterprise Middleware, was closely aligned with
the company’s longterm technology strategy, which is to
remain vendor agnostic while continuing to improve the
robustness and stability of its application platform.
SFR’s IT team considered Red Hat Middleware
architecture, as they were familiar with the J2EE platform
and knew it could migrate its development environment to
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform with little effort.
This was a crucial requirement for SFR, which developed
customized in-house solutions in a Java environment that
needs to be fully certified and supported.
“We were convinced that JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform was mature enough to support our missioncritical applications. Having performed extensive in-house
stability and performance testing, the platform met all our
needs perfectly and has proven to be an ideal solution for
our developers. We’re used to working in J2EE
environments, and the migration to JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform has been seamless,“ explained Karim
Ben Mustapha, Project Manager, SFR.
BENEFITS
Selecting JBoss means that SFR no longer faces the license
fee costs for IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic, resulting
in total cost savings for this project. JBoss Enterprise
Middleware improves SFR’s developer productivity, reduces
time to market, automates business processes, and enables
efficient sharing of enterprise data.
With Red Hat providing reliable technology consulting and
support for JBoss Enterprise Middleware, SFR can dedicate
its resources to projects that are the core of company’s
business and focus on customer service. SFR can innovate
and deliver new applications and services more quickly, in
turn strengthening its competitive advantage in the
telecommunications industry.
“The implementation has been carried out so seamlessly
that we have called Red Hat support services only a limited
number of times in 18 months. We have been impressed
by their response time and the overall quality of support,”
added Karim Ben Mustapha Project Manager, SFR.
The testing and validation of the middleware platform was
carried out across three operating system platforms—
including Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®, Solaris on x86, and
Solaris on Sparc—that could be deployed on physical or
virtual machines. The evaluation and certification of the
new platform had to be completed within short deadlines
to allow the IT team to re-write and deploy targeted
applications by 2012.
“JBoss Enterprise Middleware integrates and certifies the
latest enterprise-ready features from JBoss Community
projects to create a supported, stable, enterprise-class
middleware distribution. It‘s the leading open source
platform for next-generation JavaEE applications. Built on
open standards, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
enhances JBoss Application Server with enterprise
features and leading open source frameworks to provide a
complete solution for Java applications,” explained Franz
Meyer, vice president, sales EMEA at Red Hat.
In order to facilitate change management and enhance the
security of the migration, SFR has deployed JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform as an additional platform
to WebSphere. By doing so, SFR gave the teams an
opportunity to make an informed decision instead of
implementing only the accepted standard technology. To
date, JBoss Enterprise Middleware runs eight missioncritical projects such as prepayment mobile contracts
management. The number of supported CPUs will grow by
the end of 2011 and eventually by the end of the project.
27
redhat.com/jboss
SFR | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Swisscom IT Services
Implements Simply Managed
Linux (SIMLU X) with Red Hat
and JBoss Solutions
Geography
Switzerland
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Swisscom IT Services is a strategic subsidiary of the Swisscom Group,
the largest Swiss telecommunications provider, and is one of the largest
outsourcing companies in Switzerland. It offers services that range
from the integration, operation, and further development of complex IT
environments to the development and maintenance of applications.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Swisscom IT Services was running a comprehensive Linux infrastructure at
the beginning of 2005. But Bertrand Dafflon, the head of the internal IT
department, decided to further advance the company’s infrastructure. Dafflon’s
team looked to implement a completely standardised Linux environment
with an automated staging infrastructure for the majority of applications.
Swisscom IT Services needed to create
a standardised and stable operating
system environment to host outsourced
services for its customers. The company
also wanted to simplify the provisioning
and allocation of new servers by
creating an automated staging
infrastructure
Solution
Combining Red Hat and JBoss
Solutions delivers simple management
through the reliable Red Hat
subscription model
solution
Under the name “Simply Managed Linux” (SIMLUX), Swisscom decided to
work with Red Hat to develop a highly flexible and effective infrastructure
for its data centres.
“Over the years, we have seen time and again that Red Hat follows a more
conscientious approach than others. Red Hat only makes functions available
once they are stable and suitable for enterprise use,” said Thomas von
Steiger, systems engineer at Swisscom IT Services. “We run many
applications within the SIMLUX environment that are critical to our company
and our clients, making Red Hat’s concentration on the reliability of its
software essential to us. We believe that the principles of open source
development are best represented by Red Hat. We would rather use open
source software for SAN multi-pathing than the tools provided by the SAN
provider. In this way, when we carry out a kernel update, we can update the
multi-pathing functions at the same time without having to worry about
proprietary drivers and so on.”
Swisscom IT Services uses IBM blade server hardware for the SIMLUX
infrastructure. The IT team has assigned both data management and the
operating system to a Storage Area Network (SAN) and has enabled the
blade server to boot directly from the SAN without a hard drive. This
ensures system stability and hardware independence. The server hardware
can be replaced easily with minimal configuration, as all the data is held
separately on the SAN. As a result, the blade servers now require less
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SWISSCOM
software
Simply Managed Linux (SIMLUX)
including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
with virtualization, Red Hat Cluster
Suite, Red Hat Satellite Server, JBoss
Application Server
Hardware
IBM blade servers
Benefits
Swisscom IT Services now has a highly
stable standardised Linux platform
called Simply Managed Linux (SIMLUX)
The solution also delivers top priceperformance ratios for Swisscom IT
Services
redhat.com/jboss
28
cooling because without a hard drive, they produce much
less heat. In addition, the SAN images serve as the basis
for the automated staging infrastructure, making it possible
to allocate a new server with just a few clicks in a web
interface—a process which only takes about 30 minutes.
“The decisive factor in choosing Red Hat
was the company’s total commitment to
the reliability of its software and its open
source strategy. Our clients depend on
installations such as SAP in our Linux
environment. There was no serious
alternative to Red Hat in that respect.”
– Bertrand Dafflon, Head of Linux & Middleware Engineering
Swisscom IT Services
being able to offer the required stability and integration
into the complete solution,” said von Steiger. “In
contrast, we wanted to optimise our hardware capacity
without endangering reliability for our clients. Red
Hat’s virtualization solution makes this possible. With
virtualization integrated with Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
new systems are provisioned as virtual machines. Red
Hat Enterprise Linux and the JBoss Application Server
make it possible to integrate even the most demanding
of architectures into a virtual infrastructure. Swisscom
IT Services has installed a cluster of JBoss Application
Servers in virtual machines on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”
“Red Hat’s acquisition of JBoss was another lucky break
for us,” said Dafflon. “Since the acquisition, we have been
able to profit from the same excellent price-performance
ratio for middleware as for the operating system layer.”
Swisscom IT Services deploys web, application, and
database servers. All software is installed in the RPM
format developed by Red Hat. So the company can use
Red Hat Satellite server as the central administration
centre for updates, monitoring, and allocation.
As of June 2007, Swisscom IT Services operates
approximately 70 SAP, 40 Oracle, 90 Web and 100 JBoss
application servers in the Red Hat Enterprise Linuxbased SIMLUX environment. The IT service provider
also uses Red Hat Cluster Suite as the basis for 20
cluster nodes. The SAN provides 40 Terabyte of memory
too. With the benefits of Red Hat’s management tools,
Swisscom IT Services’ two Linux administrators are more
than capable of maintaining the entire infrastructure.
They ensure optimum supply for more than 50
outsourcing clients on the SIMLUX platform in addition
to other responsibilities.
BENEFITS
The SIMLUX infrastructure offers Swisscom IT Services
an extremely stable and flexible data environment that
can be managed centrally by Red Hat Satellite Server.
Red Hat’s subscription model also gives Swisscom the
ability to benefit from technical innovations and updates
without incurring additional costs. Since 2006, Swisscom
IT Services has implemented 64-bit applications and
device mapper multi-pathing for booting from the SAN
after a corresponding operating system update. At
the start of 2007, Dafflon’s team also began the most
crucial test phase for server virtualization with Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5.
“Virtualization with Xen is a good example of a function
that other providers have pressed ahead with, without
29
redhat.com/jboss
SWISSCOM | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
AMPERSAND CREATES
ROBUST CUSTOMER LOYALTY
PROGRAM WITH RED HAT
SOLUTIONS
Generating business results and high return-oninvestment levels for customers
Ampersand emerged more than 20 years ago from knowledge and
experience gained implementing loyalty solutions and strategies for
customers through the Fiesta Rewards program. This rewards program
was established to reward the choice and loyalty of frequent guests at
hotels in Posadas, including: Live Aqua, Fiesta Americana Grand,
Fiesta Americana, Fiesta Inn, Hoteles One and EL Explorean Kohunlich
in Mexico, as well as the Caesar Park and Caesar Business in South
America.
The company always focused on supporting its customers by providing
supreme loyalty in consulting and design services. The design,
implementation, and innovation of these loyalty solutions are possible
through methodology, best practices, and state-of-the-art technology.
Geography
Mexico
Solution
· Red Hat Enterprise Linux
· JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform
· JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform
· Alfresco Enterprise Content
Management
· Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite
· Red Hat Training
Benefits
An architecture based on Red Hat
solutions provided the company the
architectural flexibility and prompt
response customers needed—with
lower costs than their previous IT
infrastructure
In early 2010 when the company was rapidly expanding, ampersand
realized the need to integrate a technology solution that would help
meet its customers’ demands. The main criteria included flexibility,
scalability, and timely response times. However, ampersand needed a
solution that would become a true investment rather than a cost. Open
source technology was the first choice when evaluating solutions in
the marketplace due to its cutting-edge, robust, flexible, and secure
software.
“The main challenge was to find a solution to accommodate the needs
of our customers in terms of security and performance, while providing
an unparalleled return on investment (ROI). Couple these requirements
with our need for world-class, enterprise support, and Red Hat led the
pack,” said Victor Vargas, CIO, ampersand.
The company’s motto: The customer comes first
Under the premise “the customer comes first,” ampersand started
looking for the perfect combination of components that would allow for
running the business successfully while managing its customer loyalty
programs. The company quickly learned that maximizing technology
would help achieve this goal in a profitable way.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | AMPERSAND
redhat.com/jboss
30
Ampersand analyzed the advantages of Red Hat
solutions and found huge benefits in deploying the
company’s customer portal on the Red Hat Enterprise
Linux operating platform. Administered through Oracle’s
Siebel Loyalty Management, these two applications
interface through JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform from
Red Hat and are managed by JBoss Operations Network.
Together, these solutions allow ampersand to create a
stable architecture with superior performance but, most
importantly, one capable of being replicated and suitable
for the specific solutions of ampersand’s customers.
Additionally, ampersand and its team made use of Red
Hat Training, the professional training services from Red
Hat, which allow daily operation support and help with
requests made by large customers on-the-fly.
“Red Hat has become a strategic technological partner
for ampersand. Thanks to its large product portfolio, we
have managed to integrate a comprehensive solution,
from the enterprise operating system to the application
server, from integration solutions to enterprise portals,”
said Vargas.
“Enterprise open source solutions
from Red Hat help us respond to our
customers in a swift manner at a low
operating cost.”
– Victor Vargas, CIO, ampersand
“In addition to the benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform offered an easy,
standard way to streamline our application
infrastructure.
This allows excellent performance, simplifying our
management and monitoring tasks in full compliance
with our IT cost optimization strategy,” said Vargas.
Decreased operating costs, improved
infrastructure
By successfully using the Red Hat technology stack,
ampersand has created an architecture capable of
being replicated in zero time, and above all, is able to
provide leading loyalty solutions for prompt response to
customer service requests.
“Having Red Hat technological components and teams
of Red Hat experts supporting us—both locally and
globally—has been crucial in the unrelenting expansion
of our business and loyalty solutions,” said Vargas.
Currently, ampersand’s operating system availability
has reached 99.9 percent IT operating costs have
been reduced by 33 percent which makes room to
redirect efforts to business-value tasks rather than to
day-to-day support operations. In addition, the use of
ampersand’s infrastructure has improved by 30 percent.
“Because of our outstanding experience with Red
Hat, we will continue working together to strengthen
our technology strategy even more and take better
advantage of the capabilities offered by Red Hat
solutions,” said Vargas.
Red Hat solutions helps ampersand
ensure high levels of customer service
“Working with Red Hat has brought us multiple benefits,
such as the flexibility to replicate our solution in different
environments, accommodating the needs of each
customer. In addition, we have managed to reduce our
operating and capital expenses and implementation times
while maintaining an operation that allows us to ensure
the highest service levels to our customers,” said Vargas.
“Enterprise open source solutions from Red Hat help us
respond to our customers in a swift manner at a low
operating cost. We managed to establish effective
communication between the portal and our core
application through the use of the JBoss Enterprise SOA
Platform.”
Every solution offered by ampersand to its customers
runs on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, offering stability,
scalability and security. With all the advantages of a highavailability solution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux minimizes
any impact in the case of technical failure.
31
redhat.com/jboss
AMPERSAND | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Acxiom® Standardizes
Its Grid Computing
Environment on Red Hat
Solutions
Geography
Global
Business challenge
To increase the speed, scalability,
BACKGROUND
and cost-effectiveness of the business’
Acxiom® Corporation, a global leader in interactive marketing services, was
founded in 1969. Headquartered in Little Rock, AR, Acxiom provides deep
consumer insight to companies that want to better connect with customers
and prospective customers for lasting relationships. The Acxiom team
incorporates expertise in consumer data and analytics, information
technology, data integration, and consulting solutions to enable marketing
across digital, Internet, email, mobile, and direct mail channels.
high-performance grid computing
Acxiom is widely recognized for its ability to successfully utilize advanced
technology to meet its clients’ marketing demands. The company’s teams
process and interpret massive volumes of client data for use in developing
and executing strategic marketing campaigns.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
environment, which now records more
than one trillion transactions per month
SOFTWARE
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss
Red Hat Network
Hardware
x86 Servers
In 2001, Acxiom introduced a breakthrough marketing technology that
delivered entity resolution and customer recognition. The technology
quickly became vital to Acxiom’s business proposition. Despite compelling
growth opportunities, Acxiom discovered scalability and affordability
challenges because the application was built on large SMP boxes running UNIX.
Benefits
“Implementation of the application would not allow us to scale cost-effectively
to meet our customers’ needs,” said Terry Talley, chief technology officer at
Acxiom. “We needed to solve this problem with hardware, and the only way to
do that was through commodity hardware. Then, we needed to find a reliable
operating system to run successfully and easily on commodity hardware.”
scalability while also reducing costs
Standardizing its grid computing
environment on Red Hat Enterprise
Linux helped Acxiom achieve 100-fold
performance gains and unmatched
and increasing flexibility
SOLUTION
Needing an infrastructure that was faster, more scalable, and more affordable,
the company decided to assess the use of open source technology for
its operating system solution. Acxiom turned to Red Hat for its industryleading solutions and support.
“We needed a reliable, stable, and supported version of Linux that was tested
and production-ready to support millions—and now billions—of records per
day through our application,” Talley said. “Red Hat was that solution. Red
Hat was sensitive to our unique support needs. Although we had thousands
of machines, we had few distinct instances. Red Hat was very flexible
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ACXIOM®
redhat.com/jboss
32
in engaging with us, and as a result we are able to build
stronger and smarter systems with our customers in mind.”
Acxiom’s grid infrastructure is designed to improve efficiency,
maintain consistency across its systems, and logically
partition resources to meet Acxiom clients’ increasing
demand.
“Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the standard operating
system for Acxiom’s grid-computing environment that
amounts to over 6,000 machines today, translating to
12,000 sockets. It is the foundation for all of Acxiom’s
scalable marketing business applications and bulk
processing applications,” Talley said.
“With Red Hat we have a very collaborative,
partner-oriented discussion about the
technology we need and what Red Hat can
provide for us. As we venture into new technology
areas, Red Hat has always been very responsive.
We view it as a true partnership, and we are
very happy with our relationship with Red Hat.”
assist in managing its Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based
systems and for expert advice and hands-on training
during new implementations.
In addition to its expansive use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
Acxiom utilizes the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.
In 2004, it turned to JBoss to leverage its high-performance
middleware solutions. Today, the company continues to
expand its use of JBoss enterprise solutions to build its
service-oriented architecture (SOA) environment.
“The open source community and open source standards
are very important to us, as are the community-driven
aspects of the products we use,” said Matt Hoggatt,
technical unit leader, Acxiom Service Delivery
Infrastructure. “The immediate performance benefits
delivered by our JBoss solutions resulted from the ease
and speed of the initial migration. The ability to easily
integrate applications and meet our customers’ needs
was another benefit we’ve experienced with JBoss.”
“We have a very good relationship with Red Hat and JBoss,”
Hoggatt said. “In the future, as we continue to build out
our on-demand capabilities, we fully expect to leverage
the capabilities that we have come to expect from JBoss.”
– Terry Talley, chief technology officer, Acxiom Corporation
BENEFITS
An important goal for Acxiom in rolling out the deployment was
to substantially reduce hardware costs. With a broad ecosystem
of certified hardware and software solutions, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux enabled Acxiom to make hardware choices
independent of the operating system. In addition to hardware
flexibility, Red Hat Enterprise Linux addressed Acxiom’s
need for increased performance and congruent scalability.
“If you considered a ratio of throughput to cost, the ratio for
one of our key applications running on SMP boxes under UNIX
was about 10 to 1. After migrating our application to a grid
computing environment running on Red Hat Enterprise
Linux and commodity hardware, the ratio went to 1,000 to 1. The
100-fold increase was a dramatic improvement in throughput to
cost and an extremely successful strategy for us,” Talley said.
Acxiom’s grid environment is business-critical and can’t afford
unscheduled downtime or gaps in performance. “As all of the
machines in our grid run Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it is the
core of where we do all of our CDI processing, which is
essential to our business,” said Chuck Howland, technical
group leader for Acxiom’s CDI and marketing services line of
business. “One of our applications is capable of handling a peak
load of 15,000 transactions per second. On average across all
applications, we process billions of transactions a day and
over a trillion records per month. So it simply has to work.”
Additionally, Acxiom uses Red Hat Network for management
and procurement of the various instances of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux in its grid computing environment. Acxiom
has also utilized a Red Hat Technical Account Manager to
33
redhat.com/jboss
Using Red Hat and JBoss solutions, Acxiom’s grid
environment has achieved heightened scalability,
increased stability, and 100-fold performance increases.
Red Hat solutions have enabled Acxiom to focus on
its business needs and to trust that its technology is
delivering high performance, low latency, and reduced
costs. Acxiom realized improvements from migrating to
Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the grid, including an internal
syndicated datamart process that accommodated one
billion records and quickly grew to six billion records.
“Using the standard SMP box, it ran in 28 days,” Howland
said. “After migrating to the Red Hat environment in the
grid with our scale-out approach, we were able to run it
from 28 days down to 2.8 days, 16 hours to six minutes,
six days to six hours—all significant improvements.”
“Red Hat is the leader in the open source community and
is the industry standard for Linux,” Howland said. “Our
long-standing relationship with Red Hat has allowed us to
create business value. And with the reliability, scalability,
and support it provides for our critical grid computing
system, we can focus on our business goals.”
“Our use of Red Hat has grown along with our use of
commodity hardware and our involvement in the open
source community,” Talley said. “With Red Hat we have
a very collaborative, partner-oriented discussion about
the technology we need and what Red Hat can provide
for us. As we venture into new technology areas, Red Hat
has always been very responsive. We view it as a true
partnership.”
ACXIOM® | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Covad Slashes Costs,
Improves Time-To-Market
with jboss enterprise
middleware
BACKGROUND
Covad Communications Group, Inc. is a leading provider of integrated voice
and data communications. As a broadband specialist and pioneer, Covad
was the first vendor to commercially deploy DLS in the United States. It
owns the largest broadband network in the country, and is the only provider
of data, voice, and wireless telecoms solutions for small and medium-sized
businesses (SMBs) with a national footprint. A major supplier of broadband
access for companies like Earthlink, AOL, and AT&T, Covad offers its
services to more than 57 million homes and businesses
in 235 major markets in 44 states.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Previously, Covad was using proprietary middleware software running
on proprietary hardware to manage the complex billing and operational
support systems (BSS/OSS) that support Covad’s broadband wholesale
and retail customers. Covad had developed a broad range of front-end
applications in-house using this proprietary software that integrated with
the BSS/OSS back-end applications and were accessible to sales and
support representatives via the Internet. These applications were also
part of a modular service-oriented architecture (SOA) Covad had built in
2003 to enable rapid deployment of new software as needed.
Geography
San Jose, California
Business challenge
Transition from inflexible and costly
proprietary middleware software
and hardware to JBoss Enterprise
Middleware to cut costs while speeding
new broadband products to market
SOFTWARE
JBoss Operations Network
Hardware
400 x 86 systems
Benefits
Improved customer web presence with a
central portal that increased services and
information available provided ability to
use applications based on open standards
in order to interact better with customers,
suppliers and partners, reduced costs,
gained excellent support and continuous
advancements of its portal software, and
reduced vendor lock-in.
But Covad increasingly found the licensing terms of the proprietary
software inflexible, inhibiting its ability to add new functionality to its
existing systems, develop new ones, and scale to meet market demands.
“If you wanted to do something as basic as use the middleware on a
different network, you had to completely renegotiate the license,” said
Unmesh Kulkarni, project manager of the software and information
systems (SWIS) department within Covad, that is responsible for all sales
and support operations for the Covad network. “This inflexibility was really
hampering our ability to innovate, which is a cornerstone of our company.”
Additionally, the proprietary systems—both the hardware and the software—
were prohibitively expensive. “We were spending millions of dollars on these
proprietary solutions, and knew we could find a cheaper alternative,” said Kulkarni.
But, as important as cutting costs were, Covad couldn’t afford to
compromise on quality. Its middleware platform was the basis for a broad
range of mission-critical applications.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | COVAD
redhat.com/jboss
34
For example, it had built a “prequalification engine” that
sales representatives use to determine which Covad
services are available to a potential customer at a
particular location. “You have to go through a lot of data
to come up with an answer quickly,” said Kulkarni. “Our
reps had less than two seconds to respond, otherwise the
customer won’t wait, and we lose the sale.” Because Covad
gets literally millions of these requests every day from
hundreds of partners, “this was an absolutely missioncritical system, and our middleware needed to be robust
enough to handle it,” he said.
SOLUTION
Kulkarni, a long-time proponent of open source, had been
keeping his eye on the developments of JBoss Enterprise
Middleware for some time. His team performed extensive
due diligence of both the technology and the company,
and the decision turned out to be an easy one. “JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform had everything we needed
in a technology platform: it offered superior performance;
a full range of functionality; high-quality support; and was
reasonably priced,” said Kulkarni. “Clearly, JBoss was our
best option going forward.”
Today, Covad has about 400 commodity x86 machines
running JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, and 32
CPUs running JBoss Operations Network. An integrated
management platform that simplifies the development,
testing, deployment and monitoring of JBoss Enterprise
Middleware.
“With the economy shrinking, these kinds of
cost savings were exactly what our senior
managers were demanding. But we still had
to offer our customers 99.99% availability,
and our developers still had to roll out new
software every eight weeks. That’s why we love
JBoss—it allows us to do more with less.”
– Unmesh Kulkarni, Director, software architecture and delivery,
Covad Communications Group, Inc.
BENEFITS
Right away, the flexibility of JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform provided value. “JBoss is very customer-oriented,
and offered us a flat fee structure for our CPU counts,” said
Kulkarni. “Even if we implemented virtualization or added
new applications, our costs did not increase substantially.”
Thanks to this flexibility, the cost savings have been
substantial. Covad was spending $600,000 a year on
hardware and software for the proprietary middleware.
Today, it pays $200,000 annually, plus $70,000 annually
for support. “We’re saving $330,000 per year by deploying
JBoss,” said Kulkarni. “My executives love the fact that our
invoices are going down every quarter.”
35
redhat.com/jboss
Moving from the proprietary platform to JBoss Enterprise
Middleware was part of an overall corporate mandate that
came from the very top of the organization to cut costs to
the bone—but without sacrificing the ability for Covad to
provide customers with the highest quality services.
“We’d recently gone from a public to a private company,
and were under new management,” said Kulkarni. “With
the economy shrinking, these kinds of cost savings were
exactly what our senior managers were demanding.
But we still had to offer our customers 99.99 percent
availability, and our developers still had to roll out new
software every eight weeks. That’s why we love JBoss — it
allows us to do more with less.”
JBoss also enabled Covad to reduce the time-to-market
of new services. It recently designed and deployed a new
JBoss-based Voice over IP (VoIP) solution within four
months. “We moved from concept to product within this
extraordinarily tight timeframe — something we could
never have done with our proprietary middleware,” said
Kulkarni. “And instead of costing us millions, the cost was
minimal.”
JBoss Enterprise Middleware has proven to be a boon
within Covad’s SOA strategy as well. The firm first rolled
out its SOA four years ago, and used the proprietary
middleware as a way of deploying Web services
throughout the organization. Because of JBoss Enterprise
Middleware’s’ advanced support for Java Platform
Enterprise Edition (JEE), Covad was able to seamlessly
migrate its SOA over to the JBoss platform. “There’s no
way I could have modernized my SOA without JBoss,” said
Kulkarni.
The JBoss Operations Network (JON) allows Covad to
improve operational efficiency and reliability through
thorough visibility into production availability and
performance and effectively manage configuration with a
single, integrated tool.
The fact that Covad has freed itself from vendor lock-in
is another big plus. “With all the consolidation going on in
the middleware industry, prices are going up and vendors
are less inclined to work with customers and be flexible,”
said Kulkarni. “Not only does JBoss give us exactly what
we need now, it provides us with choices going into the
future.”
Looking forward, Covad is currently working on a very
aggressive new product roll-out for 2009, primarily in the
form of providing customers with Internet-based network
services delivered “in the cloud.” “We’re looking at the
JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform to implement business
rules, and JBoss Seam as a messaging and integration
platform,” he said. “Whatever we do, JBoss is certain to be
a core part of our efforts.”
COVAD | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Rivet Logic’s Work with
Harvard Business Publishing
Boosts Agility, Delivers Rich
User Experience with Open
Source Solutions From Red
Hat, JBoss, and Alfresco
Geography
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) is a not-for-profit, wholly-owned
subsidiary of Harvard University which publishes a range of content—both
print and online—bridging the knowledge gap between the academic and
the corporate world. It serves three primary markets: academic, enterprise,
and individual managers. With more than 250 employees, the HBP’s
mission is to explore and improve management practices around the world.
HBP’s major web properties include the online version of Harvard Business
Review (hbr.org), Harvard Business Digital (harvardbusiness.org), and
Higher Education (www.hbsp.harvard.edu). Rivet Logic and HBP were
selected for the Optimized Systems Innovation Award for the use of open
source solutions from Red Hat, JBoss, and Alfresco, which have enabled
increased stability and the ability to develop products faster, bundle
existing products more efficiently, and generate new revenue opportunities
by increasing site traffic and offering richer, fresher, and more varied content.
Rivet Logic provides professional open source services and solutions that
help organizations engage with customers, improve collaboration, and
streamline operations. The company offers a full suite of JBoss professional
services—including deployment, customization, and integration—enabling
clients to fully leverage the power of the world’s leading open source
enterprise middleware stack. With complementary expertise in the Alfresco
content management platform, Rivet Logic offers integrated, content-rich,
and web-oriented architecture (WOA)-enabled solutions that power a new
generation of interactive web properties, enterprise Intranet applications,
and collaborative Web 2.0 communities.
“This project was as mission-critical as they come. It
encompassed the back-end repository, the front-end application
that internal users deployed to create new content and products,
and a customer-facing web application that delivered those
products to customers through a variety of channels. Red Hat
Enterprise Linux coupled with JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform and Alfresco CMS, drove a total transformation of the
way that HBP approached product development and delivery.”
– Mike Vertal, CEO, Rivet Logic
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | RIVET LOGIC
The HBP’s ability to get new products
to market and the quality of the
customer experience at its e-commerce
site were hindered by a proprietary
operating system, a difficult-to-use
legacy content management system
(CMS), and inflexible customerfacing web applications, which were
negatively impacting the HBP’s
revenues and limiting growth
software
Enterprise Application Platform and
Frameworks including JBoss Seam,
JBoss Hibernate, jBPM, Oracle
Database, and Alfresco’s open source
Content Management System.
Hardware
Intel™ Xeon™ processor-based Dell™
2950 multicore servers
migration path
From a proprietary operating system
running a proprietary legacy CMS
application to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform running the Alfresco Content
Management System
Benefits
Increased employee productivity,
lowered IT operational costs, and
increased website traffic and
e-commerce transactions.
redhat.com/jboss
36
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
To stay innovative and develop new products faster, HBP’s
business users require the ability to easily access and use content
from a variety of systems across the range of HBP business
units. But the existing aging content management system
was limiting access to only a few trained power users, which
routinely resulted in productivity bottlenecks across all units.
To further challenge the workflow and production of HBP
products, critical content resided on various shared drives
across the enterprise or was locked up in the proprietary
system, making it increasingly difficult for HBP to repurpose
existing content into the kind of new digital media products that
the fast-moving business information marketplace was seeking.
“Strategically, HBP knew it needed to transform itself from
a print organization—which it had been for the past 10 to
20 years—to a digital media organization,” said Mike Vertal,
CEO of Rivet Logic Corporation, a professional open source
services and solutions firm hired by the HBP to reengineer
the core IT platform and mission-critical applications.
The growing array of aging and disparate legacy middleware
and operating systems used to run HBP’s websites was also
proving increasingly unstable. The system routinely caused
integration hurdles, IT bottlenecks, and escalating operational
costs due to personnel overhead and software licensing fees.
The lack of easy-to-use web publishing tools hindered the
editorial staff’s ability to deliver fresh and innovative content
and, consequently, limited HBP’s ability to drive site traffic
and therefore the ad revenue and e-commerce transactions
that contributed directly to the firm’s bottom line.
In addition to the financial overhead due to high software licensing
and maintenance costs, a large percentage of IT operational
costs and human resources were spent just keeping the old
systems running, leaving little time and resources for
developing innovative new products. The proprietary legacy
systems were difficult to customize and integrate, and could
not scale to keep pace with HBP’s expanding business.
solution
HBP recognized it needed to replace its proprietary content
management system with a robust, yet easy-to-use enterprise
-grade content management system that would facilitate
access to its high-value content to its business users and
integrate seamlessly with existing systems such as
enterprise content repositories, search and merchandising
tools, e-commerce systems, ad networks, Web analytics, and
community-building applications such as blogs.
HBP required a solution that provided increased flexibility
around page design and messaging, easy access to digital
products, a uniform user experience, an easy-to-use
e-commerce experience, and improved visitor experience
37
redhat.com/jboss
for user registration and session management. HBP also
sought a higher level of performance, scalability, and rocksolid stability.
One absolutely non-negotiable requirement: the new solution
needed to be built with open source software and an open
architecture with an enterprise Java foundation at the core.
It also needed to support rapid, lightweight development
at the upper layers of the application stack—most notably
at the user interface layer and presentation tier. This
requirement would focus on HBP’s business goals and on
leveraging HBP’s very high-value content and core
capabilities to enable future innovation.
This is where Rivet Logic came in. Rivet Logic provides
professional open source services and solutions and
offers a full suite of JBoss professional services including
deployment, customization, and integration—enabling
clients to fully leverage the power of the world’s leading
open source enterprise middleware stack.
Rivet Logic implemented an end-to-end open source
solution that delivered on all of HBP’s requirements. HBP’s
production ecosystem was built on Red Hat Enterprise
Linux on Intel Xeon processor-based Dell 2950 servers
with dual and quad core CPUs, running JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, Apache, Oracle Database, and the
Alfresco Content Management System.
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform was used as a core
component for the dynamic content delivery system and
e-commerce experience. JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform provided the basis for a WOA that enabled
straightforward integration with numerous enterprise
back-end systems and third-party web services, including
enterprise resource management (ERP), ad servers, XML
repositories, taxonomy management, third-party search,
web analytics, and a user ID management system.
In addition, JBoss Seam served as the rich user interface
(UI) framework for an Intranet application for
enterprise content management, and the public-facing
web applications for the online versions of Harvard
Business Review at hbr.org, HBP’s e-commerce site at
harvardbusiness.org, and HBP’s Higher Education site
at www.hbsp.harvard.edu. In all cases, the JBoss Seam
applications were integrated with Alfresco for back-end
content management. The Intranet application utilized
Alfresco’s document management (DM) repository,
whereas the website applications utilized Alfresco’s web
content management (WCM) repository.
JBoss Hibernate provided the persistence layer for all
application logic and user-generated content, and jBPM
governed workflow for editorial content and publishing
processes. The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
RIVET LOGIC | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
provided the foundation necessary for HBP’s mission-critical
applications that required high performance and scalability.
Rivet Logic used a WOA approach for the need for singlesign-on support, while also enabling integration with a
variety of systems, including a blogging platform (blogs.
harvardbusiness.org), e-commerce, an XML repository (for
HBR article content), and community platforms. Integration
with a third-party search engine offered powerful faceted
search and navigation functionalities. This content delivery
approach also met standards-compliant XHTML/CSS
requirements, maintained SEO-friendly URLs, and allowed
for straightforward integration of web analytics. Integration
between JBoss and Alfresco was streamlined by using free
and open source software from Rivet Logic, including the
Remote Alfresco API rivet for Alfresco DM integration and
the Crafter rivet for Alfresco.
The JBoss Seam Intranet application allows enterprise
users to:
• Navigate, search, find and retrieve relevant content
quickly through a combination of full-text search,
metadata search, and content relationship browsing
• Create and enter new content and associate metadata
and relationships
• Manage digital rights of product-related media
• Restrict access to certain types of content through
role-based user authorization
“The new JBoss- and Alfresco-based Intranet provides an
easy way for end users to search and find content, as the
search results deliver detailed content, such as individual
chapters, images, author bios, and the public-facing HBP
site provides visitors a rich experience for navigating and
consuming HBP’s digital content,” said Vertal, “The JBossand Alfresco-based web content delivery system provides
the dynamic and feature-rich functionalities HBP needed
in a simplified manner by seamlessly connecting the
presentation, application and content repository layers.”
BENEFITS
By using Red Hat, JBoss, and Alfresco open source
solutions, HBP has gained platform agility that enables
brand management, broader community functionality, and
increased site traffic. The JBoss and Alfresco integrated
solution has enabled HBP to gain the stability and ease of
use it required to empower business-end users and integrate
with a host of critical applications and systems. With the
new system in place, HBP can now develop products faster,
bundle existing products more efficiently, and generate new
revenue opportunities by increasing site traffic and offering
richer, fresher, and more varied content.
From a developer perspective, HBP’s IT department can
now focus on value-added development of new application
and site features given the open source architecture and
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | RIVET LOGIC
the modern WOA infrastructure. Dramatically less time
and resources are now spent on maintaining rigid, legacy
systems that carried expensive maintenance and software
licensing costs.
The new implementation has enabled HBP to better
leverage the value of its branded content—articles, books
and book chapters, blogs, podcasts, and videos—easily,
quickly and securely.
“Uniting all content across the enterprise led to the rapid
development of new digital media products and richer
content on HBP’s revenue-generating web properties,”
said Vertal, “With Red Hat, JBoss and Alfresco, HBP has
enhanced the visitor experience with improved navigation,
along with much faster website performance. By offering
fresher and more dynamic content and increasing
site traffic, HBP has started to expand its revenue
opportunities.”
“This project was as mission-critical as they come,” said
Vertal. “It encompassed the back-end repository, the
front-end application that internal users deployed to create
new content and products, and a customer-facing web
application that delivered those products to customers
through a variety of channels. Red Hat Enterprise Linux
coupled with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform drove
a total transformation of the way that HPB approached
product development and delivery.”
Business agility has also increased by orders of magnitude,
said Vertal. “Because we were on the new platform, in
a matter of months we were able to replace the entire
e-commerce front end with a much better user experience
and more manageable applications.”
The stability of the system has also proven itself. And,
looking forward, HBP has plans to begin incorporating social
media into the site using collaborative tools and community
applications that will enable its employees to become better
engaged with customers. “This will allow HBP to build and
maintain better customer loyalty across its entire customer
base,” said Vertal.
“We utilized leading edge, open source platforms from
Red Hat, Alfresco, and Rivet Logic to implement a largescale, high-value, business-critical solution that spans
internal enterprise collaboration applications, public-facing
web properties and communities, and business-critical
e-commerce applications,” said Vertal, “We believe
this project demonstrates the powerful benefits that
commercial open source software from Red Hat, JBoss,
and the open source ecosystem is ready to deliver to major
enterprises for the converged world of content, community,
collaboration, and commerce.”
redhat.com/jboss
38
CUSTOMER ADVICE
“Any enterprise or government agency that is looking to
increase employee productivity and/or improve relationships
with customers should seek to leverage next-generation
solutions that expand their use of content, community,
collaboration, and community. And just as the consumer
Web 2.0 was built on open source software, these next
generation Enterprise 2.0 solutions are being built on
enterprise-grade, commercial open source software from
Red Hat, JBoss, Alfresco, and others. All organizations
should seek to leverage commercial open source software as
much as possible for any and all future enterprise software
initiatives,” said Vertal.
“Businesses should remember that software is a means to
an end, not an end in itself. Companies should first focus on
business requirements and desired results, and leverage the
best-of-breed software technologies that will help them get
there. And whether the business needs better internalfacing,
content-enabled enterprise applications, improved externalfacing web properties, or e-commerce platforms, JBoss
software has proven it can help deliver tremendous bottomline results,” said Vertal.
39
redhat.com/jboss
RIVET LOGIC | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
SPRINT MAKES THE RIGHT
CALL BY REPLACING COSTLY
PROPRIETARY MIDDLEWARE
WITH JBOSS ENTERPRISE
MIDDLEWARE
Geography
Overland Park, Kansas
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline
communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers,
businesses, and government users. Sprint Nextel served more than 56
million customers at the end of the first quarter of 2012 and is widely
recognized for developing, engineering, and deploying innovative
technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national
carrier in the United States; offering industry-leading mobile data
services, leading prepaid brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost
Mobile, and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international pushto-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. The American
Customer Satisfaction Index rated Sprint No. 1 among all national carriers
and most improved in customer satisfaction across all industries during
the last four years. Newsweek ranked Sprint No. 3 in its 2011 Green
Rankings, listing it as one of the nation’s greenest companies, the highest
of any telecommunications company.
Tired of paying exorbitant licensing
and maintenance fees for proprietary
middleware, Sprint embarked on an
open source initiative with JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform that
significantly cut costs while delivering
enhanced flexibility and agility to the
company’s mission-critical business
applications.
software
Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®, Red Hat
Consulting, Red Hat Training, JBoss®
Operations Network
Hardware
“Since the environment we’ve created is rooted in open
source standards, it will allow us to grow our middleware
platform at a rational cost and allow us to focus on
delivering applications to our business.”
– Jamie Williams, IT Director, Sprint
Intel™ Xeon™ processor-based Dell™
2950 multicore servers
Benefits
Saved $4 million annually in licensing
and maintenance fees, improved
developer productivity, reduced timeto-market of Sprint products
COSTLY MIDDLEWARE A DRAIN ON BUSINESS-FOCUSED IT
OPPORTUNITIES
Prior to 2011, Sprint was locked into expensive and proprietary Oracle
WebLogic and IBM WebSphere middleware platforms for its key business
applications. The high license maintenance and support costs diverted funds
away from other business-driven IT opportunities, and it was very difficult
to keep multiple versions of the multiple middleware products current.
“We had several applications on non-supported EOL [end-of-life] versions
of WebSphere and WebLogic,” said Jamie Williams, director of IT middleware
at Sprint. The company finally reached a point where it either needed to
embark upon a costly and labor-intensive upgrade of all existing middleware
environments, or standardize on a new middleware platform.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SPRINT
redhat.com/jboss
40
The Sprint IT team was leaning toward deploying a new
solution, but had some very specific requirements. First,
the middleware would need to support a transition to a
new, low total cost of ownership (TCO) platform without
disrupting production operations or business-critical
projects in the IT development pipeline. “We also needed
middleware that was based on innovative open standards,
was flexible enough to meet the needs of our many diverse
applications, had been ‘battle-tested’ for production
stability in carrier-grade implementations, and—finally—
could be implemented in a standard way to make it easy to
keep software current down the road,” said Williams.
In addition to replacing middleware, Sprint also decided to
modernize related infrastructure components while
“already under the hood” of its IT environment. “We
simultaneously sought to migrate applications from
standalone physical servers into virtualized environments,
from proprietary operating systems to Linux, and from
proprietary web servers to Apache,” said Williams.
JBOSS ENTERPRISE MIDDLEWARE BEST
SOLUTION FOR NEXT-GENERATION IT PLATFORM
After extensive due diligence and proof-of-concept testing,
Sprint chose JBoss Enterprise Application Platform as its
new middleware solution and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
as its new operating system environment. In April of 2011,
Sprint approved and funded a major project to replace all
legacy WebLogic and WebSphere middleware with JBoss
Enterprise Middleware from Red Hat, and began migrating
those applications to a virtualized Red Hat Enterprise Linux
environment. Going forward, all new applications developed
at Sprint would use JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.
As part of the two-year project, Sprint utilized Red Hat
Consulting to help with application migrations, defining best
practices, and designing a future-state architecture.
Sprint IT began the migration, which would eventually
involve moving more than 100 Sprint applications from
the proprietary legacy middleware platforms to the new
JBoss standard. The massive scope of this migration effort
is such that it will ultimately touch every area of Sprint’s
business, including sales, HR, finance, IT, and engineering.
Williams worked closely with his peers throughout IT to
build consensus, given all the critical applications that
would ultimately be impacted by the migration. The team of
Red Hat consultants guided and mentored internal Sprint IT
personnel to develop Sprint-specific standards that would
promote application portability, architecture flexibility,
reliability, and performance while reducing vendor lock-in.
Today, Sprint IT has successfully migrated 57 of Sprint’s
most business- and mission-critical applications. Previously,
those applications consumed more than 600 CPUs of
41
redhat.com/jboss
WebLogic and nearly 24,000 PVUs of WebSphere. “The
applications we have migrated include service and repair
management in our retail stores, prepaid online purchasing,
secure file transfer to Sprint partners, asset and inventory
management for the Sprint wireless network, and many
more,” said Williams. “At the completion of the program,
we expect to have migrated more than 100 applications
that were previously utilizing 1,000 CPUs of WebLogic and
100,000 PVUs of WebSphere.”
Sprint at the same time modernized its infrastructure by
transforming standalone servers into virtual machines
running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and replacing legacy
web servers with Apache web servers.
“The standards that Sprint has created
with Red Hat Consulting have provided our
applications with the fundamental enterprise
architecture framework that will allow them
to have more flexibility and less dependency
on expensive, closed-source technologies
in the future.”
– Jamie Williams, IT Director, Sprint
JBOSS DELIVERS MILLIONS IN SAVINGS AND THE
ABILITY TO FOCUS ON STRATEGIC IT INITIATIVES
Sprint expects to save more than $4 million annually through
reductions in license and maintenance costs alone, simply
by replacing the proprietary middleware environment with
JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Because Williams’ team also
embraced implementation standards and management
tools like JBoss Operations Network, Sprint developers,
middleware administrators, and systems support staff are
much more productive, leading to even more savings. These
cost reductions allow Sprint to fund more IT projects for
business-driven functionality, rather than simply supporting
the infrastructure by “keeping the lights on,” said Williams.
“Since the environment we’ve created is rooted in open
source standards, it will allow us to grow our middleware
platform at a rational cost and allow us to focus on
delivering applications to our business,” said Williams.
“Additionally, the flexibility and choice we have now with
applications that have been successfully migrated will
allow Sprint to have more control over the evolution of its
infrastructure hosting, whether it be internally, externally,
or a hybrid environment.”
Developers have learned how to more quickly debug
their code locally and in “low-commitment” development
environments. Additionally, “The standards that Sprint
has created with Red Hat Consulting have provided our
SPRINT | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
applications with the fundamental enterprise architecture
framework that will allow them to have more flexibility, and
less dependency on expensive, closed-source technologies in
the future,” said Williams.
Sprint has extensively utilized Red Hat Global Support
Services and Red Hat Training during the migrations. Red
Hat Training provided several JBoss Enterprise Middleware
courses that were a key part of bringing such a large group
of Sprint application developers up to speed on the new
platform. “Completing these training courses early in the
program gave the Sprint application development teams
the background and confidence they needed to take on the
challenge of migrating their applications,” said Williams. “And
our Red Hat TAM [technical account manager] is actively
involved as applications complete production migrations
onto the new platform.”
In the end, says Williams, Sprint has reaped more than just
financial rewards with this migration project. Standardizing
and modernizing the infrastructure of many mission and
business critical applications was also a key success that will
promote improved developer productivity, reduced time-tomarket for key Sprint products, and improved automation of
crucial business processes in the future. “In today’s market,
these are all key factors helping Sprint remain nimble and
enabling us to deliver cutting-edge solutions to the market,”
says Williams.
42
redhat.com/jboss
SPRINT | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
43
Travel Channel Delivers
Enhanced Online User
Experiences, Gains Visibility
into Application Performance,
and Optimizes its Environment
with Red Hat Solutions
Geography
United States
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Launched in 1987 and owned by Scripps Networks Interactive, Travel
Channel is available in more than 95 million US cable homes (Nielsen
Universe Estimate, August 2009) and is the place for consumers to satisfy
their urges to go, see and do. Through the engaging storytelling and
unique perspectives of its on-air personalities, the Travel Channel creates
travel content that inspires, entertains and taps into the human desire to
experience new things, explore new places and engage with interesting
people and cultures.
Travel Channel’s high-definition simulcast, Travel Channel HD, is distributed
to more than 17 million, and its website, www.travelchannel.com, serves as the
network’s entertainment travel hub and averages more than two million
unique users each month. Its largest annual event is a live simulcast of its
popular “Ghost Adventures Live” show, which is broadcast both on
television and via TravelChannel.com as an interactive web portal. In 2009,
the Travel Channel received its first Emmy award, accompanied by six
nominations. Travel Channel also hosts www.travelchannelacademy.com, the
only travel-focused digital film school where anyone can register for online
courses and boot camps to learn how to professionally produce travel media.
The Travel Channel IT group is divided into three distinct teams: operations,
digital media asset and interactive. This team’s main goals are to promote
positive and interactive website experiences and to provide content as
quickly as possible.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Each year, Travel Channel conducts several live television events that are
completely interactive with the company’s website. While watching, viewers
can interact online through webcams, live video chat, texting, message
boards, and forums. These events draw a massive following with more than
one million hits to the website, resulting in web traffic spikes of up to
300%, causing the need to monitor and manage all of the web applications
to ensure there are no unfavorable outcomes for visitors during the live event.
“We mean it when we say ‘interactive,’ said Richard Hood, senior manager
of IT operations at Travel Channel. “If ‘Ghost Adventures Live’ viewers see
shadows go by on a webcam, they can text a message to the Travel Channel
team, and we can send the personalities to investigate the area in real time.”
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | TRAVEL CHANNEL
Required a management and monitoring
solution to ensure travelchannel.com
visitors have positive experiences with
no downtime or viewing difficulties,
especially during business-critical events
solution
With Red Hat Consulting and Amentra,
a Red Hat company, Travel Channel
implemented JBoss Operations Network
(JBoss ON) on JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, running on
Platform, to increase visibility and
availability, and improve the risk
management of its web applications
software
Platform, JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform, JBoss Operations Network,
Red Hat Network Satellite, Red Hat
Consulting, Amentra Consulting
Hardware
Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers
Benefits
Increased visibility to mitigate
performance issues, enhanced risk
management and capacity planning;
increased throughput to servers 20-fold
by increasing memory usage; gained the
ability to test the website’s refresh load,
memory leaks and performance issues
during business-critical live events;
Increased application availability; gained
knowledge through Red Hat Consulting
and Red Hat’s Amentra Consulting team
redhat.com/jboss
44
During “Ghost Adventures Live,” Travel Channel receives up to
one-tenth of its annual revenue, and more than one million hits
to its website. “On an average day we’ll get anywhere from
200,000 to 300,000 website hits,” said Hood. “During the
live events, we can have up to one million hits in six hours,
which is unprecedented for the size of our operation.”
During previous years’ live events, Travel Channel lacked the
tools to effectively monitor and manage the performance of
its web applications. In addition, the spike in users overloaded
the web applications, resulting in unanticipated downtime.
“When you have a live event, you have the world looking at
you right then and there,” said Hood. “It is not pre-scripted
and you don’t get to do a retake. If you have an issue,
everyone can see it. We decided to become proactive
and identify a solution that would enable us to test our
systems before the event, monitor and manage during the
event and plan our capacity for future events,” said Hood.
SOLUTION
When the need for a middleware monitoring and
management solution was identified, the Travel Channel
IT team was not yet leveraging JBoss ON. However,
this solution was already built into Travel Channel’s
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform solution, which
the company deployed in 2006. The JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
and Travel Channel currently runs 80 percent of its
infrastructure on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
potential issues. This testing ensured that the IT team was
prepared and equipped to handle the traffic and usage
spikes associated with their live events.
“The partnership we have with Red Hat is
not based on dollars, it is based on the
technology and the people who are
committed to our success. Red Hat takes
the burden of hardening, testing, and
supporting the technology, allowing us
more time to satisfy the problem rather
than playing with the symptoms.”
– Richard Hood, senior manager IT operations, Travel Channel
“The Red Hat consultants reached out to us in advance
of the live event, worked with us during the event and
followed up with us after the event to ensure all of our needs
were met and questions were answered,” said Payne. “This
unsolicited feedback and candor solidified the feeling that
Red Hat really cares about the success of our business.”
“JBoss ON also enabled us to remove the questions,
concerns and risks that we had during live events,”
continued Payne. “We now have visibility into our web
application performance. In addition, we didn’t have to add
another vendor, and thus complexity, to our environment.”
With a need for these capabilities and minimal experience
with a monitoring and management solution, Travel
Channel worked with Red Hat Consulting and consultants
from Amentra, a Red Hat company, to fully leverage the
many capabilities of JBoss ON for its specific pain points.
Because it met all of its monitoring needs, including
visibility, availability, risk management, capacity planning
and significant cost savings over proprietary alternatives,
Travel Channel decided to utilize JBoss ON.
Travel Channel also realized key benefits through the use
of Red Hat Consulting and Amentra, a Red Hat company.
“The consulting and support from Red Hat has been
outstanding,” said Payne. “It has provided me with the
tools, skills and knowledge necessary to identify problems
and make accurate and efficient recommendations to fix
them. While, I’m not reliant on the consultants, they are
mentors to me and are constantly following up with us,
which is unheard of in the IT industry.”
BENEFITS
“In a short timeframe, Red Hat Consulting has enabled
us to grow our environment and become self-sufficient
with the installation, tuning and configuring of JBoss ON,”
said Hood. “Additionally, the monitoring tool enables us to
identify and resolve problems before our customer sees
them. It allows me to focus my attention on other areas
of my environment, and alerts me when we are meeting a
threshold that is unfavorable.”
“I was amazed at how quickly JBoss ON was set up and
configured to our specifications,” said Chuck Payne,
systems administrator at Travel Channel. “Within two hours
of working with Red Hat consulting teams, including
Amentra, we had the monitoring and management solution
installed. In addition, we had identified the roadmap for
equipping our team with the tools necessary to identify
issues, discuss pain points and collaborate to address issues.”
Prior to the first live event after JBoss ON’s implementation
in 2009, the Travel Channel IT team tested all of its critical
web applications and websites against inflated traffic
projections, utilizing JBoss ON to identify and fix any
“The partnership we have with Red Hat is not based on
dollars, it is based on the technology and the people
who are committed to our success,” said Hood. “Red Hat
takes the burden of hardening, testing and supporting the
technology, allowing us more time to satisfy the problem
rather than playing with the symptoms.”
45
TRAVEL CHANNEL | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
redhat.com/jboss
EDUCATION
INDUSTRY:
EDUCATION
46
Leading UK Exam Board
Cuts Costs, Innovates
with End-to-End Open
Source Solution
Geography
United Kingdom
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) is the largest of the
three English exam boards. It is the leading provider of qualifications for
UK schools and colleges, awarding 49% of full course GCSEs and 42% of
A-levels nationally. In total, over 3.5 million students take exams
with AQA each year.
To launch an extranet service that
would be available to its external
users of more than 35,000 examiners
and moderators
Hardware
HP x86-based commodity servers
AQA is an independent registered charity, with no shareholders, therefore
all of its income is used to run examinations and carry out research and
development to improve its qualifications and services.
SOFTWARE
AQA employs 1050 permanent staff across its offices, headed up by its
Executive Board. The organization also works with about 35,000 teachers,
lecturers, advisers and consultants who assist in setting and marking exams.
JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform, Red
AQA is committed to using modern technology to enhance the quality and
accuracy of the examination process for the benefit of candidates and is
always striving to modernize its assessment process.
Migration path
“Prior to the implementation, we
considered all the major vendors, but
chose an open source strategy as
it offered similar and even superior
levels of functionality, security and
quality, but at a tenth of the cost.”
Hat Enterprise Linux, Alfresco ECM,
Enterprise DB
Proprietary, closed solution to a more
cost-effective and flexible platform
based on JBoss Enterprise Application
platform
Benefits
Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO),
including cost and efficiency savings
of £250,000 per year, and freedom
from vendor lock-in
– Peter Morris, Programme Manager, AQA
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
AQA needed a secure extranet service that would be available to its
external users of over 35,000 examiners and moderators. This extranet
would contain valuable and important documentation allowing users to
mark exam papers more effectively, eliminating the previous paper based
process of printing and posting.
Security was a big consideration as all examination papers and marking
schemes were held on the system along with overall guidelines on marking
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | AQA
redhat.com/jboss
47
the papers. AQA needed a secure platform that would not
be openly accessible. It was also important that the new
system allowed users to access a variety of documentation
twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.
Application technologies to improve the overall
experience. Optaros supported AQA in the adoption of an
Agile Development strategy which reduced the timescale
for development to around four weeks.
AQA had a system built around a more traditional,
proprietary architecture that was too restrictive and costly
to maintain. In order to reduce the costs associated with
licenses, support and maintenance, AQA decided to replace
all the proprietary software with open source solutions.
This migration allowed AQA to benefit from an end-to-end
open source solution deployed on open standards and at a
value point that would allow AQA to continue to innovate
into the future.
The extranet was initially rolled out to a pilot group of 200
examiners whose feedback has been resoundingly positive.
“We were spending six-figure sums every year on printing
and posting documentation to examiners alone. We wanted
to develop an extranet that could replace our paper-based
manual processes with electronic documentation that could
be easily updated,” explained Peter Morris, Programme
Manager, AQA. “Prior to the implementation, we considered
all the major vendors, but chose an open source strategy as
it offered similar and even superior levels of functionality,
security and quality, but at a tenth of the cost.”
Red Hat’s subscription model now provides AQA with
increased value as it can consolidate onto a single
subscription. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is reduced,
and printing, posting, licensing and other ongoing
operational costs are significantly reduced. By automating
its manual process online and enabling users to update
details themselves, they have improved accuracy and
administration staff are now free to carry out other tasks.
BENEFITS
Key requirements for the migration to open source
technology were cost and efficiency savings. AQA
calculated that it was 10 times less expensive to
implement a solution from Red Hat than to extend the
previous proprietary solution to this external audience.
As a result, AQA expects to save £250,000 annually.
Because of the high demand for AQA’s services the entire
solution needed to be deployed, tested and put into
production in just six weeks.
SOLUTION
AQA evaluated a number of open source solutions that
could offer an alternative software delivery model to its
existing closed proprietary solution.
AQA had an existing relationship with Red Hat and had
been using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform for
its servers for some time. Knowing that the same highquality support structure, value and superior technology
development extended to JBoss Enterprise Middleware,
AQA decided to migrate to the JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform as well. The overall stack proved
to be far more cost effective than its competitors and
significantly less expensive than keeping the existing
legacy systems in place.
The solution AQA has chosen is based on an open source
stack comprising Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss Enterprise Portal
Platform, Alfresco and Enterprise DB, and will provide a
strategic platform for future collaboration.
AQA used systems integrater Optaros to aid the smooth
integration of the new open source platform. Optaros
enabled AQA to create a customised user experience
that focused on ease-of-use and utilised Rich Internet
48
redhat.com/jboss
The other important consideration was that migrating
to an open source platform facilitated the rapid and
agile development of the system, enabling two or more
developers to work on different aspects of the project
at the same time. This had not been practical with the
proprietary technologies previously used and was another
area where Red Hat’s solution helped the developers to
meet the challenging completion deadline of six weeks.
AQA also utilised Red Hat’s expertise through its training
and consultancy services to enable them to take the
application stack and server to build a version that is
ready to use and web facing. This had a significant impact
in enabling the system to go live within a very short
timeframe.
AQA is no longer dependent on individual technology
suppliers and now has the flexibility to decouple, plug, and
unplug solutions as and when required without impacting
the whole stack. This has given AQA a competitive
advantage in the marketplace.
The migration to open source solutions has helped AQA
meet the commercial challenge of staying ahead of its
competitors while improving the level of service for its
customers, examiners and candidates.
Peter Morris from AQA commented: “The first phase of
our project with Red Hat has been a great success. We
AQA | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
will continue to innovate and grow the technology stack.
The new system has changed the way we work and has had
a massive impact in terms of cost and efficiency savings.
Red Hat pulled out all the stops to deliver over and above
our expectations. We are now looking to migrate further
services to open source as it will give us the competitive
advantage to maintain our position as market leader and
stay ahead of our competitors.”
FUTURE
The first phase of the project has moved exam materials
online for operational cost savings. The next phase will
involve messaging capabilities that will help communication
across the organisation. This includes adding more exam
papers, marking schemes and even training material such
as online demos and screen captures to further enhance
the user experience. AQA would also like to implement
a forum so users can participate in conversations and
discussions, creating an online community to share
thoughts and learn from each other.
Eventually, AQA’s plan is to open up its information to
candidates and a broader range of teachers. This will
require a system capable of scaling to hundreds of
thousands or even millions of users; AQA believes its open
source system will be able to scale to meet this demand.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | AQA
redhat.com/jboss
49
50
EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE MIGRATES TO RED HAT
SOLUTIONS TO INCREASE
RELIABILITY AND OBTAIN
SUBSTANTIAL COST SAVINGS
Geography
Italy
Business challenge
To replace the company’s existing
BACKGROUND
The European University Institute (EUI) was created in 1972 by the six
founding Member States of the European Community to provide advanced
academic training to doctoral researchers and to promote research
at the highest level. Opening its doors to the first researchers in 1976,
the organization focuses on research from a European perspective in
economics, law, history, politics, and social sciences.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
As the organization continued to expand, EUI was interested in a solution
to address the proliferation of heterogeneous user data managed by its
single enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. The organization’s
existing point-to-point integration architecture had become redundant, as it
was unable to service EUI’s ever-changing workflows. The company sought
enhanced flexibility and heightened security to track how its resources
were being used and to provision and transfer individual data securely.
point-to-point integration architecture
and address the proliferation of
personal and individual data managed
by the EUI’s single ERP application
SOFTWARE
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise SOA Platform
Benefits
Increased flexibility, enhanced security,
reduced licensing costs and operating
expenses.
“As our ecosystem of professors, students, and visitors continued to
expand, our legacy system was no longer able to service the needs of the
company,” said Michael Goerke, Computing Service, EUI. “We needed a
system that could better support and add value to our community but did
not require significant investment in proprietary licenses.”
SOLUTION
With the help of Red Hat partner Visionest, a business process
management (BPM) provider, and the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, EUI
has been able to manage the integration between software applications
and heterogeneous data sources. Developed by Visionest with Red Hat
technology, the solution has radically changed the integration architecture
through using end-to-end service provisioning process as its starting point.
EUI implemented JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform to enable the distribution
of necessary information and coordinate the services offered to individuals
associated with the Institute. The system, which collects data from
heterogeneous sources such as the student and staff databases, compiles
Master Data Management (MDM) of the electronic identities on site,
enabling the institution to track how resources are used and providing the
necessary data to the security systems.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | EUI
redhat.com/jboss
51
“Educational organizations are under
increased pressure to cut costs. Red
Hat’s solutions offered EUI reduced costs
and operational expenditure without
compromising service or expertise. Red Hat
support teams provided the indepth technical
knowledge necessary to integrate our entire
system and prepare us for critical situations
as they arise.”
– Michael Goerke, Computing Service, EUI
MDM has become the only reliable archive for all
provisioning, authorization, and indexing processes of
individual data inside the complex EUI infrastructure (IT
services, training, and residential support).
flexibility, reliability, and stability, often higher than those
of proprietary solutions.”
“Our a>PLUS” platform has been developed specifically to
solve management issues caused by increased data usage
across enterprises,” added Marco Serpilli, CEO, Visionest.
“Due to Red Hat’s promises of reliability, robustness,
and security, we chose to build the platform on Red Hat
technologies in order to provide customers with valueadded solutions at a competitive price.”
“Educational organizations are under increased pressure
to cut costs,” said Goerke. “Red Hat’s solutions reduced
licensing costs as well as operational expenditures for EUI
without compromising service or expertise. Additionally,
Red Hat’s support teams provided the in-depth technical
knowledge and expertise necessary to integrate our entire
system and prepare us for critical situations as they arise.”
Building upon JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, Visionest
has developed a Central Person Registry (CPR) application
based entirely on the Red Hat solution, to offer EUI users
maximum freedom in developing and implementing
organizational rules and processes. Visionest worked with
EUI to develop its “a>PLUS” platform, a powerful BPM
framework built entirely on JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform
technology, delivering robust process management
applications.
BENEFITS
Through enabling the integration of multiple applications
and IT security systems, the CPR application offered EUI
ease of administration along with change management.
Within the CPR system, user data derived from multiple
management applications is consolidated and shared
through a wide set of rules and a complex provisioning
process that provides information and support to the
security systems. CPR integrates organizational processes
to streamline IT resource allocation through governing
and orchestrating connected applications. Immediately
after re-modeling the process and its business rules, EUI
benefited from simplified integration processes and a
more immediate and powerful provisioning solution. By
implementing the Visionest “a>PLUS” platform, EUI has
also succeeded in achieving enterprise-class reliability and
security at a reduced cost.
“This migration marks the first phase of the adoption of
open source solutions across our entire infrastructure,”
said Goerke. “Positive feedback from the Institute’s users
and employees has confirmed our initial expectations of
choosing open source technologies to achieve high levels of
52
redhat.com/jboss
EUI | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
King’s College London
Dental Institute Builds
Award Winning Virtual
Campus Experience on
JBoss Enterprise Middleware
Geography
United Kingdom
Business challenge
To provide online learning materials and
assessment tools virtually to dental
students through a flexible, secure and
cost-effective technology infrastructure
with optimal functionality
BACKGROUND
King’s College London is the Sunday Times University of the Year 2010-11,
one of the top 25 universities in the world (Times Higher Education 2010),
and the fourth oldest in England. A research-led university based in the heart
of London, King’s has nearly 23,000 students (of whom more than 8,600 are
graduate students) from nearly 140 countries, and some 5,500 employees.
Migration path
The application was developed from
ground up using JBoss
SOLUTION
The IVIDENT project (International
Virtual Dental School, now known as
The College offers an intellectually rigorous environment supported by
welcoming and caring traditions. King’s has played a major role in many
of the advances that have shaped modern life, such as the discovery of
the structure of DNA, and it is now the largest centre for the education of
doctors, dentists and other healthcare professionals in Europe, and home to
six Medical Research Council centres.
UDENTE – Universal Dental E-Learning
http://www.udente.org) is a flexible
learning platform (FLP), conceived to
deliver quality-assured content and
web-based education tools to dental
students. The platform is built on Red
At the hub of the award winning IVIDENT ethos is customisable, high
quality, secure, seamless integration of learning tools, systems and
e-content with an accent on sustainability in the project. The virtual faculty,
and indeed all stakeholders, strive to achieve economic, environmental and
technological sustainability throughout the advanced second generation
virtual learning environment and infrastructure.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
King’s College London Dental Institute received the highest quality assurance
and research ratings in the latest assessments. This is despite the national
22% decline in the number of professors, senior lecturers and lecturers
since 2000. The loss of research expertise of clinical academics and the
impact on the research agenda is concerning. It is therefore to the Dental
Institute’s credit that the creative solutions of IVIDENT can support teaching
and learning in a blended approach that incorporates the latest research
findings and the best clinical practice. With a finite number of senior faculty,
especially in the smaller specialties, the Dental Institute wanted to provide
an innovative solution to better serve its growing, geographically dispersed
student body and to more efficiently use its tutoring resources.
“The main challenge for the Dental Institute was to create a premium
environment for learning, whilst meeting the project’s final objective of
sustainability,” said Professor Patricia A. Reynolds, Director of Flexible
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | KING’S COLLEGE
Hat’s open source middleware portfolio
including JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform and JBoss Developer Studio.
Hardware
Dell Poweredge 1435, 2 x Dual Core AMD
SOFTWARE
JBoss Developer Studio, JBoss Seam,
JBoss Hibernate, and jBPM
Benefits
Create an award-winning virtual
experience for students; to improve
the educational experience for both
students and tutors; potentially
improve ROI while reducing costs;
increase flexibility, interoperability and
ease of maintenance
redhat.com/jboss
53
learning, at the Institute. “King’s saw technology as a
strategic tool for centralising resources and providing
increased accessibility to the latest learning content and
curriculum for students while scaling the curriculum to
serve its growing number of students.”
The Dental Institute designed an online, flexible and scalable
learning portal to deliver expert curriculum to dental students,
called the International Virtual Dental School (IVIDENT)
which was jointly funded by the Higher Education Funding
Council for England (HEFCE) and the Department of Health.
The £2.3 million three-year project aimed to bridge the
gap between skills development for dental students and
the availability of expert teachers in smaller specialties, by
providing an online-based, flexible learning capability with
universal IT integration.
A critical part of the successful introduction of IVIDENT
was gaining mindshare and momentum from a diverse set
of the King’s community, including students, lecturers,
aculty members and research specialists. For this to be
achieved the Dental Institute had to implement a solution
that brought together technology and education for an
improved student experience within the context of a
sustainable but not-for-profit business.
The IVIDENT project was created with an ultimate objective
of proposing a sustainable solution that could be shared by
other dental learning institutions around the world, once it
had been proven at the Dental Institute and its partner
institutions. With this potential reach in mind, the technology
infrastructure had to be built on open standards. As with
any educational establishment cost reduction and return
on investment were key requirements. The Dental Institute
was therefore searching for a solution that consolidated its
current IT infrastructure, maximising existing technology
assets and minimising capital expenditure.
Security also needed to be taken into account throughout
this project. Teaching resources and student data needed to
be protected, therefore any solution had to have a stringent
security layer. As part of this requirement, the ability to
audit any activity within the system was crucial as all
interactions could play a part in a student’s assessment.
Finally, the Dental Institute had to ensure that students did
not experience downtime from any solution that was put in
place. Availability, around-the-clock support, and accessibility
were crucial to the college meeting its need to have course
content and educational mechanisms available online.
SOLUTION
King’s worked with Tier 2, a Red Hat Premier Business
54
redhat.com/jboss
Partner that holds a middleware specialization, to design
the specification requirements of the IVIDENT project.
As IVIDENT took shape, it encompassed online course
content, virtual classrooms, social networking tools,
a bulletin board, assessment tools, virtual lectures,
and demonstrations. Students would be able to access
these services via laptops or smartphones, encouraging
collaboration, mobility and research.
Tier 2 worked with King’s to identify its options, which
included a non-technical scoping exercise to decipher the
exact applications and requirements of the system. The
College was aware that there were many off-the-shelf
technology solutions specifically designed for educational
needs; however, it wanted a more customizable
infrastructure that would meet its exact requirements and
integrate with its existing, incumbent technology.
An open source architecture was identified early on as
a solution that King’s wanted to explore. The ability to
reduce capital expenditure as well as benefiting from
community collaboration fit well within the project’s
sustainability programme. With integration, security,
customisable features and capital expenditure taken into
account, the overriding factor behind the decision to use
JBoss Enterprise Middleware as the basis for IVIDENT was
its technology superiority. JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform was considered to be the only open source
enterprise middleware solution upon which the college
could build applications and scalable platforms to the
standard that it required. On the completion of IVIDENT in
March 2010, King’s named the completed project UDENTE
(Universal Dental E-Learning http://www.udente.org).
BENEFITS
IVIDENT/UDENTE is changing the way that King’s Dental
Institute is delivering dental education. It has created a
virtual learning environment which not only meets, but
enhances, the traditional learning experience in a blended
approach.
Flexible graduate dental courses are already delivered
online through blended learning programmes at http://
www.kcl.ac.uk/distancedentistry. These allow greater
flexibility of access for students and effective monitoring
by faculty. Using flexible learning techniques, staff are
freed up from repetitive teaching tasks, and faculty can
also focus on the individual needs of students as well as
their own research.
In addition, dental institutions and organisations will be
able to affiliate with IVIDENT/UDENTE, allowing them to
leverage and access extensive quality-assured e-content
king’s college | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
and tools to create their own curricula. As the UDENTE
family grows it is hoped that those institutions located in
developing countries may access and share world-class
training resources according to their local needs.
From a technical perspective IVIDENT/UDENTE has met
all of the challenges of integration, open standards and
interoperability. JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
and frameworks has enabled the legacy systems to be
integrated into the current system, and therefore created
a full portfolio of functionality on more cost-effective
hardware.
Another benefit of the IVIDENT/UDENTE application
running on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, was the
potential cost savings, and possible revenue-generating
benefits to support further research and development
of the system. An unexpected benefit is the way that
IVIDENT/UDENTE acts as a publishing capability for
teaching materials from all dental professionals across the
world, provided the resources meet the quality assurance
requirements.
Additionally, Red Hat’s growing ISV ecosystem ensured
that third party applications and other affiliate bodies could
integrate and interact seamlessly with the system. JBoss
Enterprise Middleware also gave King’s valuable security
reassurance with full administration, audit and log on
functionalities to ensure accountability and audit trails for
all interactions by students.
“Ultimately IVIDENT as a project has been a resounding
success and has met all of its objectives,” said Reynolds.
“The UDENTE approach has already been appreciated by
an international body of senior deans and experts, and
together with student involvement will steer us on a course
for the future.”
King’s, as a member of the prestigious Russell Group, is
widely recognised as a leader in academia and research. It
is anticipated that the IVIDENT/UDENTE model will assist in
influencing the changing landscape of higher education and
as such, be transferable to all specialties and faculties in
healthcare and beyond.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | KING’S COLLEGE
redhat.com/jboss
55
56
BRIGHT HORIZONS AUTOMATES
REQUISITION PROCESS AND
INTEGRATES EXISTING IT
ARCHITECTURE WITH HELP OF HJB
CONSULTING AND RED HAT’S JBOSS
ENTERPRISE MIDDLEWARE
BACKGROUND
Bright Horizons is the global leader in employer-sponsored child care,
early education, and work/life solutions. Founded in 1986, Bright Horizons
currently operates more than 700 child care centers and schools for some
of the world’s largest companies, hospitals, universities, and government
agencies throughout North America and Europe, including nearly 100 of
the Fortune 500 companies. Bright Horizons also provides back-up care
solutions for children and elders, as well as college counseling services and
other work/life solutions for employers and working families.
HJB Consulting provides technology solutions that help organizations
plan, implement and manage information-intensive products as well as
complex business processes. For more than six years HJB Consulting
has helped customers achieve measurable results with enterprise
architecture-based solutions for Business Process Management (BPM),
Identity and Access Management (IAM), and Information Portals.
Geography
United States
Business challenge
Needed to deploy a Business Process
Management solution to transform
a paper-based capital requisition
workflow into a scalable and automated
system. The Business Process
Management solution needed to fully
integrate with the existing Oracle
Application Server and Portal running
onRed Hat Enterprise Linux, all within
an exceedingly tight budget
SOFTWARE
JBoss Enterprise Framework; JBoss
jBPM, utilizing jBPM Process Definition
Language (jPDL); Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5; Oracle Database 10g
Hardware
HP ProLiant DL380 G6 servers with
EMC Celerra NS40 storage arrays
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Benefits
Bright Horizons’ purchasing process was not scalable over their 700 and
growing child care centers, the process was becoming dated and did not
easily enable transparency.
Reduced costs and increased agility,
functionality, and flexibility with a
combination of Red Hat and JBoss
solutions
Previously, when any one of Bright Horizons’ 700 child care centers or
schools needed to purchase a capital item or asset—for example, a new
computer or a new piece of playground equipment—the director of the
center was required to initiate a capital request form (CRF), a paperbased manual process for receiving approval for the necessary funds.
The CRF—which involved a significant amount of actual paper—had to be
routed to several different people based on the type of request and the
budget the funds would require. Typically processed using traditional USPS
mail, fax, or email, it could take weeks before a purchase order (P.O.) was
issued, and until the actual purchase order arrived at the requestor’s desk, he
or she did not typically know where the request was in the approval process.
“We surveyed our employees annually, and our CRF process was the biggest
pain point among our center directors,” said Nancy Johnson, Director of
Supply Management for Bright Horizons.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | BRIGHT HORIZONS
redhat.com/jboss
57
To address this business process challenge, Bright Horizons
called in HJB Consulting to help design and automate
a new requisition process based on a Business Process
Management (BPM) solution. Among other goals, Bright
Horizons asked HJB to streamline the requisition process
by automating request routing and notification; to make
the end-to-end expenditure pipeline transparent to key
stakeholders; and to archive all requisition documentation so
it was easily accessible for additional information.
SOLUTION
Bright Horizons had two major conditions for the new
requisitions system: HJB had to leverage its existing
Oracle Portal and associated Oracle Internet Directory,
and had to stay within tight budget constraints.
“We had a situation where the application server already
existed—Oracle—so whatever we built needed to run on
that technology,” said Hernando Barake, principal of HJB
Consulting. “We couldn’t really go to Bright Horizons and
say, you need to replace your infrastructure to do
accomplish what you want.”
“With almost 1,000,000 downloads, JBoss jBPM
is clearly the market leader over competing
BPM products, none of which has more than
100,000 downloads. That told us a lot about
the maturity and quality of the product.”
– Hernando Barake, Principal, HJB Consulting
HJB was further limited by cost considerations. “When
you need to implement a solution across this many
locations, any per-use licensing scheme—which pretty
much means any licensing terms for any proprietary
software product—presents a big problem,” said Mr.
Barake. “Many of these centers make just a few capital
purchases per year. Traditional proprietary licenses just
didn’t make sense.”
These two factors—ease of integration and cost
considerations— naturally led HJB to consider using open
source software, and once Mr. Barake started investigating
possible open source BPM solutions, JBoss jBPM was the
natural solution.
The ease with which HJB could integrate JBoss jBPM
with Bright Horizons’ existing IT infrastructure was the
second major factor. “Due to its availability as a plain
Java library, we were able to seamlessly integrate JBoss
jBPM into the Oracle Application Server,” said Mr. Barake.
Finally, there was cost. “Red Hat’s subscription model
was very attractive and made it possible to achieve what
Bright Horizon wanted without breaking the budget,”
said Mr. Barake.
HJB designed a purchase requisition process using the
Eclipse-based JBoss jBPM Process Definition Language
(jPDL)
modeler and deployed the process model to an Oracle
RDBMS. They then built a set of JSR168 portlets that
allowed
users to submit requests and to monitor approval status
and approval history. Finally, all documents associated
with the requests, such as quotes and estimates— were
securely stored in the Oracle Portal content management
system and protected by corporate authorization rules.
BENEFITS
Today, Bright Horizons’ capital requisition process
has been successfully automated. Anyone with proper
authorization can view the expenditures pipeline in real
time, and requesters get emails each step of the way
regarding the progress of their requests. They can also
export all the pending requisitions to Excel spreadsheets
if they want to perform deeper analyses of requisition
trends. Now all process participants have instant access
to a single source of information as well as all requisition
process history and documentation.
Perhaps most important, the requisition process has
been dramatically accelerated. “Today, a center director
can put in a request for a requisition in the morning and
have the P.O. within hours,” said Johnson.
Ms. Johnson said she was further impressed by how
quickly HJB Consulting’s team was able to translate the
vision of non-technical professionals and dramatically
transform the company’s purchasing process. “They
made it so simple; we had absolutely no trouble getting
people to use the new system,” she said.
“This application will work for many other
decentralized processes within our organization
that require senior level review and approvals. We
already have three to four projects lined up that
will save Bright Horizons time and money.”
– Nancy Johnson, Director of Supply Management, Bright Horizons
58
redhat.com/jboss
BRIGHT horizons | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
EDUCATIONAL TESTING
SERVICES ACHIEVES
HIGHEST MARKS WITH
RED HAT
Geography
International
Business challenge
Roll out new, competitively priced
educational products and services more
swiftly while cutting costs. Build
applications on a base of infrastructure
BACKGROUND
ETS advances quality and equity in education for people worldwide by
creating assessments based on rigorous research. The nonprofit
organization serves individuals, educational institutions and government
agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification;
English-language learning; and elementary, secondary and post-secondary
education; and conducting education research, analysis and policy studies.
Founded in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50
million tests annually—including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE®
test, and the Praxis Series® assessments—in more than 180 countries, at
over 9,000 locations worldwide.
software technology that will position
ETS for evolution into cloud models.
Migration path
Vertically scalable platform to commodity
software and hardware platform and
proprietary application server technology
to open source technology
Hardware
Intel x86 systems
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
SOFTWARE
ETS is widely recognized as the world leader in creating and
administering academic assessments that are both rigorous and fair.
But in the early 2000s, ETS management realized that limitations in its
IT infrastructure were impeding its ability to compete in an increasingly
crowded and price-sensitive global educational market. ETS’s dependence
on proprietary hardware and software, in particular, was standing in the
way of its ability to maintain its position as the premier educational
assessment organization.
“A lot of new companies with new technologies have entered the market
in recent years, offering solutions that were very aggressively priced
against ours,” said Harikumar Rajappan, Enterprise IT Architect for
applications at ETS. “We knew we needed to embark upon a different
technology strategy to compete effectively.”
by moving to a stable, secure x86-based
ETS had previously used platforms that were costly and non-portable (the
software enabled with vertically scalable features as well as the proprietary
hardware required to run them), and also prevented ETS from bringing
competitively priced products and services to market in a timely manner.
(metrics are based on the current
ETS wanted to heavily move to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that
would enable it to combine reusable modules of functionality to quickly
create new products and services. They also wanted to be able to easily
port its applications from one hardware platform to another. “We’re
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ETS
JBoss Enterprise Web Platform, JBoss
Developer Studio, Red Hat Consulting
Benefits
Reduce costs and boost competitiveness
platform for developing and delivering
new assessment products to market
more quickly. With Red Hat products,
ETS achieves the following benefits
server-hardware and OS support service
cost at ETS):
• Cost savings (approximately 40 percent)
• Improved efficiency (approximately 30
percent)
• Improved technology management and
standardization
• Improved leverage of development resources
• Better positioned for adoption of cloud
computing and virtualization technologies
redhat.com/jboss
59
particularly interested in the opportunities offered by cloud
computing and virtualization as a way of bringing costs
down while improving the scalability, portability, performance,
flexibility and reliability of our applications,” Rajappan said.
Additionally, having an utterly stable platform for
its mission-critical applications was one of ETS’s top
priorities. “ETS wanted to stay with highest quality and
hence design our applications to perform with no error,”
Rajappan said.
ETS has developed applications designed to enable
instructors to grade tests in a standard manner to ensure
fairness. More recently, it has introduced tests that
students can take via the Web. “These applications must
be high available due to the nature of ETS services and”
Rajappan said.
For example, if a system crashes while a student is taking an
online test, the student risks losing all of his or her work.
“This would be unacceptable,” he said.“From the students’
perspective, there is no room for error,” he said. “Wrong test
score, or missing a score reporting deadline can negatively
impact someone’s entire academic career.” Likewise, ETS
has developed applications that enable instructors to grade
tests in a standard manner to ensure fairness.
More recently, it has introduced online tests that students
can take over the Web. “These applications must be up
at all times, because the ramifications if they fail are
severe,” said Rajappan. For example, if a student is
taking an online test, and the system crashes, then the
student risks losing all of his or her work. “This would be
unacceptable,” he said.
SOLUTION
ETS decided to move from vertically scalable platform to
horizontal scalable Linux platform, primarily for reasons
of cost, and portability. It chose Red Hat Enterprise
Linux because the open source operating platform was
established as one of the most stable and reliable Linux
distributions on the market at that time.
“We performed extensive in-house performance testing,
talked to industry analysts and considered all other aspects
of the operating system and application server, including
the quality of support, market share and the software and
hardware ecosystem,” said Rajappan. “Once we took all
these things into consideration, Red Hat was the most
viable choice.”
Although ETS initially tested the open source waters using
the JBoss.org community version, the company today
mandates that all developers use JBoss Enterprise Middleware
to gain access to Red Hat’s stellar support resources.
ETS is in the process of migrating a majority of its
applications from vertically scalable platform and
60
redhat.com/jboss
proprietary technologies to Intel x86 boxes running Red
Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware.
ETS has also migrated J2EE applications to JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform and JBoss Enterprise
Web Platform. In addition, the company plans to pilot
JBoss Operations Network (JON) as a monitoring and
administering tool for J2EE application servers to improve
real-time monitoring and proactive resolution capabilities.
“We performed extensive in-house
performance testing, talked to industry
analysts and considered all other aspects of
the operating system and application server,
including the quality of support, market share
and the software and hardware ecosystem.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss from
Red Hat with support subscription were the
obvious choice at that time.”
– Harikumar Rajappan, Enterprise IT Architect for applications at ETS
BENEFITS
Thanks to its new Red Hat-based strategy, ETS is
positioned to compete aggressively in the rapidly evolving
educational assessment marketplace. In addition to
dramatically reducing its upfront investment in hardware
and software, ETS is in process of using the Red Hat
products to construct an SOA that will speed time to
market of new products and services.
ETS has also achieved its performance goals with Red Hat
products. When benchmarking Oracle databases running
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and x86 machines compared
to Oracle databases on SPARC stations running Solaris
[Sun SPARC(4 CPU , 1.2 GHz) to Intel (2 CPU Dual Core,
3.2 GHz) ], “we found that Oracle running under Linux on
Intel machines delivered required performance and that
the cost was substantially lower based on the support
service cost at ETS,” Rajappan said.
Thus far, ETS’s management has been very happy with the
stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux due to the fault
tolerance capabilities of the platform. “When you are
running your application on a single 8-CPU Sun machine
and it fails, you are in trouble,” he continued. “But if you
are running it on four Intel x86 machines, even if one
crashes, your application stays up.”
And given ETS’s interest in virtualization and cloud
computing, Red Hat was the optimal solution. “It would be
very difficult to move vertically scalable systems into the
cloud, or into virtual machines,” Rajappan said.
ETS | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Since ETS standardized its J2EE application development
IDE to JBoss Developer Studio, the company has
experienced improved resource management, application
portability, security monitoring, and patch updates. Since
ETS migrated its J2EE applications to JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform and JBoss Enterprise Web Platform,
they have also found it much easier to manage application
configurations, application deployments and changes in
technology lifecycles.
“We have potential opportunities to increase our capacity
with the same resources necessary to support deployment
and production environments,” Rajappan said. “Now we
can better leverage our existing development teams as the
applications are becoming more portable within different
development teams.”
ETS has also experienced improved technical support and
cost savings through Red Hat Global Support Services and
Red Hat Consulting, and is very pleased that Red Hat treats
it like a true collaborator. “Red Hat representatives have
briefed us on upcoming solutions, allowed us to tour their
facilities, and provided insight into their product roadmap,”
Rajappan said.
This knowledge makes Rajappan feel confident that ETS’s
J2EE application architecture vision is aligned with Red
Hat’s strategic direction. “Thanks to Red Hat, we feel we
are on the right path to the future,” he said.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ETS
redhat.com/jboss
61
62
FINANCIAL
SERVICES &
INSURANCE
INDUSTRY:
FINANCIAL SERVICES
& INSURANCE
63
ALLIANZ UPDATES IT
INFRASTRUCTURE WITH RED
HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX ON
IBM SYSTEM Z AND JBOSS
Geography
Australia
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Operating across Australia and New Zealand with approximately 3,300
staff, Allianz Australia Limited offers a wide range of insurance and
risk management products and services, including personal insurance,
industrial and commercial insurance, corporate insurance, public and
products liability and workers’ compensation insurance.
Allianz is Australia’s fourth largest general insurer with over two million
policyholders. It also provides some form of insurance cover for more
than half of Australia’s top 50 BRW-listed companies.
Rebuild Allianz’s IT infrastructure
based on a flexible and scalable
platform that could leverage new
virtualisation technology to generate
hardware and support savings, and
reduce its underlying software and
operations costs for several strategic
business application projects
MIGRATION PATH
The organisation has been a member of the Australian Government’s
Greenhouse Challenge Plus Programme and the wider Global Allianz
Group has a target to reduce emissions by 20% by 2012.
Windows-based infrastructure to Red
Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM System
z10 mainframe and from WebSphere to
JBoss Enterprise Middleware on Intel
processor-based HP ProLiant servers
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
SOFTWARE
In 2007, Allianz Australia’s IT department reached a crossroads as it faced a
data centre that was at capacity and network equipment that was at end of life.
Allianz saw the situation as an opportunity to build a completely new
infrastructure from the network right down to the back-up devices.
Middleware, JBoss Operations
Network, Red Hat Consulting
“After running WebSphere applications on an Intel platform using
Windows for some time, we realised we couldn’t go any further with the
current setup,” said Peter Rowe, Head of Infrastructure and Operations,
Allianz Australia Limited. In addition, Allianz had also reached the
limitations of its Windows-based operating platform.
Hardware
“We needed a platform that could give us the flexibility and scalability
to enable us to grow and expand for the future,” said Rowe.
Significant reduction in middleware
software and support costs, reallocation
of IT budget from software licensing to
staff and resources, resolved data centre
power limitations with new capacity for
growth, superior workload management
and operational efficiency, reduced
carbon footprint, increased flexibility,
scalability, and freedom from vendor
lock-in
In line with the wider organisation’s goal to reduce emissions by 20 percent
by 2012, the IT department was also interested in examining how it could
take advantage of new virtualisation technology to save on power usage.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ALLIANZ
IBM System z10 mainframe,
HP ProLiant servers
Benefits
redhat.com/jboss
64
“Our business took the view that the
mainframe was essentially another
commoditised piece of hardware
and for us, the value really lay in the
interface between the server and the
applications. Our target was to employ
a Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based
platform that could combine agility with
low support costs.”
– Peter Rowe, Head of Infrastructure and Operations,
Allianz Australia Limited
SOLUTION
After comprehensive analysis, Allianz concluded that the
most viable option for the business going forward would be to:
• Combine the performance and reliability of the IBM System
z10 mainframe with the flexibility and efficiency of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux.
• Deploy JBoss Enterprise Middleware on the Intel platform,
implementing a common system across diverse hardware.
In September 2008, Allianz received project approval to
commence both infrastructure refreshes concurrently. “IBM
System z10 mainframe running Red Hat Enterprise Linux was
undoubtedly the best fit-for-purpose solution for us,” said Rowe.
“The mainframe offered us the best option for consolidation—
Our business took the view that the mainframe was
essentially another commoditisedpiece of hardware and for
us, the value really lay in the interface between the server
and the applications. Our target was to employ a Red Hat
Enterprise Linux-based platform that could combine agility
with low support costs.”
When assessing operating systems for the IBM System z10,
Allianz found that open source based Linux would deliver the
best outcome and as a result, selected Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, to host all Internet-facing applications, including home
and motor insurance quoting, broker and agency pages,
premium funding and other broker tools for policy servicing.
“A major part of the decision to use Red Hat Enterprise
Linux was its tight integration with the IBM platform and
its impressive support structure,” said Rowe, “Red Hat’s
relationship with IBM meant that if we were going to have
any issues, Red Hat could essentially replicate the scenario
on their own IBM z10.”
For ongoing, centralised systems management, Allianz also
implemented Red Hat Network Satellite to complement the
management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and minimize daily
administrative demands.
65
redhat.com/jboss
As a centralised tool, Red Hat Network Satellite can
help boost productivity by creating a single template for
managing multiple servers more efficiently. It creates a
system for grouping machines together and mapping out
how to manage them. Having this template also means that
one administrator can run the same updates on a greater
number of systems simultaneously, and can build a new and
completely configured machine within a couple of minutes.
In addition, it has the capability to manage virtualised
instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux through the same
interface regardless of underlying hardware platform. Red
Hat Network Satellite manages Red Hat on the mainframe
in the same manner and interface as Red Hat on a
distributed machine.
As an alternative to WebSphere, which Allianz had been
using as part of its existing framework, the organisation
implemented JBoss Enterprise Application Platform for
content management, document management, business
process automation, and client portals, along with JBoss
Operations Network Management to reduce systems
management and resource costs.
“We had three new workloads — BPM, content management,
and print services — that had begun on the old system, and
which had to be redeployed in order for us to achieve the
projected capacity needed for these workloads over the
next two to three years,” said Rowe.
“JBoss has enabled us to cost-effectively leverage the
recent advancement in Intel chipsets in HP hardware,
without the costs traditionally associated with multi-core
software licensing models,” said Rowe.
Allianz enlisted Red Hat and JBoss Consulting services to
assist in building automated provisioning of new Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware
deployments through Red Hat Network Satellite and JBoss
Operations Network, in a matter of minutes rather than days.
BENEFITS
Commencing production in late April 2009, and Allianz has
already observed a number of solution benefits.
“The combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat
Network Satellite, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
and JBoss Operations Network was, and will continue
to be, valuable for Allianz, as the solutions enabled the
organisation to streamline operations and free up resources
for allocation to other high-value tasks,” said Rowe.
Allianz will save more than $500,000
in middleware licensing costs, as it
deploys JBoss Enterprise Middleware
on the Intel platform.
Allianz | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Plus, by using Red Hat and JBoss Consulting and Training,
the Allianz team has been able to get up to speed in a very
short period of time, once again freeing up funds to invest
in run up areas such as staff development, rather than
expensive proprietary infrastructure software.
“We were looking for an operating system that we could
simply drop down into the network, that was independent
of the hardware, and provided a higher level of service with
centralised management for patching,” said Rowe.
“So far with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Network
Satellite, and JBoss Enterprise Middleware, we’ve begun to
significantly reduce day-to-day security administration and
now have more strings to bow in terms of virtualisation and
what we can do to minimise both the investment in hardware
and ongoing production costs — particularly those associated
with escalating licensing and support costs,” said Rowe.
Allianz believes this is just the beginning, with expectations
that the move from a Windows-based environment to a
virtualised Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment, together
with the JBoss Enterprise Middleware deployment, will save
the organisation over one million dollars a year in hardware
and support costs.
In addition to resolving data centre capacity issues, the
new system is expected to accommodate significant future
growth whilst enabling superior workload management
and operational efficiencies, and helping to reduce the
organisation’s carbon footprint.
Allianz also believes it will continue to benefit from the fact
that Red Hat has more applications certified to run on Red
Hat Enterprise Linux than any other open source operating
system platform.
Once the production system is up and running, Allianz will
shift its focus toward the continued reduction of proprietary
software in favour of more widespread use of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ALLIANZ
redhat.com/jboss
66
67
Large Indian Insurance
Company, HDFC Standard Life,
Powers Mission-Critical
Process Improvement
Applications with JBoss
Enterprise Middleware
Geography
Pan India
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company Limited is one of India’s leading
private insurance companies, which offers a range of individual and group
insurance solutions. It is a joint venture between Housing Development
Finance Corporation Limited (HDFC Limited), India’s leading housing
finance institution and a group company of the Standard Life Plc, UK.
As a technology-driven company, HDFC Standard Life has made
significant IT investments to improve the efficiency of its processes,
thereby ensuring excellent customer service. Over the years, the
company has received many IT implementation awards.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In the insurance industry, in order to serve the customers effectively, a
firm needs to ensure that the turnaround time required to convert any
insurance proposal into a policy is minimal. In the case of HDFC Standard
Life, this had previously been achieved by outsourcing the data entry
operation to third party vendors. The vendors would receive proposal
documents from customers, the details of which they would manually
enter. The captured data would then be sent back to HDFC Standard Life
to be uploaded in the company’s existing core insurance solution. Although
the process worked, it was not scalable, and turnaround time to process a
proposal would increase as business workload increased.
“Being a customer-focused organization,
serving the customer effectively is our
primary goal. Red Hat, with its open
source technology, has enabled us in
meeting that goal.”
To streamline and automate the
manual data processing in terms of
providing a centralized application
for multiple vendors, providing
management for policy proposal
processing, and building a web-based
application that could be deployed
across India
SOLUTION
HDFC Standard Life deployed on JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform along
with Oracle database to implement
a web-based solution to improve
productivity and efficiency, and to
drive cost out of the organization
SOFTWARE
J2EE applications running on JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform 4.3
and Oracle 10g Database on Microsoft
Windows Server 2003
Hardware
Intel Nehalem processor-based HP blades
and Dell rack servers with two sockets
Benefits
“All of these issues were culminating to higher turnaround time for
capturing customer’s data,” said Mr. Vijay Gokarn, Sr. IT Manager, HDFC
Standard Life. “Automating this process was critical and necessary.” To
Built enterprise-class architecture that
can scale for growth and highperformance, improved productivity of
the internal staff as well as third-party
vendors ; accelerated turnaround time
on policy processing leading to faster
decision making time; improved the ability
to serve customers, effectively leading to
increased customer satisfaction
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | HDFC STANDARD LIFE
redhat.com/jboss
– Amar Shah, Manager – Information Technology HDFC
Standard Life insurance Company Ltd.
68
address this issue, HDFC Standard Life’s IT team decided
to build a web-based system, which would act as a bridge
between its core system and the data entry operators.
In order to engineer a solution that would automate the
proposal workflow and build a web-based application, HDFC
Standard Life needed a middleware platform that was costeffective and reliable.
SOLUTION
HDFC Standard Life’s IT team chose Red Hat as its
technology partner and decided to build the application
using JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. “We evaluated
multiple technologies for our needs and finally decided to
build them in the Java programming language and chose
JBoss Enterprise Middleware as our middleware platform,”
said Shah.
“Implementation of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
was a key milestone in our IT architecture as it was the first
time HDFC Standard Life had implemented an open source
solution,” said Amar Shah, IT Manager at HDFC
Standard Life.
“The system performance has exceeded our expectations
during the testing phase,” Shah added. In addition, the
IT team has performed load and functional testing of the
system and the performance met HDFC Standard Life’s
expectations.
BENEFITS
With its critical web-based application powered by JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, HDFC Standard Life has
experienced value delivered by open source software. “With
the data processing happening in real time, this has led to
significant improvement in our productivity in serving the
customer in a better and more efficient way,” Gokarn said.
JBoss Enterprise Middleware solutions also provided HDFC
Standard Life with lower IT costs. “This is only the first
phase of the entire project, and in the near future we plan
to add a lot more functionality to it,” said Gokarn. “And
during all future phases, we are quite confident that JBoss
Enterprise Middleware will deliver expected performance.”
“At the end of the day, being a customer-focused
organization, serving the customer effectively is our
primary goal. Red Hat, with its open source middleware—
JBoss Enterprise Middleware—has enabled us to meet our
goals,” said Shah.
69
redhat.com/jboss
HDFC STANDARD LIFE | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
RED HAT VIRTUALIZATION AND
JBOSS HELP QUAM LIMITED BUILD
FLEXIBLE, HIGH-PERFORMANCE
INFORMATION PORTAL
Geography
Hong Kong
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Quam Limited serves both institutional and retail investors and provides an
array of services supporting participation in capital markets and wealth
management. The company’s history goes back to the founding of Quam
Limited in 1986 and the listing of Quam Ltd on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
in 1997. Today Quam Ltd is the holding company of a diverse financial services
and wealth management group with a major and fast-growing stake in
Mainland China through strategic alliances and intermediaries.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Rapid business growth and the
expansion of its service portfolio made
it necessary to replace the company’s
website with an efficient financial
information portal. It also looked to
leverage virtualization technology to
reduce hardware footprint and increase
operational flexibility
In 1998, Quam built the first financial services website in Hong Kong.
However, by the spring of 2007, Quam’s rapid business growth and the
expansion of its service portfolio made it necessary to replace the existing
website, www.quamnet.com, with an efficient financial information portal
that would provide a much stronger link between the firm’s financial services
and its hundreds of thousands of members.
MIGRATION PATH
Slow access time was becoming a problem with the old website. “In our
business, users expect very rapid response time,” said Philip Choi, head of
Technology for Quam Limited. “And our infrastructure was not able to handle
the large user base that we had acquired.”
SOFTWARE
The financial information portal also has to process direct connections to the
Hong Kong Stock Exchange for stock announcements on listed companies
and wire news services, including Xinhua and Infocast Financial news for
news of Hong Kong and Asia.
“We have a very large number of active members, many of whom are
involved in online trading,” said Choi. “We needed to provide them with
market information, including financial news, reports, analysis, and realtime stock quotes.” In addition, the financial information portal needed
a redesign of its front-end—the Content Management System, and backend—the Customer Relations Management System, in order to enable
Quam to know and serve its members better.
Microsoft Windows and UNIX to
Platform with integrated virtualization
on Intel Xeon-based servers
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced
Platform with built-in virtualization,
Red Hat Satellite, JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, Hibernate
Hardware
Intel Xeon-based servers
Benefits
Achieved a high-performance, flexible
IT infrastructure with the integrated
virtualization technology in Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, experienced 50–70
percent reduction in software and
hardware costs
Another problem with the old website was the inflexible infrastructure,
which made updating web content a tedious business. “Our financial
information has to be altered frequently, so we needed a fast, simple
way of updating the site,” said Choi.
When Philip Choi joined Quam in May 2007, he was asked to completely
re-build the website. “We were asked to totally revamp and restructure the
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | QUAM
redhat.com/jboss
70
website, so we basically did everything from scratch,” said
Choi.
the financial information portal, server utilization, and
connections to the database and application layers.
SOLUTION
The main operating systems used in the existing website
were Windows and UNIX. “For the financial services industry,
Windows may have some security issues,” said Choi. “UNIX is
more costly, in terms of license fees and related hardware. I
also had to consider the availability of skilled support labor.”
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform includes fully
integrated server and storage virtualization, coupled with
high availability clustering capabilities based on Red Hat
Global File System and Red Hat Cluster Suite. The robust
environment supports servers of any size and an unlimited
number of virtualized guest environments.
In his previous experience, Choi had used Red Hat Enterprise
Linux successfully, so he decided to measure it against the
existing alternatives. “One advantage would be that Red
Hat Enterprise Linux can run on powerful and inexpensive
servers, with a wide choice of hardware vendors,” said Choi,
“So we would not be locked into any proprietary technology.”
Quam also uses Red Hat Satellite, a reliable systems
management system, to help the company keep its open source
environment up to date, and to help efficiently manage its
physical and virtual servers. “The beauty is we can reassign
memory and CPUs on the fly, and whatever applications need
more resources, we can provide them immediately,” said Choi.
Another factor in Quam’s decision was the wide acceptance
of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the leading platform within
the financial services sector. The quamnet.com website
has the same demands for performance, availability, and
security as other major financial institutions, said Choi.
“Like other players in the financial services market, we
seek alliance with the leading vendors to optimize the
performance and security of our operations.”
Clustering is one of the elements of virtualization that
Quam required. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced
Platform virtualization technology allows Quam users to
easily move applications and resources between servers.
Today, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a very mature operating
system, and Red Hat provides high-quality direct support.
“I have confidence in the top management of Red Hat both
locally in Hong Kong and globally, and believe the company
is a long-term partner for Quam,” said Choi.
The Quam IT Department started the study project on
the new financial information portal in May 2007, and the
staff talked to several vendors. “We decided to go with Red
Hat Enterprise Linux for its cost effectiveness, enterprise
support, ease of management, and flexibility,” said Choi.
Red Hat Consulting provided guidance and hands-on
support to the Quam IT team beginning with the planning
stage. “Once our server hardware was installed, Red Hat
Consulting certified the platforms as stable and scalable
and carried out all the software installation work, providing
a guarantee to remedy any platform issues,” said Choi.
Throughout the installation process, Red Hat helped Quam
with the sizing and planning of how to configure the resources.
“We gave them figures, such as the number of portal visitors
and page views per day that we needed to support,” said
Choi. “This helped us determine how many servers, how
many CPUs and how much memory we needed. We have a
requirement of so many transactions per second, and we
need to guarantee the response time provided to end users.”
Quam’s infrastructure includes server farms to support frontend users’ access and back-end service delivery with all Intel
Xeon-based servers on rack mounted blades. Quam relied
on Red Hat for the majority of the sizing work on planning
71
redhat.com/jboss
Powerful middleware: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.
The financial information portal build was carried out at high
speed, aided substantially by Red Hat Consulting, and was
mostly complete in months. “My in-house programmers had to
write a number of new applications from scratch, mostly
using Java J2EE,” said Choi. “It was then subjected to
extensive testing, after which we went live in mid-January 2008.”
To support the large number of applications on their
financial information portal, Quam selected JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, which it found to be the
best platform for innovative and highly scalable Java
applications. Integrated and simplified, it includes powerful
open source technologies for building, deploying, and
hosting enterprise Java applications and services.
A key part of Quam’s use of JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform is Hibernate, a framework that enables users to
express queries in native SQL, an extension called HQL,
or with an object-oriented Criteria and Example API.
Hibernate provided a ubiquitous object-relational mapping
and persistence framework that does not require handwritten SQL or stored procedures and this provides a
significant increase in performance and scalability.
Another JBoss technology used was the JBoss cluster,
which is a group of nodes comprising JBoss server
instances within a server partition. “Individual nodes can
be added to or removed from a cluster at any time,” said
Choi. “JBoss Clustering provides high availability for J2EE
applications running inside of JBoss.”
The use of JBoss Enterprise Middleware enabled Quam to
speed up the creation of applications. “Our system is very
stable, and that enables our IT team to concentrate on the
programming operation,” said Choi.
QUAM | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
SBI LIFE INSURANCE REDUCES
IT COSTS, INCREASES
PERFORMANCE AND GENERATES
VALUE TO BUSINESS THROUGH
ITS USE OF RED HAT SOLUTIONS
Geography
Pan India
Business challenge
To design reliable, stable, high-
BACKGROUND
SBI Life Insurance Company Limited, one of the largest private life
insurance firms in India, is a joint venture between the State Bank of
India and BNP Paribas Assurance. SBI Life Insurance is registered with an
authorized capital of Rs 200 million and a paid-up capital of Rs 100 million.
SBI Life owns 74 percent of the total capital, and BNP Paribas Assurance
owns the remaining 26 percent. State Bank of India is the largest banking
franchise in India. Along with its six associate banks, SBI Group has the
unrivaled strength of over 16,000 branches across the country.
performance, cost-effective IT systems
with substantial longevity
SOLUTION
Migrated highly critical applications
and databases to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux to increase flexibility and
performance while reducing costs
SBI Life has a unique multi-distribution model encompassing vibrant
bank assurance, retail agency, institutional alliances and corporate
solution distribution channels.
SOFTWARE
SBI Life extensively leverages the SBI Group as a platform for crossselling insurance products along with its numerous banking product
packages such as housing loans and personal loans. SBI’s access to
over 100 million accounts across the country provides a vibrant base for
insurance penetration across every region and economic strata in the
country, ensuring true financial inclusion.
virtualization, clustering and file
Agency Channel, comprising the most productive force of more than
68,000 Insurance Advisors, offers door-to-door insurance solutions to
customers.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Since its inception, SBI Life has been highly conscious about its IT
spending. “We’ve seen two major recessions in the last eight years,” said
Mani RVS, head of information systems group (ISG). “In such a volatile
market, companies need to be highly conscious about all expenditures.”
Platform, including integrated
system technologies; JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform 4.3; SAP Business
Suite; SAP HRMS; Oracle DB
Hardware
Intel Xeon processor-based servers
from HP and IBM
Benefits
Increased flexibility, decreased IT costs,
increased scalability and performance
SBI Life needed any cost savings for its IT infrastructure to be balanced
with system performance and scalability. In addition, the organization
needed its systems to be highly reliable, robust and scalable.
“Longevity of the IT platform is a critical parameter in our business,”
said Mani. “The cost-to-performance ratio is very important as it
illustrates the value that any IT solution can generate for the business.”
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SBI LIFE
redhat.com/jboss
72
SOLUTION
With reliability, scalability, cost, performance, and business
value criteria in mind, Red Hat open source solutions were an
ideal fit as they not only met these criteria, but also allowed
SBI Life to take advantage of the rapid innovation from the
open source community and avoid proprietary lock-in.
“Implementation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux was one
of the key milestones in our IT deployments,” said Mani.
“Additionally, the proof of concept (POC) completed
using Red Hat Enterprise Linux was highly successful.
With the similar setup, Red Hat Enterprise Linux showed
considerable improvement in the performance,” said Mr.
Kundan Patil, manager of applications, infrastructure and
design. Red Hat’s subscription model also provides SBI Life
with a predictable TCO, while also ensuring that SBI Life is
able to derive continuous value even after initial rollouts.
SBI Life started its first open source migration project in
2004 when it steadily migrated the Oracle-based database
of its critical policy management system to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform. “The migration was
very successful,” said Kundan. “It was a smooth rollout with
absolutely no issues.”
“Adoption of Red Hat and open
standards has enabled us to mitigate
the risk of proprietary lock-in
and has led to cost reduction and
improved interoperability.”
– Mr. Bhaskar Jutti, chief information officer,
SBI Life Insurance
After the successful migration, SBI Life designed SAP HRMS,
another large application in terms of deployment efforts,
and deployed it completely on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Advanced Platform. Kundan describes the deployment
process in three words: “smooth, flawless and efficient.”
“The performance of the system is quite outstanding
considering the fact that we have all the branches’ and
headquarter’s users continuously using the application and
the database,” said Mani. “We have achieved almost zero
downtime with the use of clustering technology embedded
in Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform,” he added.
One success story builds another. After the success
of SAP HRMS on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced
Platform, SBI Life has implemented a number of its critical
systems on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform.
SBI Life’s ISG team has also started implementing some of
its important applications on JBoss Enterprise Middleware
73
redhat.com/jboss
using JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.3.
“Currently, few applications are running on JBoss, and we
plan to deploy more applications on JBoss,” said Kundan.
Currently, close to 95 percent of SBI Life’s database servers are
implemented on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform.
Additionally, the ISG team is studying the feasibility of
migrating other applications to JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform 4.3. “We are exploring the possibility of two
content-based applications to be hosted on JBoss,” explained
Kundan. “These systems are expected to go live in 2010.”
“Over the last four years, Red Hat has become a very
important technology partner for SBI Life,” said Mani.
BENEFITS
“Adoption of open standards has enabled us to mitigate
the risk of proprietary lock-in and has led to cost reduction
and improved interoperability,” said chief information
officer Bhaskar Jutti.
With its mission-critical back end now almost completely
powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SBI Life has
experienced considerable value delivered by open source
software. “With Red Hat, we were able to extract tremendous
value from our systems and applications,” said Mani.
“Red Hat has enabled our company to choose hardware
platforms that deliver flexibility and high performance.”
“We have been using Red Hat Enterprise
Linux for mission-critical applications and
have been satisfied users of the product.
Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO)
in implementing the applications in this
environment has encouraged us to extend
this environment for other applications.”
– Mani RVS, head of information systems group,
SBI Life Insurance
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with its
inbuilt clustering technology provided SBI Life with
a highly stable system without any compromise on
performance. “In the last four years, Red Hat’s systems
have shown extremely high stability. We have managed to
achieve nearly zero downtime,” said Mani.
Red Hat systems also turned out to be cost effective
for SBI Life, both in terms of cost of acquisition and
cost of maintenance. “We have been using Red Hat
Enterprise Linux for mission critical applications and
have been satisfied users of the product. Reduced TCO
in implementing the applications in this environment
has encouraged us to extend this environment for other
applications,” said Mani.
SBI LIFE | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Star Union Dai-ichi Life
Insurance Powers MissionCritical Group Policy
Management System on JBoss
Geography
Pan India
Business challenge
To design a group policy management
BACKGROUND
Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance Co. Ltd. (SUD Life) is a joint venture
between Bank of India, Union Bank of India, and the Dai-ichi Mutual Life
Insurance Company, Japan. Bank of India and Union Bank of India have a
strong nationwide network of more than 5,400 offices serving more than
48 million customers. Star Union Dai-ichi Life, with the strength of the
domestic partners in the Indian Financial Sector coupled with the Dai-ichi
Life’s strong domain expertise, is expected to be a strong player in the
Indian life insurance market in a short time.
system that would deliver high
operational efficiency and reduce
operational costs and high ROI with
no compromise on performance,
scalability, security, and flexibility
SOLUTION
SUD Life designed its group policy
management system on open source
SUD Life is also committed to providing insurance to rural and various
social sectors. Both partners are in the process of implementing
Government of India’s initiative of financial inclusion and the Pan India
network of branches gives the company a natural edge in catering to these
sectors effectively. With a strong brand and the commitment of partners,
SUD Life promises to be a new star on the horizon of the Indian life
insurance business, bringing value to all stakeholders.
Java J2EE software infrastructure with
as its middleware solution
Hardware
Intel Xeon-processor-based servers
from HCL and IBM
“Through the use of open source J2EE
technology and JBoss Enterprise Middleware,
we have achieved nearly 70 percent savings in
costs, as well as greater operational efficiencies
compared to traditional approaches. The
solution has also made our business agile,
enabling us to react quickly to the changing
business needs, giving us a competitive edge.”
Benefits
Increased flexibility and choice by
freeing the organization from vendor
lock-in, decreased IT costs by 70
percent, simplified management,
reduced systems maintenance, increased
scalability and performance, improved
business agility
– Harnath Babu, Head – Information Technology
Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance insurance Company Ltd.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Since its inception in February 2009, SUD Life has focused on technology
innovation to achieve better operational efficiency and, in turn, serve its
customers more efficiently. Therefore, the company outsourced the IT
functionality of the core insurance product LIFE/Asia to CSC. LIFE/Asia
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SUD LIFE
redhat.com/jboss
74
is responsible for the individual life insurance business
for SUD Life. Simultaneously, the IT team also started
conceptualizing other systems required for business
support. One of theses systems was the Group Life
Insurance policy administration system.
SUD Life launched Group Life Insurance products for
its corporate customers. The organization required a
flexible, cost-effective software solution for group policy
management. There were a few challenges in building the
system for group products.
Group products are different from individual products,
and hence cannot be maintained on an individual policy
administrative system like LIFE/Asia. Secondly, each group
product is different in structure and operation than the
others, and also differs in parameters such as group term,
group gratuity, and group superannuation. “The group
policy business may not be as large as the individual policy
business, but to build an automated system for it is equally
complex due to different product structure, the variety of
policy options, and the possibility of adding newer offerings
at regular intervals,” said Harnath Babu, head of IT, SUD
Life.
In the beginning, the group insurance policy administration
was being done using Microsoft Excel, which turned out
to be increasingly inefficient as the business grew. “There
was a serious need for policy servicing, maintenance,
reporting, and calculation automation,” said Harnath. Thus
the IT team decided to implement a complete group policy
management system encompassing the complete lifecycle
of a group policy including; quotation, new business, policy
servicing, renewal, member administration, premium
calculation, refund, and claims. A critical requirement was
that the application required flexibility to implement a
variety of group products. Also, the application would have
the capability to integrate with its business intelligence,
reporting, accounting, and investment applications.
With these requirements, the IT team of the organization
started evaluating different options for implementing the
group policy system.
SOLUTION
“We ruled out the proprietary products available in the
market for a couple of reasons,” said Harnath. “One was
that it was exorbitantly high-priced, close to INR 50
million, because of its specific hardware needs,” he added.
The second reason was the fact that few of the available
products in the market were CUI-based and not web-based.
“We wanted flexibility in the platform in order to modify
it per business requirements, in addition to adding newer
modules to it at a regular interval,” said Harnath. With a
lack of an off-the-shelf web-based group policy system in
75
redhat.com/jboss
the Indian market, the organization decided to build the
system from the ground up, within a phased approach to
keep adding and enhancing the feature set. “Our team
needed to have complete control of not only the domain,
but also the requisite technology management skills to
execute this ambitious initiative,” said Harnath.
SUD Life chose Arion Systems, a Red Hat partner in India,
to design and develop the entire group policy management
system. In consultation with Arion Systems, SUD Life
designed a comprehensive roadmap to build the system
using an open source J2EE software infrastructure. “We
ruled out a competitive platform due to scalability and
performance issues we had encountered with it in the
past,” said Harnath.
SUD Life wanted a system that would enable a userfriendly, browser-based interface, and would also reuse its
existing software and hardware infrastructure. The next
logical step was to choose an appropriate middleware
platform, which is the most critical component in any webbased system. “Because the application would be hosted
as an enterprise application, we decided to deploy it on an
application server instead of a web server,” said Harnath.
SUD Life’s IT team began to evaluate the appropriate
application server that could fulfill its enterprise needs.
With parameters such as reliability, scalability, cost,
performance, manageability, and flexibility, SUD Life’s IT
team chose Red Hat as its trusted technology partner and
decided to build its middleware infrastructure solution
based on JBoss® Enterprise Application Platform. JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform was an ideal fit, as it not
only met these criteria, but also allowed SUD Life to take
advantage of the rapid innovation from the open source
community and avoid proprietary vendor lock-in.
“Implementation of the group policy management
application based on JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform was one of the key milestones in our IT
deployments, as it was the first time SUD Life was
implementing an open source solution,” said Harnath. The
POC that was done using JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform was highly successful, raising the confidence of
the IT team to choose it as its middleware solution. The
Red Hat subscription model also provided SUD Life with
a predictable total cost of ownership (TCO), while also
ensuring that SUD Life was able to derive continuous
value even after initial rollout.
The system was designed and developed in a just three
months. “The system is web-based, and its user-friendly
interface has minimized the time required for application
training to operations users to just about a week,” said
Sandip Chintawar, chief executive officer, Arion Systems.
The system is also parameterized to easily configure new
SUD LIFE | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
products. “The system is flexible enough for us to design
new group insurance products, add them in the system, and
deploy them within just one month,” said Chintawar. JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform’s flexible and scalable
architecture helps the IT team tremendously in this regard.
“With the JBoss platform providing services like clustering,
failover, and load balancing, my IT team has more time for
other high-priority tasks,” said Chintawar.
Along with the Java programming language and JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, the system uses SQL
Server database and Microsoft Windows. Currently, the
system is used by in-house data entry users and certain
employees of the two banks in the joint-venture who
download the insurance certificate for issue. To date, the
system has a database of approximately 18,000 group
policies/lives. “We expect it to grow to about 50,000 in a
couple of months,” said Chintawar. Currently, the system
is handling various types of group policies such as Group
Mortgage Reducing Term Assurance (MRTA), Group Savings
Linked Insurance (GSLI), and Reverse Mortgage Linked
Annuity (RMLA), among others. “The system is performing
excellently with no unplanned downtime to-date.”
scalability and performance. The system was designed and
developed rapidly, which has helped the organization in its
aggressive go-to-market strategy.
The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, in particular,
and the overall system in general, is flexible enough
that small changes can be accommodated quickly.
“It also helps us to introduce new offerings with the
confidence that the product can be quickly deployed
within the system,” said Harnath. A good example was the
introduction of unique RMLA policy by SUD Life, which
became a market success.
Overall, Red Hat and its partner Arion Systems provided
SUD Life with enterprise-class solutions at an affordable
price and increased scalability and performance. “The
solution has not only reduced costs, but has also made
our business agile, enabling it to react quickly to changing
business needs, giving us a competitive edge,” said
Harnath.
In the future, SUD Life is planning to build a group portal
on JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform in order to provide
log-in access to the policy holders who, in turn, are the
end users. “We want to implement basic business rules
capabilities in the portal by designing a rules-based
engine,” said Chintawar. Currently, the rules are entered
and modified at a database level. “We would evaluate JBoss
Rules Framework for this purpose,” he added. SUD Life is
also planning to build its intranet portal on JBoss Portal
Platform and e-procurement system on JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform. “Knowing that JBoss platforms run
optimally on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are also actively
looking at migrating the underlying Microsoft Windows
operating system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the group
policy system,” said Harnath.
BENEFITS
“With JBoss Enterprise Middleware, we were able to reduce
the TCO of the group policy management application
significantly,” said Harnath. “Through the use of Red Hat
open source technologies and the implementation of open
standards, we have achieved nearly 70% savings in costs
as well as greater operational efficiencies compared to
traditional approaches,” he added. The Java-based solution
running on JBoss Enterprise Middleware also freed SUD
Life from proprietary vendor lock-in, and enabled the
organization to choose commodity hardware platforms that
delivered flexibility and high performance.
The solution further provided SUD Life with simplified
management, reduced systems maintenance, and increased
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SUD LIFE
redhat.com/jboss
76
77
Red Hat Enables the
Development of Banka IN,
Slovenia’s First Comprehensive
Online Banking Service by
Banka Koper
Geography
Slovenia
BACKGROUND
Banka Koper is the sixth largest Slovenian bank based on revenue. It is
part of the Italian financial group Intesa Sanpaolo, which has a presence
in more than 30 countries worldwide. Banka Koper has 52 branches in
Slovenia and 830 employees across the country. It serves more than
150,000 consumer and business customers.
Business challenge
Banka Koper is a universal bank, offering a wide range of banking
services and products for households, small entrepreneurs, small
and medium-sized enterprises, large companies and institutions. It
processes over 45 million transactions per year. Approximately 87
percent of all the bank’s transactions are conducted via internet banking
and for corporate customers around 90 percent of transactions are
undertaken via the internet.
because the Red Hat solution offered
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Banka Koper believes that online banking will continue on its strong
growth trajectory. As a result, it decided to launch Banka IN, a new
internet banking solution that offers customers a personal approach,
more comprehensive services, and lower charges. Banka Koper is
already viewed as the technological innovator on the Slovenian market,
within the Intesa Sanpaolo group, and within the banking industry in
general. By increasing the range of banking services it offers via the
internet, Banka Koper aims to consolidate this position.
By developing Banka IN, a complete online banking solution, Banka
Koper will be able to reduce costs, expand banking services and make
them more effective, increase loyalty and reduce risks. Providing a
secure banking environment is a priority for Banka Koper. As a result, a
further requirement was the integration of chip and pin technology and
card authentication within the Banka IN platform. Banka Koper is also
keen to reach new customers, particularly of a young demographic, and
strengthen its market position as a whole. The new internet banking
project is central to achieving this goal.
Banka Koper chose to build its new online
banking solution, Banka IN, on Red Hat’s
open source platform to avoid vendor
lock-in, enable in-house innovation, and
easy integration, greater efficiency, and
better performance
migration path
ATG to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
software
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform 4.3,
including JBoss Seam, Alfresco Content
Management System, and IBM DB2
Hardware
HP Blade Center systems
benefits
Reduced operational costs, and enabled
easy integration, faster development
time, and in-house innovation
SOLUTION
Initially, the in-house IT specialists at Banka Koper selected e-commerce
platform ATG as the basis for the Banka IN development. However, after
12 months the team concluded that the development was too slow. The
ATG platform was proving too costly and inflexible and Banka Koper was
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | BANKA KOPER
redhat.com/jboss
78
disappointed by the poor documentation, lack of skills
and experience on this platform in the region. The team
took the difficult decision to shelve their 12 months of
work and look for an alternative solution. Determined
to develop in Java to avoid vendor lock-in, and to
ensure Banka IN could be integrated with Banka Koper’s
existing platforms and core business applications, they
chose JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.3 which
includes JBoss Seam and the reliable Red Hat Enterprise
Linux operating platform.
Developing the Banka IN service using the JBoss
platform also offered Banka Koper significant cost
savings and the ability to develop its own in-house
solutions much more quickly. Banka IN was launched
in October 2008 after 20 months of development. The
solution is based predominantly on an open source stack,
including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2; JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, which includes the powerful JBoss
Seam framework; in-house developed solutions; and DB2
database. The Red Hat solutions run on virtualized HP
Blade Center systems.
“Red Hat’s open source platform is
the right solution for Banka Koper. It
is in line with our business strategy to
become independent of any technology
platform and allows us to develop our
own solutions and stay at the forefront
of technology innovation.”
customers. The feedback from the market has been
positive. The Banka IN solution does not require any
additional costs or applications and delivers flexiblity.
Also of great importance, Red Hat’s solutions are
compatible with Banka Koper’s long-term technology
strategy to avoid vendor lock-in. “Red Hat’s open source
platform is the right solution for Banka Koper. It is in
line with our business strategy to become independent
of any technology platform, allows us to develop our
own solutions, and stay at the forefront of technology
innovation,” said Mojca Plahuta, director of Information
Technology Division, Banka Koper.
After choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise Middleware, Red Hat organised a workshop
for Banka Koper’s developers in cooperation with its
local distributor, Housing Co. d. o. o. Since the launch
of Banka IN, Banka Koper has enjoyed a smooth
deployment.
Banka Koper aims to secure 25,000 new customers
over the next three years through Banka IN. It also
plans to move more of its services online, which would
result in additional cost savings.
“Cost savings are evident with our new joint Red Hat
and JBoss solution,” said Plahuta. “This is just the
beginning of a success story. We have gained a lot of
knowledge in the process of deploying Red Hat solutions
and this knowledge represents an important asset to
our bank. It will also reduce training times in the future
and allow us to do more with our technology.”
– Mojca Plahuta, director of Information Technology Division,
Banka Koper
BENEFITS
The speed of the platform’s development was impressive,
allowing the IT team to finish the project on time
despite losing 12 months of work following the switch
from ATG to Red Hat and JBoss solutions. After laying
the foundations, developers now have the freedom to
develop customized in-house solutions at a faster pace.
VoIP applications and Alfresco’s content management
system run seamlessly on Red Hat’s solutions, and
new applications have integrated well with the existing
architecture and enable better disaster recovery. The
simplicity of the Red Hat platforms allows for easy and
cost-effective maintenance. Compared to other software
payment models, Red Hat’s subscription model has also
proven to be significantly more cost effective.
Red Hat’s solutions allow Banka IN personal bankers
to be more efficient and thus spend more time serving
79
redhat.com/jboss
BANKA KOPER | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
BITMARCK IMPROVES AGILITY
APPLICATION PLATFORM
Geography
Germany
BACKGROUND
The BITMARCK group is Germany’s largest IT services provider for the
public health insurance sector. The group consists of a holding company
and five subsidiaries responsible for actual business operations.
Stakeholders in the holding company are several German public health
insurances who are also BITMARCK’s main customers. The BITMARCK
group provides IT services, including software development, datacenter
operations, networking infrastructure, and data processing services that
ensure efficient, timely, and fully compliant transactions on behalf of 26
million insurance customers.
The BITMARCK group employs 1,200 people and achieved an annual
revenue of approximately €250 million. BITMARCK Software GmbH is
the software development subsidiary within the BITMARCK group.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The health insurance sector in Germany is highly regulated and subject
to continuous changes in procedures and compliance regulations set
forth by the federal government. Not only do the public health insurance
companies in Germany handle the reimbursement of medical treatments
on behalf of insured patients, they also take care of collecting the
insurance premiums directly from employers who are responsible for
paying monthly fees on their employees’ behalf. Furthermore, these
organisations have to observe a common financial balancing scheme
that compensates for the risks that are usually unevenly distributed
between them. Within this political framework, it is one of BITMARCK’s
key tasks to provide a software infrastructure able to accommodate this
complex environment. Simultaneously, the software must be flexible
enough to dynamically incorporate changes in processes and the
underlying data.
Business challenge
To create a robust and scalable
middleware infrastructure for the
delivery of complex Java EE applications
to public health insurance customers; To
ensure fast turnaround of application
development and deployment to enable
customers to comply with regulatory
changes
software
JBoss® Enterprise Application Platform,
IBM DB2 v9.5, Solaris 10
Hardware
SPARC-based Solaris Systems
benefits
Implemented a model-driven
development approach enabling the
company to bring new releases to market
at a high pace; increased flexibility and
scalability, helping to serve tens of
thousands of end users with the stable
and responsive JAVA Swing Client
applications necessary to process
complex health insurance data; Adopted
“Since the late 1990s, we have been constantly looking for ways to
create an IT architecture that would be able to accommodate the
dynamic and complex regulatory initiatives,” said Dirk Schäfers, chief
infrastructure architect at BITMARCK Software. “It was clear very
early on in the process that a software system that would meet these
requirements would have to be unified, browser-based, and follow a
model-driven approach to software development.”
the Red Hat open source subscription
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | BITMARCK
redhat.com/jboss
model, which delivers high value at a
significantly lower cost than proprietary
vendors
80
SOLUTION
Based on these prerequisites, BITMARCK selected a Java
EE-based software architecture that would encompass
both the middleware and the application layers. “In
addition to agility, we were also looking for scalability,”
said Schäfers. “In the early stages of our Java-based
infrastructure implementation, we expected to serve
approximately 50 to 100 users per customer, but we
knew it wouldn’t remain that way for very long, as
electronic processing of insurance incidents was becoming
more common across the board. That was back in 2002,
and today we’re very happy to have opted for Java EE, as
it has helped us accommodate tremendous growth.”
BITMARCK made the definitive step to Java EE
architecture in 2002, after evaluating a number of
middleware options for the next-generation infrastructure.
“We looked at the market incumbents, which back then
were IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic now Oracle
WebLogic. The open source contender on the list was
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, and it won in every
respect,” said Schäfers. “JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform turned out to provide the exact functionality
and robustness we needed. It also offered better support
and faster delivery of bug fixes, and the total cost of
ownership (TCO) was considerably lower than the TCO for
WebSphere and WebLogic.”
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform provides the
scalability and robustness necessary to provide a
complex and transaction-heavy application landscape to
more than 30,000 end users in public health insurance
companies across Germany. “To illustrate the power of
the system, I will quote a couple of figures from a load
test we recently completed,” said Schäfers. “We pushed
about 425,000 use cases through the system in just
four hours, resulting in about 51 million database server
calls. The infrastructure didn’t fail once and delivered an
average response time of below 600 milliseconds. That’s
just a hint at how our systems based on JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform make our customers happy.”
“JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform turned out to provide the
exact functionality and robustness we
needed. It also offered better support
and faster delivery of bug fixes, and
the total cost of ownership (TCO) was
considerably lower than the TCO for
WebSphere and WebLogic.”
– Dirk Schäfers, chief infrastructure architect, BITMARCK
Software GmbH
BITMARCK’s main application for insurance clerks has
been in operation since 2005. The total number of
users has increased to about 30,000 in about 160 public
health insurance companies today, constantly testing the
scalability of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. “As
we determine the entire software and hardware stack, all
the way from the servers in our datacenters to the endusers’ desktops that run the common Java EE application
in the browser, we have full control over the capabilities
and performance of our systems,” said Schäfers. “This
makes the delivery of a consistent user experience and
achieving high availability of the systems much easier.
And JBoss Enterprise Application Platform has been
instrumental in driving the performance of our systems.”
With the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
subscription, BITMARCK has access to an around-theclock global network of experienced middleware support
engineers. “Red Hat® Global Support Services is very
quick at resolving issues and delivering patches if
need be,” said Schäfers. “We have never regretted our
selection of open source software.”
BENEFITS
By using JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and
the Java EE framework for application development,
BITMARCK has achieved a high degree of agility in
software development. The development team delivers
a new release of the core applications about every four
weeks. ”Each new release includes many changes, from
bug fixes to new features and newly defined processes
reflecting changes in laws and regulations,” said Schäfers.
“This speed and agility simply wouldn’t be possible
without JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. Modeldriven Java development is the key to our success here.”
81
redhat.com/jboss
BITMARCK | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
ING-DIBA GAINS HIGH AVAILABILITY
AND INCREASES SCALABILITY OF
ITS BANKING SYSTEMS WITH JBOSS
ENTERPRISE APPLICATION PLATFORM
Geography
Germany
BACKGROUND
ING-DiBa AG is Germany’s largest direct bank and one of the pioneers
of Internet and phone banking. It serves more than 7 million private
customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year through
its online, mobile, and phone channels. The bank’s products cover a full
range of private banking from checking and savings accounts to online
brokerage, to consumer credit to mortgage loans.
ING-DiBa’s 2,696 employees are based in Frankfurt, Nuremberg, and
Hanover and are managing a balance sheet total of over 96.3 billion
Euro (2010 figures). ING-DiBa AG is a wholly owned subsidiary of the
Dutch ING Group.
HIGH availability for a modern IT infrastructure
is essential
ING-DiBa is at the forefront of a growing segment of the banking
industry in Germany. Direct banking has massively gained in popularity
over the past 10 years and ING-DiBa is among the companies that profit
the most from the boom.
Business challenge
ING-DiBa AG had to ensure long-term
scalability and process agility of its bank’s
mission-critical middleware infrastructure. In
addition, the financial services company set
out to achieve cost efficiency through open
source subscriptions, while guaranteeing
enterprise-level support for a highly
available, high-volume transactional IT
infrastructure
solutions
JBoss Hibernate, Oracle Databases, Red Hat
Consulting
migration path
From proprietary, legacy middleware on
Since 2002, when ING-DiBa’s customer base reached 1 million, the bank
has accommodated steep growth rates and is now serving more than 7
million customers. A pure-breed direct bank with no branch offices, INGDiBa’s touch points with the customer are either through its direct call
centers or through the company’s website (www.ing-diba.de).
Sun Solaris servers to JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform from Red Hat on a
virtualised x86 infrastructure
Hardware
“For our business, high availability of our IT infrastructure is essential,”
said Jörg Forstner, head of technical engineering and application
services, ING-DiBa. “If we’re offline, we’re losing business, so that
simply can’t happen. At the same time, our processes and operations
have to be as streamlined as possible. We make a profit from ‘IT
industrialisation’ as we call it. This means that we build and maintain
a highly standardised and automated IT landscape on all levels, from
the infrastructure and our central services, all the way through to the
business and application development side.”
Standard x86 servers
Much of ING-DiBa’s success comes from the bank’s ability to quickly
adapt to market trends and customer demand. The technological
basis for accomplishing this goal is a service-oriented architecture
(SOA) approach in application and middleware architecture. In the
retained Java EE developer knowledge
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ING-DIBA
benefits
Lowered maintenance costs and reduced
time needed to compile new applications
by 50%, lightened the load on RAM,
storage, and backup space by utilising
hardware investments more effectively;
in-house built a future-proof foundation
for automated IT processes supporting
an IT industrialisation strategy
redhat.com/jboss
82
early 2000s, ING-DiBa had implemented SOA based on
proprietary middleware, which at that time was among
the incumbents in the field.
However, only a few years later, as Jörg Forstner
explains, the company’s IT staff began to experience the
platform’s limitations. “The proprietary middleware in
production became more and more complex. The vendor
kept adding tools we didn’t really need, but insisted we
install these tools regardless. Also, patches and updates
to the JDK were provided with a considerable lag;
therefore, maintenance costs went through the roof as
our business grew. That wasn’t a situation we could live
with for very long.”
In 2008, ING-DiBa decided to revisit its IT buying strategy
in the course of a company-wide cost-efficiency
programme. Middleware software was one of the key areas
under scrutiny and the IT Central Services team soon
defined the requirements for a new middleware platform.
“The criteria for our future middleware vendor were quite
straightforward,” said Jörg Forstner. “First, the platform
had to scale to accommodate the rapid growth of our
customer base without increasing costs at the same
rate. Second, it had to be flexible enough to support
very fast turnaround of the new application and process
development projects to improve our competitive edge.
And third, we wanted to retain the expertise of our inhouse, Java EE developer team.”
“The dominant question was about the
speed and standard of professional support
we required. Our management wasn’t
willing to compromise on the quality of
support that would ultimately determine
the quality of our product. In the evaluation
process, however, the Red Hat subscription
model and the engagement of Red Hat
Consulting in the architecture planning
stage dispelled all doubts.”
– Jörg Forstner, Head of Technical Engineering and
Application Services, ING-DiBa
The Red Hat subscription model seals
the deal
The evaluation process ultimately led to the selection
of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform from Red
Hat. Red Hat prevailed against two other vendors, both
of which sell proprietary software. The open source
approach was initially met with some scepticism, Jörg
Forstner recalls, “The dominant question was about the
speed and standard of professional support we required.
83
redhat.com/jboss
Our management wasn’t willing to compromise on the
quality of support that would ultimately determine
the quality of our product. In the evaluation process,
however, the Red Hat subscription model and the
engagement of Red Hat Consulting in the architecture
planning stage dispelled all doubts.”
Before migration, ING-DiBa’s IT Central Services
team developed an architectural concept for the new
middleware. As the bank’s IT team already had many
years of experience with Java-based middleware, most
of this planning was taken care of by the in-house team
and validated with the help of Red Hat Consulting.
The migration to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
took place between 2008 and 2009. JEE operations
expert Oliver Hummel said that, although the
architecture was complex, his team was well-versed in
automating processes, including migration projects. “In
addition, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform fits so
well into our Java EE architecture that we were able to
handle the entire migration project without help from a
systems integrator partner.”
The migration of applications, which included call center,
mortgage, banking, brokerage, and service center
solutions, was staged over a 1.5 year period for security
reasons. “As we’re a 24/7 business, downtime is not an
option. We did not want to migrate in a rush, so we made
sure everything worked in one segment of our application
landscape before moving to the next,” said Hummel.
ING-DiBa reduces costs by half
The middleware migration to JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform yielded impressive benefits for
ING-DiBa. For example, maintenance costs were down
by 50% compared to the previous proprietary solution.
However, even more value comes from the flexibility
and speed of the platform in day-to-day operations.
“Our developer teams can create, test and deploy
new applications or modified processes much faster
than before,” said Hummel. “Since JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform has been in production, deploying
a new setup can be done in about 20 minutes. That’s
half the time we needed before, and an enormous
productivity gain for the IT organisation.”
The Red Hat-based architecture is also much more
lightweight than the previous solution. This results
in lower consumption of disk space, RAM and backup
storage, helping ING-DiBa optimise its hardware
investments.
ING-DIBA | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
French Financial Service
Organization Maintains 100%
Uptime and Saves 2 Million
Euros with Red Hat’s JBoss
Geography
Germany
BACKGROUND
LaSer Nederland B.V. (LSN), founded in 1996, is an innovative service
organization that specializes in financial services, retail marketing,
protection, and related programs for consumers, retailers, and money
brokers, which act as intermediaries. LSN’s portfolio includes tailormade programs for acquisition financing, credit products, (cobranded)
Visa credit cards, loyalty cards, and online loyalty program management.
LaSer Nederland is part of the French LaSer Group, which is equally
owned by Galeries Lafayette and BNP Paribas. At its headquarters
in Den Bosch in The Netherlands, LSN employs approximately 375
employees who serve more than 400,000 customers. LaSer also has
offices in France, Denmark, United Kingdom, Poland, and Spain.
“Transparency is a key part of LSN’s philosophy. It’s important for us to
offer customers fair products and inform them thoroughly about terms
and conditions, such as when to pay off a loan. We want to communicate
information to our customers as clearly as possible,” said Marc van
der Tier, manager of IT Delivery at LaSer Nederland. “LSN, therefore,
has about 30 websites that provide product information and service
customer needs.”
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
LSN wanted to improve the customer experience by expanding selfservice options, such as making payments, changing a phone number, or
transferring money.
In addition, the company wanted to offer customers the unique option
of opening or closing an account and obtaining a real-time overview of
credit card transactions.
Business challenge
To create self-service websites that allow
LSN’s customers to manage and control their
financial products online, such as point-of
sale (POS) loan application and reporting
services; to build a secure, flexible, scalable,
and adaptable platform for the company’s
new core system to connect back-end
applications to the websites.
software
JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, JBoss
Operations Network, JBoss Business
Rules Management System (BRMS), HP
Dialogue Live and VMWare.
Hardware
Windows 2008 Server, Microsoft SQL
Server, Dell PowerEdge 2950 with two
quad-core 2.8 GHz CPUs per server, 32
GB RAM per server; EMC SAN storage
via iSCSI.
benefits
Operational savings of €2,250,000,
The French LaSer Group took the decision to introduce a new core
system, Base 2000, from Fidelity Information Services (NYSE: FIS)
in the Netherlands and across operations worldwide. The new system
was intended to easily consolidate financial figures and provide a
comprehensive overview of the entire group’s activities. With the
introduction of the core system came the need for a more featurerich front end. Most of the LSN product websites were not integrated
with all databases, architectures, and maintenance plans. A number
of the websites were connected to the old LSN back office systems.
In addition, some of LSN’s financial products (Visa credit cards, retail
increased security, flexibility, and
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | LSN
redhat.com/jboss
manageability for the IT department,
expanded functionality and performance
and enhanced service that allows
consumers to manage their financial
affairs online, such as opening or closing
an account or viewing credit card
transactions in real time.
84
credit, and personal loans) were administered and
processed in large back-end applications (IBM/CICS),
often rigid in architecture and mostly written in COBOL.
Initially, it proved difficult to develop new sites and keep
the processes and data consistent and interconnected.
ISAAC, a JBoss Solution Partner, was commissioned to
create a platform on which LSN could build replicable
and interconnected sites, to improve the integration
between the middleware platform and the new LSN back
office systems. In addition, it was important that the
front and back-end applications offered enhanced control
and flexibility so that LSN could easily scale and adjust
as needed.
An important factor in the solution selection is VISA
International’s required adherence to an array of
financial legislation and internal security processes.
For example, when customers create and enter their
passwords online, they are required to enter codes
received by SMS on their mobile phones. Both the email
address and the mobile phone number are verified when
someone tries to create a password.
“A modular deployment was crucial to any technology
implementation. The system had to meet core standards
of stability and security, in particular, the customer’s
security. We are very concerned about identity theft,”
said Van der Tier. “We do everything to avoid headlines
such as ‘personal credit card information is leaked to the
public.’”
SOLUTION
JBoss Solution Partner ISAAC developed a JBoss
Enterprise Middleware prototype that withstood stress
testing and an external evaluation. During this process,
comparable solutions demonstrated bottlenecks.
Therefore, JBoss Enterprise Middleware was identified as
the ideal platform fit.
ISAAC developed an Enterprise JavaBeans 2.1/Java
MessageService (JMS) based platform called Pangaea,
which runs on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
4.3. The platform itself uses Microsoft SQL 2005, which
exposes an XML based interface/API, which can be
accessed through JMS.
Furthermore, ISAAC used JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform and JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform to connect
legacy back-end applications to a large number of
customer service websites, POS loan application portals,
and reporting solutions, all developed by ISAAC. JBoss
Enterprise Middleware forms a bridge between the
backend systems and third-party services, such as an
advanced printing solution based on HP Dialogue Live.
In total, tens of thousands of loan applications are
processed every month by the system and hundreds of
thousands of customers access the customer service
portals. Of these, 125,000 are active users.
In the new solution, back office integration varies and
involves XML over HTTPS, MQ, file transfers, and SOAP.
Data is either stored in the back office or in a central
Microsoft SQL 2005 database. Lately, dotCMS has been
added as a possible front end to the Pangaea platform,
allowing dotCMS websites to include back-office
content, which is retrieved via the Pangaea platform.
JBoss Enterprise Middleware communicates using IBM
Websphere MQ with the CICS back-end mainframes,
and uses the messaging component in JBoss EAP 4.3
to communicate with front-end servers. The front-end
environment uses JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
in combination with Apache, mod_jk, and the enterpriselevel CMS system dotCMS to provide a rich front-end
architecture.
JBoss Enterprise Middleware is one of four key IT
infrastructure components. The 24x7, 365 days a year
model for availability is crucial because if Pangaea is
down, the entire system stops functioning.
BENEFITS
Based on Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Middleware, ISAAC
has developed a solution for LaSer Nederland that has
proven to be highly scalable. Without having to change
the architecture, LaSer has gone from servicing several
thousand online customers in 2008 to far more than
100,000 customers in 2010.
Although changes are made to the system on a weekly
basis, reliability and stability have remained very high,
with no middleware or front-end-related outages over the
past six months.
Integrating front-end solutions like dotCMS and back-end
systems using WebSphere MQ has functioned almost
without incident due to the standards compliance JBoss
Enterprise Middleware maintains in its architecture and
the flexibility the EAP platform offers in configuring its
interfaces to third-party systems.
“Since the introduction of the self-service websites, we
have dramatically reduced workloads and enhanced the
customer’s ability to consult/access his/her financial
accounts. This is a savings of €2,250,000,” said Van der
Tier. “We can further automate certain processes and
make them simpler and quicker, increasing efficiency.
We are also in a position to offer and add new modular
functions for our customers and retailers.”
“Over the past year, we’ve established and maintained a
85
redhat.com/jboss
LSN | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
100% uptime level. The IT dashboard built by ISAAC and
managed by Red Hat allows us to monitor whether all
system components are functioning properly,” said Van
Der Tier. “A change in color indicates real-time issues, so
we can address it immediately.”
“We maintain a short turnaround time for incidents. If we
can’t address the issue ourselves, we have secondhand
support from ISAAC and a third backup line to Red Hat.
LSN is very satisfied with the involvement of ISAAC as
a Red Hat partner,” said Van Der Tier. “With JBoss we’ve
always got a specialist on hand. We rely on this safety
net, and it functions exceptionally well. The Red Hat
subcription model is an added value. In fact, I don’t think
we could do it without JBoss.”
“JBoss, as a toolkit, fulfills a crucial role for our business,”
said Van der Tier. “Some applications that ISAAC has built
are unique. It offers us the necessary functionalities and
contributes to the transparency that we want to convey
in the market, underlining our business philosophy. In
addition, JBoss has improved speed and performance,
which are very important. That said, we’re well aware of
the flip side of automation. When everything becomes
fully automated, questions arise about whether the
customer relations are genuine. Therefore, next to the
extensive automated services, we maintain personal
contact with our customers that will shift from the
transactional to the relational.”
“JBoss plays a crucial role within our
organization. It improves the flexibility
and service of our self-service
websites, so that now 30 percent of our
operations are in the hands of
the consumer.”
this is a newly developing interest in other countries, it
has been established in the Netherlands for many years.
Following the lead of LaSer in the United Kingdom, LaSer
Nederland plans to implement BRMS. “It offers more
possibilities, also in the process flow and the way we
handle transactions, we can really improve with the use
of BRMS, and thereby book efficiency gains,” said Van
der Tier.
LSN also plans to expand its services to allow
consumers to adjust their own credit limits remotely,
even by mobile phones. Accountability and collections
will be put in the hands of the consumer. This is unusual
in the market and involves a brand new back-end system
that JBoss Enterprise Middleware will connect to the
website.
Another initiative is e-couponing, also enabled by JBoss
Enterprise Middleware. Consumers can apply via the
web for a loan to finance a particular purchase, such
as a new kitchen. When the credit appraisal system
qualifies the loan, the consumer receives a specific
coupon code. Once the loan is processed, the consumer
can go to the store to buy the new kitchen. “It is a
tremendous convenience for the consumer and the
retailer,” said Van der Tier. “IKEA (NL) currently utilizes
a predecessor of e-couponing that works very well for
them. We expect e-couponing to account for 35 to 40
percent of loan applications. Because of the speed and
service convenience, the turnover at the retail level will
increase by 5 to 10 percent. It’s so much easier than
paying with cash.”
– Marc van der Tier, Manager of IT Delivery,
LaSer Nederland
future
Given the success at LaSer Nederland, Pangaea (LaSer’s
middleware solution) will be deployed to LaSer Nordic
(DK) and Laser UK. A variation of Pangaea, including
JBoss Business Rules Management System (BRMS) for
process automation, will be used for interfacing the LaSer
UK Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system with the back
end systems.
These developments reinforce the pioneering role of
the Netherlands in Internet commerce and its strict
regulations around consumer loans and security. While
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | LSN
redhat.com/jboss
86
87
Panthera Capital improves
reliability, performance, and
scalability with Red Hat
solutions
Geography
Frankfurt, Germany
BACKGROUND
Based in Frankfurt, Germany, Panthera Capital AG (Panthera) operates
for its sister CeFDex AG, an innovative, full-service business-to-business
(B2B) trading platform for financial CFDs (contracts for difference).
These CFDs allow investors to speculate on the rising or falling price
of an underlying asset (shares, market indices, currencies, bonds, etc.).
In the most basic terms, anything that has a market price can also
be traded with a contract of difference. Holding periods range from
a few minutes to several hours or even longer. These types of CFD
transactions are an increasingly popular investment product because
large sums can be moved by leveraging relatively small amounts of
capital resources
Users of the Panthera trading platform include online brokers and
financial services providers who can access the CFD application via their
banks’ portals. Panthera offers development, hosting, professional, and
consulting services. These services include consulting around launches
of a CFD platform in a complex market environment, as well as guiding
integration with existing customer systems (e.g., banks).
Panthera also serves as a specialist for booking transactions and
managing accounts, as it seamlessly links the CFD platform with the
existing business processes of banks, financial services providers,
and brokers. The platform is branded for a bank or a financial service
provider but operated by Panthera. For investors, this means that they
operate in an environment with a familiar look and feel.
.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Panthera launched the development of its CFD trading platform in 2007.
Initially, IBM WebSphere Application Server, which ran on Sun Solaris, was
used as the commercial runtime environment for the Java application.
Over time, however, it became clear that the license costs for the software
had increased dramatically as the number of users grew, also leading to
issues related to scalability. Panthera’s management team and IT division
quickly agreed that they wanted to move away from a proprietary solution
toward an open source environment, encompassing everything from the
operating system and the database (PostgreSQL from EnterpriseDB) to the
application server. After evaluating a number of different products, the Red
Hat Enterprise Linux operating system and JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform were selected as the best solutions.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | PANTHERA
Business challenge
To migrate a legacy CFD (contracts for
difference) trading platform from IBM
WebSphere Application Server running on
Sun Solaris to a more affordable, clustered
infrastructure based on JBoss® Enterprise
Application Platform and Red Hat®
Enterprise Linux®
solutions
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise
migration path
IBM WebSphere Application Server
running on Sun Solaris to JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform and
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Hardware
Clustered environment based on
standard x86 servers
benefits
Achieved rapid (near real-time) response
times; increased availability and stability;
achieved excellent scalability and
security
redhat.com/jboss
88
“The open source software solution
combining Red Hat Enterprise Linux
and JBoss Enterprise Middleware
offers us a stable and scalable
platform that can be managed very
cost-efficiently. It also allows us to
operate the CFD trading platform
securely and without any around-theclock downtime.”
– Christoph Reeber, head of IT-Services,
Panthera Capital AG
“The main criteria in the selection process included
high availability, stability, scalability, and security,”
said Christoph Reeber, head of IT at Panthera Capital
AG. “We needed extremely reliable components for the
sophisticated, mission-critical CFD platform.”
For the actual migration of the platform to the new
open source environment, Panthera brought in help
from Munich-based LinuxLand International, a Red Hat
Advanced Partner. Since 1996, LinuxLand International
has offered IT business consulting services to major, well
known corporations. The company is a one-stop solution
provider, offering everything from strategic consulting
to implementation, backed by a reliable project
management team.
LinuxLand’s extensive experience with open source
software proved extremely useful, particularly when it
came to the detailed testing of how the various hardware,
operating system, and application components would
interact, in addition to finding the right combination of
modules that worked together well.
Before the migration, Panthera had little in-house expertise
in open source software. Following an extensive knowledgetransfer period, which encompassed general preparations,
setup, and extensive testing, Panthera is now in a position
where it can manage and operate the application itself.
SOLUTION
The CFD trading platform is deployed in a clustered
environment based on standard x86 servers in order to
meet the needs for fast, near real-time response times,
as well as the demands posed by the constant growth in
the number of users. The environment is implemented
as an integrated, high-performance cluster solution
that offers a highly available single-system image (SSI)
environment for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
89
redhat.com/jboss
On the client side, the CFD platform is platformindependent and does not require any additional
software. Customers of online brokers and financial
service providers simply need a browser to log into their
banks’ portals where they can place orders for CFDs.
Investors are then seamlessly transferred to the CFD
platform, and the user interface mirrors an application
created by their banks. Once the investors work on the
CFD platform, they can access all of the major US and
European stock markets.
This allows investors to do business within a 15-hour-perday time slot. Panthera’s goal is to expand this to a 24hour time slot. The security protocol used by the platform
employs the latest authentication technologies for the
firewall, as well as encryption and certification. This in turn
ensures the confidentiality of a customer’s transaction
and provides protection for his/her personal accounts. In
addition, the customer’s data remains at the investor’s
bank. For banks and other financial services providers this
means that they use professional services, as well as the
stable and sophisticated technology of the CFD platform,
while protecting their customer data from outside access.
BENEFITS
Red Hat solutions enable Panthera to offer online
brokers and financial services providers a CFD platform
in an ultra-modern trading environment, specially
adapted to each customer’s system environment.
Customers of Panthera receive all the benefits of stable,
sophisticated technology, with included professional
services. The new CFD platform strengthens Panthera’s
role as a specialist for transaction booking and account
management in a complex field of business.
In addition, Panthera creates a seamless link between
the internal CFD trading platform and the established
business processes of financial services providers with
the look and feel of their corporate designs. With this
approach, Panthera establishes a customized frontend combined with an open source based back end.
Thus Panthera is in the position to focus on its core
competencies in trading (market-making), IT (electronic
trading platforms, back office systems), and services
(sales, marketing, training, legal, and compliance).
“The new CFD platform has been in production for
several months now, and it has lived up to all of our
expectations,” said Reeber. “The open source software
solution combining Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise Middleware offers us a stable and scalable
platform that can be managed very cost-efficiently.
It also allows us to operate the CFD trading platform
securely and without any around-theclock downtime.
A major bonus for us is the high level of flexibility and
independence that we have achieved.”
PANTHERA | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
90
SNS Bank Reduced
Costs and Increased
Performance with JBoss
jBPM
Geography
Netherlands
soFTWARE
BACKGROUND
SNS Bank was established in 1817 and is one of the top five banks in the
Netherlands with more than 3, 300 employees in 146 branches. It is part
of SNS REAAL, a Dutch service provider specialising in insurance and
banking, and provides consultation for private and business customers
looking for smart solutions to broaden their financial possibilities. SNS
IT is a 300-person branch of SNS Bank that is in charge of the entire
IT infrastructure and determines the overall IT strategy including the
development, monitoring, and maintenance of the bank’s IT systems.
SNS IT ensures the uptime and availability of the systems connected
to more than 3,000 workstations, producing the more than 500,000
transactions on a daily basis.
.
and jBPM
Hardware
benefits
Flexible and high-performance platform;
fast, standardized development, cost
effective, low total cost of ownership.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
As one of the top five Dutch financial institutions, SNS Bank in the
Netherlands made a strategic decision to use technology to empower its
customers online by fully automating its business processes. The ability
to automate its service channels required SNS bank to apply Business
Process Management (BPM) techniques to existing selling channels by
revamping both its public and internal process in order to provide its
end users with an online, full-scale Straight Through Processing (STP)
experience. As a prominent financial institution, the need for online STP
was of crucial importance to its cost effective banking model in an ever
turbulent and changing financial world.
In order to effectively move towards a full-scale STP experience, SNS
wanted to align its goals to be continue to be completed via Open Source
Software, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and BPM.
SOLUTION
In an effort to effectively target and increase processing efficiency by
eliminated unnecessary human intervention, SNS Bank decided to utilize
JBoss jBPM after its use with JBoss Application Server in 2002 proved to
be effective. SNS Bank wanted to ensure that its customers were informed
at crucial process steps since open communication has always being an
important factor in customer experience. In the beginning of 2007 the first
full-scale STP project was kicked off, with the goal of putting new savings
products online in the start of 2008.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SNS BANK
redhat.com/jboss
91
There was a shift in component strategy in 2004 from
three main commercial suppliers to one where FOSS
components are preferred when possible. Open source
is quite pervasive throughout the solution architecture
of all current projects. Furthermore, the development
environment and tooling used to implement this solution
consists of almost only open source software. Red Hat
Enterprise Linux is the proven server environment, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform is hosting the web services
and jBPM is the business process engine, the SNS Bank has
a powerful infrastructure for exposing the selling channels.
With an ever-growing base of BPM process definitions, the
time to market for similar products is much quicker. SNS
Bank has projects with estimates ranging from one third
to one half of the initial development hours put into initial
projects.
With the implementation of the JBoss Application Server
hosting the jBPM process engine, SNS Bank now has
a solution that consists of a web-based front-end that
allows customer access to products and services. All
customer communications are managed by a document
management process that tracks both post and electronic
communications. The various back-end systems are
accessed via a web services layer. In the event that it
become necessary to deal with exceptions or be required
by law that human decisions be made in the course of
a process, there is a web based interface that uses web
services to add, modify or end a customer process. As
of 2009 the SNS Bank has deployed multiple projects
exposing many products and service processes to its
customers.
BENEFITS
In the current situation JBoss and jBPM have proven to be
both cost effective in terms of ownership and in terms of
speed of deployment. Reliability has been improved, with
absolutely no issues since it has been implemented. Having
access to the JBoss technical team, the various online open
source communities, and a support contract have proven
time and again that the choice for JBoss was the right one.
As strategic products made available to customers
empowered by JBoss and jBPM, SNS Bank is able to adjust
easily to customer needs. Products and product lines can
be introduced into existing business processes in a cost
effective manner. The flexibility to combine extends beyond
products, product lines, and selling channels to become a
very effective tool to reach customer bases in a timely and
personalized fashion.
Customer communications are now personalized and
tailored to specific processes, products, and customers
personal needs as the data generated by their behavior
within the processes is documented. There have been very
positive reactions from customers with regards to the
speed, quality, and the level of detail in communications.
92
redhat.com/jboss
SNS BANK | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
SNS Bank Migrates
to JBoss Enterprise
Platform
Geography
Netherlands
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
SNS Bank’s IT systems handle 500,000
daily transactions produced by various
BACKGROUND
applications on 3,300 workstations. The
SNS Bank was established in 1817 and is one of the top five banks in the
Netherlands with over 3,300 employees in 150 offices. It’s a part of SNS
REAAL, a Dutch service provider specialising in insurance and banking,
and provides consultation for private and business customers looking
for smart solutions to broaden their financial possibilities.
bank’s front-end system was reaching its
SNS IT is a 300-person branch of SNS Bank that’s in charge of the entire
IT infrastructure and determines the overall IT strategy including the
development, monitoring, and maintenance of the bank’s IT systems. SNS
IT ensures the uptime and availability of the systems connected to more
3,000 workstations, producing over 500,000 transactions on a daily basis.
.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
SNS Bank processed transactions on proprietary back-office systems and
operated its front-end SNS Administration System (SAS) based on Pascal
before its migration. The SAS front end was approaching its economical
and technical limits and was holding the bank back from driving innovation
and the initiation of new projects because costs were too high. The Pascalbased front-end of the SAS application was showing limitations too—it only
supported 16-bit and was difficult to run in newer environments.
technical and economical limit and was
reducing the opportunity for innovation
and scalability within the organization.
The SNS IT team, responsible for cost
savings, looked for a solution that was
flexible, stable, and scalable.
SOFTWARE
JBoss Application Server
Hardware
8 IBM X-series servers
benefits
SNS Bank was able to rapidly deploy its
new system onto 3,300 workstations
in nine months.The bank experienced
In 2001, project manager Marcel Schmidt and the department architecture
of SNS IT were asked to come up with ideas to innovate the IT
infrastructure and find a solution that would provide cost savings and ROI
in less than one year. The solution needed to be stable and flexible too.
reduced licensing costs and overall
cost savings after migrating to
JBoss solutions, Increased stability
and reliability of the organization’s
SOLUTION
production platform was enjoyed
The SNS IT Team defined the limitations of its old system and the
requirements necessary in its new system and concluded that a Java-based
application server would fit the organizational needs and team best. The
SNS IT Team, made up of Java specialists, tested a number of solutions
for reliability, performance, and stress, and ultimately determined that the
JBoss Application Server would fit best.
following its migration, SNS Bank also
experienced a reduction in hardware
demands following the implementation
of its new system.
In choosing JBoss solutions, cost was a decisive factor. The bank would
achieve significant savings in terms of licensing costs with JBoss’ open
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SNS BANK
redhat.com/jboss
93
source model. With the SNS IT team’s extensive Java and
open source knowledge, a solid basis of trust was developed
within the organisation for the basis of Implementation of
the Java migration and the JBoss Application Server took
SNS Bank only nine months. During this time, the SNS IT
team distributed the new Java-based SAS front end to all
3,300 workstations. With JBoss solutions, SNS Bank was
able to move to eight slim and affordable IBM X-series
servers with Linux operating systems in the production
environment..
BENEFITS
Key advantages of the JBoss Application Server
solution include its valuable reliability and stability. Since
implementing JBoss solutions, the SNS IT team has had no
problems with its JBoss Application Server.
“We tested the JBoss Application Server extensively
and then migrated it into our production environment. It
has operated exactly as we had expected, which is very
important for a financial institution like ours,” said Schmidt.
“In the last three years, we had less than five support
tickets. Our team is able to guarantee extremely high levels
of availability as well as significant savings on time spent
fixing interruptions within the systems.”
“In the last three years, we had
less than five support tickets. Our
team is able to guarantee extremely
high levels of availability as well as
significant savings on time spent fixing
interruptions within the systems.”
“The success of JBoss solutions in our organisation
was without doubt ‘the big bang.’ The SNS IT team, as
well as the rest of the organization, has embraced open
source thanks to the in-house knowledge and dedication
of the community,” said Schmidt. “We are currently
looking to deploy a full service-oriented architecture
(SOA) environment and will use the JBoss jBPM
framework to further benefit from open source and
Java at the SNS Bank.”
The JBoss Application Server enables the SNS IT team
to efficiently expand its IT infrastructure. Today, 3,300
workstations are equipped with various Java applications
through the JBoss Application Server. Due to the recent
acquisition of Regiobank, it’s very likely that hundreds
of workstations will be added to the bank’s IT system in
the near future. The flexibility and scalability of the Java
environment allows SNS IT to add more PCs to the current IT
infrastructure without the need for any additional budget.
One of the biggest motivators for SNS Bank to migrate
to a new solution was to to have a platform on which new
projects could be developed without a need for a budget
increase. SNS Bank has enjoyed significant cost savings by
migrating to JBoss solutions and can now allocate funds
toward new innovative projects. “By choosing an open
source environment based on JBoss solutions, we managed
to save at least €200,000 at the SAS front end alone,”
said Schmidt. “On top, we now run seven additional Java
applications on JBoss. We are happy to have experienced
such drastic savings on licenses. With our previous
environment, licensing costs were already rising to a couple
of hundred thousand euros. The cost savings we have
experienced since our JBoss migration have subsequently
allowed us to develop new initiatives without extra budget.”
94
redhat.com/jboss
SNS BANK | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Leading Danish Retail Bank
SPARBANK Migrates to JBoss
Enterprise Middleware to
Ensure High Availability for
Mission-Critical Applications
Geography
Denmark
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
For legal compliance reasons, SPARBANK
must ensure high availability for mission-
BACKGROUND
SPARBANK, listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange, has served both
consumers and businesses since 1857 and is a leading retail bank in
Denmark with 22 branch offices across the country. The Danish retail
banking market is very competitive with several active market players.
SPARBANK offers personalised services to its customers combined with
competitive pricing, and above all, trust. In 2009 the bank had revenues
of 964 million Danish crowns or approximately 129 million EUR (based
on exchange rate on 28 September 2010).
.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In today’s digital era, SPARBANK relies on its IT infrastructure to deliver
applications and services that enable the bank to fulfil its commitment
to its customers. Some applications are used by the bank’s staff, others
are external services offered directly to customers. IT infrastructure is
mission-critical to any modern bank like SPARBANK and applications
need to perform at all times with zero downtime. SPARBANK also must be
compliant with a number of legal and other regulatory frameworks, which
encompass IT systems and require the IT department to demonstrate how
it ensures the availability of mission-critical applications.
critical applications. The bank also
required access to professional support
and services for its application platform
SOLUTION
JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, JBoss
Enterprise Service Bus
migration path
JBoss.org community project to JBoss
benefits
Guaranteed high availability and greater
flexibility of SPARBANK’s mission-critical
application platform
SPARBANK’s internal team develops Java applications for use throughout
the bank’s IT systems. Initially established to build applications not available
in the marketplace, the team has developed specifically tailored applications,
which have become increasingly mission-critical over the years. This means
the development team is frequently audited to ensure that the applications
meet requirements of regulatory frameworks. Business rules also required
the development team to create documents attached to each application,
which detail the planned response to potential system problems. To stay
compliant with business rules and ensure smooth operation of missioncritical applications, the development team at SPARBANK also needed
access to professional support and services for its application platform.
SOLUTION
SPARBANK evaluated two Java application platforms to build and host its
applications: Oracle WebLogic and JBoss Enterprise Middleware. The Oracle
solution was considered an option mainly because it was already used by
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SPARBANK
redhat.com/jboss
95
SPARBANK’s affiliate offices around Denmark to support
some of the collectively used applications. However, the
team determined that there was no real need to integrate
with those applications. The development team also had
previous experience with Red Hat and JBoss and could
download the JBoss.org community trial version at no extra
cost. After deploying the JBoss community project, JBoss
Application Server, and JBoss ESB Server, applications
have evolved to a more advanced and increasingly
mission-critical level. However, SPARBANK’s regulatory
framework required the development team to have access
to professional support. The natural step forward was to
move to supported JBoss SOA Platform, which takes the
best projects and features from JBoss Community projects
and other communities such as The Apache Software
Foundation, and integrates them into a stable, supported
middleware solution.
“Running mission-critical applications
in a bank requires a supported platform.
Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Middleware
suite offers access to a complete set
of services, including industry-leading
technical support, certified patches and
updates, longterm maintenance policies,
and software assurance. Therefore it
was a natural choice to migrate from the
unsupported JBoss Community project
to the JBoss Enterprise Middleware
platform.”
– Kenneth Larsen, Development Team at SPARBANK
SPARBANK uses JBoss Enterprise Application Platform to
build, run, and host applications. It has also deployed JBoss
Enterprise SOA Platform to integrate and orchestrate
enterprise applications and automate business processes. The
bank utilizes the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), part of the
SOA
platform, to integrate applications built on JBoss with a
variety of other systems, including IBM Lotus Notes, SAS
Marketing Automation, TRIO call centre software, Transact
credit scoring software, and Kondor+ risk management software.
assesses the bank’s risk.
To realize the full benefits of JBoss Enterprise Middleware,
some members of SPARBANK’s IT team have attended Red
Hat’s middleware training courses, focused on managing
and administrating applications running on JBoss platforms.
BENEFITS
By migrating to JBoss Enterprise Middleware, SPARBANK
received access to professional services and support,
thereby ensuring compliance with both internal and
external business rules, including guaranteeing high
availability of the applications developed and running on
JBoss environments.
Migrating from the community projects available on
JBoss.org to fully supported and tested JBoss Enterprise
Middleware platforms took just a few weeks. “We did not
experience any issues when migrating to the enterprise
version of the JBoss platform. It would have gone even
faster if we had not decided to cluster the platform and
run it on several virtual servers simultaneously in order
to ensure high availability. This decision has enhanced
the flexibility of our platform as it enables us to do
maintenance work on applications anytime, also—for
example during working hours—something which we
were not able to do before,” said Kenneth Larsen, of the
SPARBANK Development Team.
One of the most important aspects of solving potential
system problems is response time. Red Hat support
services provide SPARBANK with fast response and
relevant information. “We save time and manpower by
relying on Red Hat’s middleware support services. If a
problem occurs, we can count on their quick feedback to
our questions, which means we can resolve any issues
before they cause real damage. We also use support
services on a regular basis to consult them on best
practices on a wide range of areas that would previously
take weeks, months, or even longer to research through
other channels,” Larsen continued.
Since migrating to JBoss Enterprise Middleware,
SPARBANK has not experienced any unplanned downtime
of any application. The development team has also
expanded its knowledge on the JBoss product suite and
can use JBoss platforms more efficiently by utilizing new
relevant functionalities and features.
FUTURE
SPARBANK built and now hosts a number of missioncritical applications on the JBoss platform—for example an
investment assessment application, which keeps track of
customers’ losses and gains in currency speculations—and
utilizes this data for financial advice to those customers. The
bank has also deployed a risk assessment tool that analyses
customers’ holdings of different types of financial papers and
96
redhat.com/jboss
SPARBANK will continue to deploy new applications on
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and use JBoss
Enterprise SOA Platform to integrate them with other
systems, and therefore maintain a Service Oriented
Architecture that makes efficient use of each service and
improves business process execution speed and quality.
SPARBANK | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Stater Further Increases Stability
and Performance of MissionCritical Applications with JBoss
Geography
Netherlands
BACKGROUND
Stater was founded in January 1997 as an independent service provider
in the mortgage market. Since then, Stater has grown to become an
international force in the financial market with over 900 employees.
Headquartered in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, Stater also has branch
locations in Bonn, Germany and Brussels, Belgium.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Over one million mortgage loans are under the administration of the
Stater Mortgage System. The financial company currently handles
approximately 35 percent of all mortgages in the Netherlands.
Oracle WebLogic to JBoss Enterprise
Stater focuses on streamlining the mortgage loan procedure from start to
finish and prides itself on running a fully-automated, paperless mortgage
process. Stater supports every aspect of the mortgage procedure and it is
important that this support remains invisible to the customer.
To upgrade existing mortgage support
services and administrative processes
migration path
Application Platform 5
SOLUTION
5, JBoss Operations Network, Red Hat
Consulting
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
HARDWARE
Because each customer is different, Stater created an innovative, mid-office
system, known internally as ‘Estate’ to further enable customization and
improve efficiency of mortgage processes and procedures.
HP ProLiant DL380R06 X/L5520 1P
To guarantee further development of Estate, Stater’s software development
department required the latest edition of Java. Version 1.4 was no longer
supported and the upgraded Java 1.6 version offered Stater the enhanced
functionality necessary to accommodate an increased data allowance and
improved application development. Moreover, developing software with
a legacy version of Java meant Stater was unable to harness supported
frameworks such as Aquima 8 and Spring. Aquima version 5, which Stater
used for modeling its business processes, was unable to perform release
maintenance management for various customers. In addition, the Oracle
WebLogic application platform hindered Stater from migrating to the latest
edition of Java.
quad core 2.26GHz 8MB L3 cache / 2 x 8
GB UDIMM; EMC San storage
benefits
Enhanced stability and error detection,
achieved cost savings through open
source software, simplified development
and deployment, increased transparency
Having decided that simply updating to version 10 of Oracle’s WebLogic was
insufficient to support Stater’s evolving customer needs, the company opted
to migrate to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5 to take advantage
of the latest Java developments and to apply release maintenance
management on Aquima, the company’s modeling software.
SOLUTION
Red Hat Consulting helped Stater migrate its existing applications from Oracle
WebLogic 8 to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform was primarily adopted for Stater’s Estate system,
and the company quickly extended its use of JBoss solutions to in-house
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | STATER
redhat.com/jboss
97
e-applications such as e-Notaris and e-Intermediair, which
allow notaries and intermediaries to view the status of
loans online, make transactions, and collate payments. All
the applications are unlocked via the web, whereas Oracle
WebLogic was only partially web-based.
“Since first deploying JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform nine months ago, we have
experienced zero downtime. JBoss solutions
have offered us the security, manageability,
and around-the-clock availability necessary to
service our demanding customer base.”
– Hans Ernsten, Project Manager, Stater
Stater’s IT department employs 200 people, including
approximately 50 developers who use workstations
running JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Using Eclipse, Stater
developers write code, test the code on their workstations,
and then, if successful, roll them out where required.
“We looked at our network situation and thought about
where we would like to be in the next ten years,” said Hans
Ernsten, project manager at Stater. “We realized that we
don’t want to be dependent on a supplier nor a platform,
which is why we selected JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform. Red Hat Consulting and Profict consultants, a
JBoss Advanced Business Partner based in the Netherlands,
have helped us create and set up the architecture, design
the development environment, and convert applications.
Together with our own developers they went through the
lines of code and developed Estate, e-applications, product
configuration, and authorization configuration that are now
all independent of any particular platform.”
The new infrastructure enables Stater to update customer
releases without having to shut down applications in
progress. This functionality will be available at the end of
2011. The number of servers, both at Stater and at a remote
back-up location, has been expanded from four to six because
the company expects the number of Estate users to increase.
“Our new application infrastructure has been operational for
about a year now and we see more and more users switching
from our solution iSHS (Internationaal Stater Hypotheken
Systeem) to Estate because they want guaranteed
performance,” said Ernsten. “Estate is also very user friendly;
the user interface is more intuitive and it is also web-based,
therefore there are no iSHS function keys needed. Users only
have to click to use the application, and future users will only
need one day of training to get up to speed.”
Because Stater took advantage of Red Hat Consulting,
employees received group lessons by a certified Red Hat
98
redhat.com/jboss
consultant. “Our consultant explained how the environment
works and what developers need to pay attention to,” said
Ernsten. This training session was attended by all application
managers and developer team leaders who support their
employees by designing the workstations.
BENEFITS
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5 enables Stater to perform
release maintenance management quickly and efficiently, which
was one of the organization’s primary goals of the migration.
The solution offers several additional benefits such as stability,
security, and cost savings.
”When moving to open source software, we had to alter our thinking
patterns,” said Ernsten. “And because of this, we were able to
immediately reap the benefits of open source software with the
subscription model and advanced enterprise support.”
Stater developed a basic structure, creating a uniform way of
developing and deploying. Because of this basic structure, a
fixed building method and cycle ensures that errors are easier to
detect. “The development, testing, approval, and entering-intoproduction environments are all designed in an identical manner,”
said Ernsten. “Everyone uses the same templates so they all
work in the same way. This results in very clear development and
deployment of applications. You can trace errors in every phase
of DTAP, which is a big advantage.”
“Since first deploying JBoss Enterprise Application Platform nine
months ago, we have experienced zero downtime,” said Ernsten.
“JBoss solutions have offered us the security, manageability, and
around-the-clock availability necessary to service our demanding
customer base.”
Stater realized significant cost savings by avoiding the license fees for
Oracle WebLogic and also benefits from increased speed and superior
performance. Stater can now run several instances on one server and
different version of applications can be tested simultaneously. The
migration from Oracle WebLogic to JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform has also allowed Stater to reduce its hardware sprawl.
“It was immediately apparent that Red Hat has a lot of
experience leading its customers to adopt open source
solutions,” said Ernsten. “The project was completed on time
and within budget. If I call Red Hat with a question, I know I will
receive an answer and a solution to the issue within 24 hours.
That is not always the case with Red Hat’s competitors.”
Holding a unique position in the European Business Process
Outsourcing (BPO) market, Stater has designed its IT
infrastructure to be scalable and future-proof. In the coming
months, Stater will move the remaining customers from iSHS
mid-office to Estate to enable them to benefit from the new
system. After the completion of the project, all operational
employees at Stater, as well as all lenders and intermediary
operational employees, will use the new application.
STATER | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
American Family Insurance:
JBoss Innovation Award Winner
2009: Management Excellence
Geography
United States
BACKGROUND
American Family Mutual Insurance Company, the nation’s third-largest
mutual property and casualty insurer and 14th-largest property and
casualty insurance company group, offers multiple insurance lines. These
offerings include automotive, home, life, health, and business insurance.
American Family began with three employees in 1927 and has since grown
to become a Fortune 500 company that generated $6.7 billion in revenue
in 2008. American Family has 4,000 agents who serve 19 states.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
An issue of scalability was American Family’s greatest technical challenge,
as the Java application server environment was growing consistently
and there was a need to identify a cost effective, stable and reliable
management solution that would complement this growth. American
Family’s prior management system could not scale to the size needed at an
appropriate cost.
American Family deployed JBoss Operations Network (JBoss ON) across
1,200 JBoss application server instances and is using it to monitor and
manage those systems.
SOLUTION
American Family required a systems management solution that would provide:
Real-time monitoring, alerting, historical trending, and the ability to control
running systems in its JBoss Enterprise Application Platform environment.
Performance of the product was a huge criterion — performance not only
to scale, but to be responsive so that the operations team could use it
successfully on a daily basis.
About 3 years ago, American Family began migrating its IBM WebSphere
environment to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform to run many of the
company’s business critical applications, including billing and claims, customer
information management, an agent-facing sales suite, and web services. As
the JBoss environment grew, American Family quickly identified the need for
the tools to help monitor and manage the servers. The company evaluated a
number of tools from several leading vendors and selected JBoss ON based
on cost, scalability, and functionality.
The American Family operations team was asked to monitor, manage, and
control a very large computing infrastructure with several different tools.
JBoss ON will allow the Computer Operations team to manage the entire
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | AMERICAN FAMILY
redhat.com/jboss
99
JBoss infrastructure with one console.
American Family will also continue to look for additional
opportunities to use JBoss ON with their application
developers. It is hoped that by using JBoss ON, American
Family will be better able to detect and fix problems earlier in
the software delivery life-cycle.
BENEFITS
American Family expects to see improved reliability in the
application server space due to the JBoss ON feature of
historical trend analysis of key system metrics and faster
time to react when there are problems due to the alerts
based on those same metrics.
American Family is hoping to extend this capability into
application support areas to detect problems early in the
software development lifecycle. Through alerting, monitoring,
and the opportunity to proactively address situations before
they cause an outage, JBoss ON will improve the reliability
and availability of Java application server applications and
keep internal customers satisfied.
Ad hoc management scripts and tooling will be replaced with
JBoss ON. The result should reduce time and effort needed
to manage, monitor and control systems.
American Family has been working in a collaborative manner
with the JBoss ON engineering, support and product team
for close to two years. JBoss provided four people on-site
and over the course of two days, they worked out a number
of technical challenges that could not have been tested or
seen in the lab. This collaboration has resulted in improved
scalability and features.
By working together, American Family and Red Hat
have given back something of value to the open source
community.
American Family worked closely with JBoss ON resources to
ensure that the product met functional and non-functional
requirements such as scalability and performance.
American Family worked closely with JBoss ON resources to
ensure that the product met functional and non-functional
requirements such as scalability and performance.
The American Family and JBoss collaborative work on JBoss
ON blazed a trail for the future features and scalability of
the monitoring and management product and will provide
benefits to other customers and developers to capitalize on.
100
redhat.com/jboss
AMERICAN FAMILY | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Red Hat Solutions Enable
CME Group to Process Millions
of Critical Financial
Transactions Per Day
Geography
Global
BACKGROUND
CME Group is the world’s largest and most diverse derivatives exchange.
Building on the heritage of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago
Board of Trade, and New York Mercantile Exchange, CME Group serves
the risk management needs of customers around the globe. As an
international marketplace, CME Group brings buyers and sellers together
on the CME Globex electronic trading platform and on trading floors in
Chicago and New York.
CME Group provides the widest range of benchmark futures and options
products available on any exchange, covering all major asset classes,
including interest rates, equities, FX, commodities, and alternative
investments such as weather and real estate. CME Group’s vision is one
of ongoing global growth, innovative product development, continually
enhanced technology, and the highest level of service available on any
exchange.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
To migrate from a cost-inhibitive
proprietary UNIX platform to a Linux
alternative in order to reduce costs and
increase performance, reliability, scalability,
and agility of the systems on which its
critical trading platforms handle billions
of derivatives trades per year, worth more
than a quadrillion in notional value
migration path
Sun Solaris on SPARC servers to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux on x86-based servers
“Our technology partnership with Red Hat is
key to us staying competitive in the market.
We look to Red Hat for technology leadership
through updates and support that help us to
improve our tuning so that we can give our
customers the best possible experience”
Software
– Joe Panfil, managing director of Enterprise Technology
Services at CME Group
4,000 x86 quad-core servers
Enterprise Application Platform, Red Hat
Technical Account Manager
(TAM), Red Hat Training
HARDWARE
benefits
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Achieved reduced latency, expanded
CME Group processes millions of transactions per day. In 2008, CME Group’s
volume totaled 3.3 billion contracts, worth $1.2 quadrillion in notional value.
In order to meet the heavy demands placed on its IT systems, CME Group
has rigorous requirements that must be met across the performance,
scalability, reliability, ease of use, and costs of its IT infrastructure.
flexibility, heightened performance,
CME Group’s IT architecture must also be agile to scale with rapid system
changes in demand and volume. It must reduce latency wherever possible
to ensure millisecond response times for its customers and needs the
reliability, scalability, and performance of a mission-critical
infrastructure.
transactions
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | CME GROUP
redhat.com/jboss
ease of migration and management, and
increased scalability while providing cost
savings for the systems responsible for
processing CME Group’s millions of daily
101
Since 1997, CME Group has witnessed a migration of trading
volume from the trading floors to its Globex electronic
trading platform. Today, 80 percent of CME Group’s volume
is handled by its electronic trading platform, with 20
percent of volume still handled on the trading floor.
CME Group previously relied on a proprietary UNIX
operating platform, but began looking for affordable, highperformance alternatives in 2002. “Our systems were
relying on a proprietary UNIX platform,” said Joe Panfil,
managing director of Enterprise Technology Services at
CME Group. “As the responsibilities of the UNIX servers
grew and the number of applications they ran continued to
expand, the cost of running those applications grew too.”
CME Group began investigating alternative platforms
and placed an emphasis on examining open source Linux
options. After rigorous internal testing, CME Group’s IT
team decided that a move to Linux would provide cost,
performance, and reliability benefits over its previous
Solaris platform. To prepare for the migration, the team
created an eight-step plan for moving to Linux.
SOLUTION
A key factor in CME Group’s plan to move to Linux was to
identify a technology vendor that could provide optimized
support for its Linux operating systems. “Our systems are
too critical to not have someone to turn to in the event that
an issue arises,” said Panfil. “We looked at the players, and
Red Hat had the best support infrastructure and the most
solid product.”
“We saw the performance advantages of Linux and were
looking for ways to reduce costs and increase performance
for our customers,” said Vinod Kutty, associate director,
Distributed Computing at CME Group. “Red Hat Enterprise
Linux fit the bill, and we started to gradually test and deploy
it internally. Our organization was an early adopter of open
source technologies, and we first deployed Linux in 2003.”
Red Hat Enterprise Linux became the primary operating
platform for CME Group’s Globex electronic trading
platform in 2004. The exchange began by deploying Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, and has migrated to all of the
latest versions of the leading operating platform through
today’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. During the first year in
production in 2004, Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivered a
twofold increase in performance and reduced costs for CME
Group by 50 percent. Today, 99 percent of its distributed
platform runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based servers support both
CME Group’s Globex electronic trading platform as well as
devices on its trading floors. “We still have a huge interest
in the trading floor, but the electronic trading platform is
102
redhat.com/jboss
very attractive to those who desire the speed it delivers,”
said Panfil. “Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports both the
electronic trading platform and the floor through the server
floor displays and hand-held trading devices.”
CME Group’s IT architecture is designed so that every
application runs on a minimum of two servers and a
disaster- recovery server. “We try to design applications
so that failover is seamless and customers don’t see
interruptions,” said Panfil.
The move to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on commodity x86
hardware goes hand-in-hand with CME Group’s horizontal
scalability model. “Red Hat helped us achieve the level of
horizontal scalability that we needed,” said Kutty. “Our
ability to add incremental capacity to the thousands of
servers we maintain daily with the reliability to deal with
the great demands of day-to-day trading is only possible
because of Linux and our work with Red Hat.”
Given the history and partnering with Red Hat, CME is
considering extending that partnership to JBoss Enterprise
Middleware technology. “We’ve worked with JBoss
architects on solutions in the past and are now determining
if JBoss can help us drive the open source software
community in the same manner Red Hat has driven
the operating system,” said Joel Tosi, lead applications
architect for Front-End Systems at CME Group.
Relying on one vendor for support for both its operating
system and middleware layers has proved valuable to CME
Group. “The coordination between Red Hat and CME Group
has been great,” said Tosi. “We knew we wanted to grow the
partnership with Red Hat that we had already established
and grown for more than six years. With Red Hat, we also
knew we’d get the high visibility we wanted for both our
operating system and middleware projects.”
BENEFIT
Performance is a key metric on which CME Group is judged
by its customers. Many of CME Group’s customers’ highest
priorities are reduced latency and speed. “We need a good
balance of performance and reliability,” said Kutty. “We
need to be able to react very quickly to changes in business.
We don’t want fluctuations in performance and cannot have
any downtime.”
“One thing we found was that Linux was faster, and speed
in this industry is really important,” said Panfil. “We want
customers to get as fast a response time as possible,
and with Red Hat Enterprise Linux we gained speed and
reduced costs.”
The reduced costs associated with Linux were an attractive
factor to CME Group’s selection of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
“Cost savings was something we were targeting, but we
CME GROUP | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
didn’t know how dramatic the cost savings would be,” said
Kutty. “We saved during the initial switch from the support
perspective, but over time, a combination of Linux and
commodity hardware has continued to deliver reduced costs.”
The IT team expects to gain continued cost savings from
elimination of licensing with both its Red Hat Enterprise
Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform solutions
and through resource reallocation. “We see cost savings
not only from both the operating system and middleware
infrastructures, but from the productivity of staff too,” said
Tosi. “We see productivity gains when our staff has the
ability to see into the code and also through the ease of
management of the systems.”
CME Group also reduced costs by gaining flexibility with its
systems. CME Group strategically executes a multi-vendor
strategy in order to avoid vendor lock-in. With Red Hat, it
achieved a platform with great flexibility through a broad
ecosystem of certified hardware and software vendors.
CME Group was quickly able to transition its administrators’
UNIX expertise to its new systems. The team leveraged
hands-on Red Hat Training courses to ease the shift of both
skills and systems, which resulted in a seamless migration.
CME Group also benefited from the skills of its dedicated Red
Hat Technical Account Manager (TAM), who offers additional,
ongoing Red Hat expertise to the exchange’s IT team. Its
TAM is the first line of support and provides one point of
contact through which CME Group can collaborate with Red
Hat on new technologies and support needs.
“The practical, hands-on nature of Red Hat Training courses
provided real value to the transition of our team’s skills to
Linux,” said Kutty. “All of our system administrators are Red
Hat Certified Engineers (RHCE).”
CME Group today works closely with Red Hat’s performance
teams to demonstrate workloads and tune systems for the
great performance and reliability demands it mandates for
its mission-critical systems. It builds synthetic workloads
that replicate the demands of its systems in order to
collaborate with Red Hat for future developments for Red
Hat Enterprise Linux and other products. Together, Red Hat
and CME Group form a technology partnership that benefits
the entire open source community as well as the vast
community of Red Hat customers.
“Our technology partnership with Red Hat is key to us staying
competitive in the market,” said Panfil. “We look to Red Hat
for technology leadership through updates and support
that help us to improve our tuning so that we can give our
customers the best possible experience. To be competitive in
this industry, we have to use the best possible applications,
operating systems, and servers. For our mission-critical
systems, we leverage Red HatEnterprise Linux.”
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | CME GROUP
redhat.com/jboss
103
104
Frost Bank builds
business -critical online
banking system on JBoss
Enterprise Application platform
Geography
San Antonio, Texas
cHanging courSe: to reMain coMpetitive, FroSt Bank
needed to replace a tecHnology Foundation
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Frost Bank had been running its online banking system for almost a decade.
But in 2009, as the bank began planning the future technology foundation
for this business-critical application, it recognized a need to change course.
Frost Bank needed to modernize its
“We realized that staying with the legacy architecture was not a good
strategic direction for us,” said Doug Skiba, senior vice president of
Information Technology Architecture at Frost Bank. “In addition to the
support issues, the legacy application had a single-threaded architecture,
so the only way to increase capacity was to add nodes and scale out
horizontally. This was an extremely costly way to go,” said Skiba. “We
wanted to move to an industry-standard solution that fully supported J2EE
and could scale as we grew.”
application server platform for its critical
application infrastructure. This meant
replacing the legacy e-commerce
online banking system with a more flexible,
scalable platform that encourages greater
developer productivity. Scaling the existing
application to meet Frost Bank’s rapid
growth was costly, and it was difficult
to find resources that supported the
legacy codebase. By migrating to JBoss®
“When we did the side-by-side
comparisons, JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform performed on par with much more
expensive options.”
– Doug Skiba, Senior Vice President Of Information Technology
Architecture, Frost Bank
Enterprise Application Platform, the
banking company increased developer and
administrator productivity, and enhanced
production efficiency.
migration path
Legacy e-commerce application server to
Frost also needed the application platform to be robust and reliable, given
the importance of the initiative. Frost Bank’s online banking system is a
critical part of the bank’s overall business strategy. “Eleven years ago, we
faced a strategic decision: buy an online banking product in the marketplace,
or build it ourselves,” said Skiba. “Because of our strong relationshipdriven culture, we knew we needed complete control over the features and
functions of the system. We also absolutely required control of the customer
experience. We decided the only way to get all this was to build the system
ourselves. Today, we serve roughly 250,000 customers and originate $8
billion worth of transactions annually through our online channels.”
Frost Bank was also interested in improving the productivity of its
developers and administrators. Like all businesses, Frost Bank was under
pressure to keep costs low—but the fact that it was growing meant that
there was an increasing burden on the existing IT staff.
Because Frost Bank considered its online banking system as a core
competency, the choice of strategic platform on which to deliver more
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | FROST BANK
SOLUTIONS
JBoss® Enterprise Application
Platform 5.1, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®
HARDWARE
HP Proliant bl460c G6 (Quad-core Intel
Xeon 2267 MHz, 36GB memory)
benefits
By migrating to JBoss® Enterprise
Application Platform, the banking
company increased developer and
administrator productivity, and enhanced
production efficiency.
redhat.com/jboss
105
features and functionality was a critical one.
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform:
The right choice to support Frost Bank’s
business goals
In 2009, Frost began researching strategic application
platform technology alternatives and decided to focus
strictly on J2EE application server technology.
Feedback from leading IT analyst firms Forrester and
Gartner indicated that, for what the bank was doing and
planning to do, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform was
equal to or better than the commercially available J2EE
application server alternatives. “When we did the side-byside comparisons, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
performed on par with much more expensive options,”
said Skiba, “And it was certainly a much more economical
choice.”
The migration process for Frost Bank went very smoothly,
including the training of existing administration and
networking engineering teams on new tools and techniques.
“The developers were able to get up to speed very
quickly, and our administrative folks say JBoss Enterprise
Application Server is a lot easier to run,” said Skiba.
“Everyone was happy with the results.”
“We didn’t have to hire anyone new to complete the
modernization project, despite the complexity of the
initiative, because our developers were able to make the
transition to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform very
easily,” said Skiba. “In fact, since then, the productivity
of both our developers and administrators has increased
because of how easy and fast they can build in JBoss.”
Enterprise Application Platform allows us to do this simply
by adding another node to the cluster. Other solutions
required us to do infrastructure uplift.”
“Cost was a huge component of our decision,” said
Skiba. “JBoss offers a very compelling business model:
a subscription that runs on any CPU, regardless of
whether it is disaster recovery, test and development, or
production.” Additionally, the Frost development team was
interested in taking advantage of the open source library—
both as a way to acquire technology to run their code
and to provide support when they needed it. “Going with
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform aligned with all our
goals and plans,” said Skiba.
Red Hat Consulting helped Skiba with the JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform application, and in
the future he plans to work with with Red Hat to learn
more agile software development techniques for J2EE
applications. “Historically, we’ve done one or two major
projects a year,” said Skiba. “But we’d like to start working
on them concurrently and accelerate to six or more
projects annually.”
“If you’re thinking strategically for the long term, I would
advise you to compare and contrast JBoss Enterprise
Application Server with pricier alternatives. I think you’ll
be extremely impressed at how well it measures up,” said
Skiba. “Our shift in strategic direction to that platform has
been achieved, and it was absolutely the right thing to do.”
Today, Frost Bank has 6 instances of JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform deployed on 3 physical nodes, with 2
instances per node. The base hardware is HP blade servers.
Red Hat supports Frost Bank as it grows
its deposit base
The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform-supported
system went live in May 2012. Since that time, online
activity has been at historically high levels. The best
news, as far as Skiba was concerned: The migration to
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform was completely
transparent from the end-user perspective. “With this
migration, we didn’t introduce a lot of new functionality,”
he said. “We also kept the same look and feel so that users
wouldn’t experience any difference. We considered hearing
nothing back from our user community good news.”
The scalability of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
has also proven to be a boon. “The bank has been very
successful growing its consumer deposit base, so we
needed the ability to scale the system easily. JBoss
106
redhat.com/jboss
FROST BANK | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
GEICO MIGRATES TO JBOSS:
JBOSS INNOVATION AWARD WINNER
2009: SUPERIOR ALTERNATIVES
Geography
United States
BACKGROUND
GEICO (Government Employees Insurance Company) is the third-largest
private passenger auto insurer in the United States based on the latest
12 months written premium. GEICO provides auto insurance coverage for
nearly 9 million policyholders and insures more than 14.4 million vehicles.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In addition to auto insurance, GEICO also offers customers insurance for
their motorcycles and homes. Commercial auto insurance, boat, ATV, RV,
personal umbrella protection and life insurance are also available.
to maintain. The architecture team
GEICO is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Berkshire Hathaway group of
companies, is rated A++ for financial stability by A.M. Best Company and
ranks at the top of several national customer satisfaction surveys. For
more information about GEICO, go to www.geico.com.
Existing proprietary middleware platform
was complex to manage, not performing
and scaling as expected and expensive
decided to investigate alternatives that
could be deployed that would better meet
their needs.
migration path
Proprietary middleware platform to
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In 2007, GEICO’s enterprise architecture team recognized they were facing
several challenges with their existing proprietary middleware platform. The
platform was complex to manage, not performing and scaling as expected
and expensive to maintain. The architecture team decided to investigate
alternatives that could be deployed that would better meet their needs.
benefits
Reduced the total cost of ownership by
more than 30 percent, throughput gain
of 3X with utilization down to one-third
of the current platform, overall resource
The GEICO IT team identified the following challenges with their existing
proprietary solution:
utilization went from above 50 percent
• Cost – GEICO’s license agreement was a “time-bound licensing agreement”
related to the number of proprietary application servers deployed during
the time frame. Since GEICO experienced significant growth during this
time frame, the cost to “true up” and pay for the additional licenses was
significant.
• Performance – When GEICO upgraded their standard Java Development Kit
(JDK) from version 1.4 to 1.5 on their existing proprietary platform, they did
not see any improvements in machine (CPU/Memory) usage or application
response time. After eight weeks of performance testing and tuning, they
were finally able to configure the upgraded proprietary platform to match
the earlier version’s performance. The upgrade was not only cumbersome
but was also expensive, since they had to engage external consultants to
accomplish the upgrade.
• Memory leaks – The previous proprietary deployment also experienced
unexplained memory leak(s). Developer load and memory testing returned
misleading results unless the developer knew how to work around the leaks
and complete certain types of tests.
• Documentation/Support – GEICO found it challenging to identify and
understand the Java API in the current proprietary environment due
significant room for scalability without
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | GEICO
redhat.com/jboss
to under 10 percent which allowed
having to acquire additional hardware.
107
to lack of documentation. They also had challenges in
acquiring tools to identify memory issues, debug leaks,
etc. For every instance of a high severity issue such as
memory leak, external consultants needed to be engaged
to identify and fix the problem.
• Staging – Due to these challenges, some of the GEICO
development teams adopted JBoss technologies for their
developer workstations and began building applications
using JBoss. This dual-use strategy became complex
and redundant for IT Operations as they needed to make
configuration changes on both the proprietary and JBoss
platforms
BENEFITS
By implementing JBoss Enterprise Application Platform,
GEICO was able to reduce the total cost of ownership by
more than 30 percent.
When compared to the previous proprietary platform,
GEICO also experienced throughput gains of 3x, and a
two-thirds reduction in utilization. The overall resource
utilization went from above 50 percent to under 10
percent which allowed significant room for scalability
without having to acquire additional hardware.
RED HAT SUPPORT, TRAINING, AND
CONSULTING SERVICES LEVERAGED
VENDOR SELECTION PROCESS
GEICO conducted extensive research and identified Sun’s
GlassFish and Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Middleware
as potential solutions that were suitable for GEICO’s
application and infrastructure. JBoss Enterprise Middleware
was selected based on its’ market share and extensive
support from Red Hat. GEICO conducted a proof-ofconcept, installing JBoss Enterprise Application Platform in
a cluster of servers (POC environment). Performance and
load tests were conducted using various tools for a selected
business application on both platforms.
The JBoss results from these tests were astonishing. A few
highlights include:
• User page transition time decreased as much as 19
seconds using JBoss
• During the proof-of-concept, 1,749 additional business
processes were created on the JBoss platform
• On the same hardware and environment, JBoss required
70 percent less CPU resources than the current platform
• Performance tuning with JBoss was accomplished in
40 man hours versus 1440 man hours for the existing
proprietary platform
One of the challenges for GEICO was the time-bound
migration process. GEICO’s middleware team was trained
on JBoss for a week. With the support of Red Hat and
Amentra (a Red Hat company), they successfully migrated
the initial 2 applications and were able to migrate the
3rd application as well. This was a clear demonstration of
expertise in Red Hat Consulting services and the ability
of GEICO’s middleware team to adapt rapidly to the new
JBoss environment.
ADVICE FOR OTHER COMPANIES FACING A
SIMILAR BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Open source does not translate to unsupported. Don’t
be afraid of change. GEICO had initial concerns about
support, stability and deploying open-source software for
its mission critical applications, but the market maturity
and the premium level of enterprise support offered by
Red Hat made it very easy to make the change to an open
source environment. If your organization has been slow to
consider adopting open-source solutions, they may lose a
competitive advantage that can be gained based on lower
cost of ownership and utilization of efficient/best of breed
open source products.
GEICO also conducted multiple reference checks with
organizations that were of similar size and industry. The
reference checks were extremely positive about Red Hat
and JBoss Enterprise Middleware.
SOLUTION
The solution consisted of subscriptions for JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) and the initial
deployment environment consisted of 540 processors.
An additional 350 were added at a later date. A plan was
put together to aggressively migrate 2 out of 3 mission
critical applications in a time span of 3 months. GEICO also
utilized a JBoss Technical Account Manager (TAM) who was
dedicated to supporting GEICO’s specific needs during their
switch to JBoss.
108
redhat.com/jboss
GEICO | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Michigan Millers Insurance
Re-Architects Its Mission-Critical
System on JBoss Enterprise
Middleware
Geography
Lansing, MI
BACKGROUND
Michigan Millers Mutual Insurance Company is a regional carrier of
personal, commercial, and agribusiness insurance. With more than 180
employees and more than 300 independent agents in North America,
Michigan Millers registered $143 million in revenues in 2008. Committed to
delivering a high level of customized and personal service, Michigan Millers
makes continual investments in training, technology, and people in its
quest to be their agents’ favorite insurance company.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Needed to integrate a new policy
management system with back-end legacy
applications
solution
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
JBoss Rules, JBoss Seam, JBoss jBPM,
As a business that prides itself on customer service, Michigan Millers
needed to give its agents and associates the right tools to ensure that they
could service customers both quickly and efficiently. To better achieve this,
the company decided it was necessary to replace its outdated, internal-only,
mainframe-based policy administration system with an Internet-enabled
system that could be used directly by agents.
JBoss Richfaces, Hibernate
The new system had to be thoroughly integrated with the company’s back-end
systems, including third-party vendor services, existing mainframe-based policy
administration systems, a data warehouse, and many other internal applications.
To add to the complexity of the project, some of the applications were managed
in-house, whereas others had been outsourced to third-party vendors.
benefits
Cut development costs in half, reduced
development time, increased employee
productivity, and achieved greater
stability.
Michigan Millers initially created this integration using a vendor product,
but once the system was in production a host of scalability problems crept
in. Unable to handle the production load, the system would continually fail
during nightly batch processing, forcing developers to stay late to monitor
the system and correct any errors. The business unit was also severely
impacted. Real-time services were slow and error-prone, systems would be
unavailable or contain out-of-date information, and corrupted business data
would get sent to down-stream systems.
When it became clear that the existing integration could not be fixed and
had to be replaced, the team pushed for developing an integration hub (IHub)
based on Java EE technology. Matthew Cannata, a senior programmer/
analyst for Michigan Millers who had previous experience with the JBoss,
suggested using JBoss Enterprise Middleware as the foundation for the IHub
due to its position in the marketplace as an enterprise-ready solution, and
the cost effectiveness of open source software.
SOLUTION
Cannata spent the next two weeks developing a proof of concept for the
IHub using the unsupported JBoss Application Server based on the JBoss
open source community project.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | MICHIGAN MILLERS
redhat.com/jboss
109
“Our senior management was impressed and fully
convinced that JBoss was the right way to go,” said Gary
Smith, manager of application development for Michigan
Millers.
After using the community version of JBoss, Michigan
Millers clearly understood the need for enterprise-level
support, and quickly made the decision to purchase
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. Within six months,
the team had fully developed and replaced the existing
integration infrastructure. An additional benefit was
realized shortly afterward when the IHub provided an easy
and stable platform for the integration of a new billing
system.
For the next three years, Michigan Millers used JBoss
primarily for system integration. However, when it was
decided that the new policy administration system now
had to be replaced, JBoss Enterprise Middleware was the
platform of choice for the development team on which to
build the new system.
“The existing system simply wasn’t able to scale to meet
our growing needs, which made it difficult to manage for
day-to-day production support, and for making functionality
enhancements,” said Smith. “We decided to evaluate
open source alternatives for reasons of time, money, and
flexibility.”
With approval from upper management, the team set off
on a 16-month project to build a new policy administration
system from the ground up. The new system added
additional JBoss Enterprise Middleware technologies to the
Michigan Millers ecosystem, including JBoss Rules, JBoss
jBPM, JBoss Seam, JBoss Richfaces, and Hibernate.
BENEFITS
The company plans to roll out the new policy administration
system for Michigan Millers’ auto insurance line of business
in March 2010. However, migrating to JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform has already improved the stability
of the back-end system integration and Michigan Millers
is already experiencing fewer errors, easier ongoing
maintenance, and reduced support costs.
“Not only did JBoss Enterprise Middleware reduce the
learning curve of my team members, but the maintenance
and support costs have also been significantly reduced,
which is paramount in this economic climate,” said Smith.
Smith managed to also keep his resource requirements
down — another huge cost savings. “We would have needed
four times as many developers, and twice the development
time to migrate to anything other than JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform,” said Smith.
110
redhat.com/jboss
The original integration infrastructure required individual
interfaces between each of the 27 different back-end
systems. However, with the JBoss Enterprise Application
platform, the workload is significantly reduced. “The IHub
has allowed us to consolidate our system integration
into one central location and reuse integration between
systems. Before, we were integrating each system with
every other system individually,” said Greg Rochon, senior
programmer/analyst.
Moreover, because the architecture of the new policy
management system is based on open standards and a
modular design, its frontend can be separated from the
underlying rating and rules engines. “If we want to create
a front end for an iPhone, we can do that without having
to rewrite anything,” said Smith. “With the old system,
everything was so bundled together that we couldn’t
easily replace components as needed.”
“We are totally committed to Red Hat
and our JBoss Enterprise Middleware
deployment and intend to use it for more
and more strategic initiatives throughout
our business.”
– Gary Smith
“Today, given the successful proof of concept we did with
the JBoss Community and how we’ve been able to resolve
our development and production problems through open
source middleware, as well as made our people more
productive, senior management has begun to understand
and support open source as a development concept for
our strategic needs.”
“I put my job on the line that JBoss Enterprise Middleware
would work, and I’ve actually benefited from that, given
how many advantages we’ve gained from it,” said Smith.
“We’ve now done more than a dozen code releases based on
our JBoss Enterprise Middleware deployment and I’m very
satisfied with my decision. Our JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform deployment just keeps getting better, given the
combination of community contributions and Red Hat’s own
innovations and quality and security enhancements.”
And Cannata agrees, “I’ve personally been following
JBoss as a company since 2002. Today JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform is really one of the best application
servers available.”
MICHIGAN MILLERS | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
NYSE Euronext Standardizes
on JBoss Enterprise Middleware
BACKGROUND
As the leading and most liquid equities exchange group, NYSE Euronext
powers the exchanging world and is comprised of equities and derivatives
exchanges across the United States and Europe that trade cash equities,
futures, options, fixed-income, and exchange-traded products. With more
than 8,000 listed issues, NYSE Euronext is home to the world’s leading
companies providing access to the global liquidity they need to collaborate,
compete, and grow.
Geography
Global
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Needed a single, common, and flexible
platform that would simplify NYSE
Euronext’s application development,
For issuers of all sizes and geographies, NYSE Euronex offers maximum
flexibility to raise capital through its various listing choices. NYSE Euronext’s
family of exchanges, located in six countries, includes the New York Stock
Exchange, the world’s largest cash equities market, NYSE Euronext, the
Eurozone’s largest cash equities market, and NYSE Alternext, a panEuropean market designed specifically for emerging companies.
deployment, and management processes
From an IT perspective, NYSE Euronext’s requirements for performance,
scalability, and reliability are second to none. Applications deployed and
managed by NYSE Euronext must maintain a high degree of integrity and
peak performance throughout the trading day. If systems should stall or fail,
the world’s financial markets could be significantly impacted.
Multiple application servers to JBoss
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
SOFTWARE
While multiple mergers and acquisitions cemented NYSE Euronext’s position
as the world’s preeminent marketplace, they also left the holding company
with heterogeneous middleware technologies and standards across its IT
infrastructure that resulted in latency, slow response times, and complicated
data management. “We had no common way to build, test, verify, deploy,
and monitor applications,” said Michael Gendelman, technical lead, NYSE
Euronext.
With more than 3,000 customers using the NYSE Euronext network for
critical trading transactions, the exchange needed to keep its trading
system operational to ensure its business, as well as its clients’ businesses,
continued to run smoothly. NYSE Euronext’s use of multiple vendors reduced
developer performance, because it left no single vendor accountable when
issues arose. The amount of time developers spent on support limited the
amount of time they spent on innovation and business needs. In addition to
better access to support, NYSE Euronext developers required more control
over the infrastructure, which included opportunities to turn processes on or
off, download new features and functions, and rapidly deploy applications.
benefits
while still meeting mission-critical
requirements for reliability, performance,
and scalability
migration path
Enterprise Application Platform and a
legacy portal server to JBoss Enterprise
Portal Platform
Platform, JBoss Enterprise Portal
Platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux
HARDWARE
x86-based servers and blades
Experienced 50-60 percent cost savings;
simplified architecture, management,
deployment, and usability by moving to
JBoss Enterprise Middleware; increased
performance, speed of deployment,
flexibility, reliability, access to support,
and control of the infrastructure;
improved regulation and security;
NYSE Euronext also needed to displace its inflexible architecture, which was
not providing a cost-effective way to scale to meet performance demands
and operational management requirements for simplicity. Striving for
technology consistency (especially at the middleware level), reduced costs,
and high performance for its systems, NYSE Euronext began investigating
streamlined processes; reduced failovers
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | NYSE
redhat.com/jboss
and development lifecycles
111
alternative leading middleware technologies to adopt as an
organizational standard and build on its already successful
Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform.
“We’ve been running mission-critical
applications on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
for a long time. It was that experience
and those results that led us to consider
JBoss Enterprise Middleware, and we’re
satisfied, and not surprised, knowing
that Red Hat’s middleware solutions
are as enterprise-class as its platform
solutions.”
– Brian Clark, chief software architect, NYSE Euronext
SOLUTION
To determine the best middleware solution, NYSE Euronext
conducted use cases that quickly revealed the many
strengths of JBoss Enterprise Middleware, including
increased performance, reliability, simplicity, flexibility,
and cost savings. “The success in the regulation area was
especially impactful in our decision,” said Brian Clark,
chief software architect at NYSE Euronext. “Its ease of
deployment and use helped to make JBoss Enterprise
Middleware an easy sell.”
In addition to the ability to drive simplicity and reduce
costs, NYSE Euronext’s positive experience with Red Hat
Enterprise Linux influenced its decision to migrate to JBoss
Enterprise Middleware. “Red Hat Enterprise Linux helped
us to optimize our critical trading platform, and we use it
everywhere,” said Clark. “It’s the corporate standard in our
trading complex, for post-trade, and even in our corporate
systems.”
NYSE Euronext developers were able to preview and gain
confidence with Red Hat’s middleware products through
JBoss Community projects. “In addition to previewing the
JBoss Community versions in our environment, this model
allowed us to demonstrate to our management team which
particular problem was being solved, rather than saying,
‘can we buy this, and then maybe it will solve a particular
problem,’” said Gendelman. As NYSE Euronext moved more
of its mission-critical, public-facing applications to Red
Hat’s middleware platform, upper management approved
the final and complete migration to Red Hat’s enterpriseready, supported, and tested JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform.
112
redhat.com/jboss
Several of NYSE Euronext’s mission-critical applications
use JBoss Enterprise Middleware. JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform is used in NYSE Euronext’s
operational data store application for the trading floor,
which captures trades and orders in real time, and in its
back office and regulatory business. “If you can’t surveil,
you can’t trade,” said Clark. “Using JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, we generate Java code that
runs surveillances to ensure that trading is conducted
properly.”
JBoss Enterprise Middleware provides a middle tier
for NYSE Euronext’s business analysts to monitor the
market via its Stockwatch application. Stockwatch, a
mission critical regulatory application that connects to
NYSE Euronext’s trading systems, provides real-time
surveillance and handles more than 100,000 messages
per second.
JBoss Enterprise Middleware is also used by an entire
server farm at NYSE Euronext for its web applications,
running all of NYSE Euronext’s external websites, such as
nyx.com, nysedata.com, and nysemoneysense.com. NYSE
Euronext also uses JBoss Enterprise Middleware to create
tools for operations, enabling the development team to
quickly deploy applications to production and save manual
intervention on the systems.
BENEFITS
“We saw major benefits in two particular areas: cost
savings, and the simplicity of the architecture,” said Clark.
“As we migrated applications from our former platforms
to JBoss Enterprise Middleware, we were able to achieve a
50-60 percent cost reduction.”
Simplicity and flexibility: “The microkernel architecture
and the ability to turn processes on or off depending on
what the application needs is very significant,” said Clark.
“One of the things we strive for is simplicity, because it’s
easier to manage, it’s easier to deploy, and it’s easier to
use.”
Unlike some of NYSE’s Euronext’s prior proprietary
products, JBoss Enterprise Middleware provided an
easy migration and today provides quick application
deployments. “Some of the other products in this space
tend to be overly complex,” said Clark. “We were able to
migrate to JBoss Enterprise Middleware quickly and the
solutions enabled us to reduce our processing needs.”
The flexibility of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
enabled NYSE Euronext to easily integrate with its
existing security architecture. “We didn’t have to rebuild
our security infrastructure,” said Sunny Xiao Liu, director
of regulatory systems, NYSE Euronext. “We were able
to plug our security module into the JBoss container to
NYSE | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
authenticate and authorize our existing infrastructure,
which sped up and simplified the migration.”
“With JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, we were
able to easily and efficiently migrate our applications and
standardize our building mechanism,” said Gendelman. “We
can now build, test, verify, and deploy applications the same
way.”
Prior to the migration, NYSE Euronext employees and
developers had to understand multiple toolsets and
environments to move from application to application.
“Now, everyone is able to follow the same process,” said
Gendelman. “Standardizing our entire environment on
JBoss Enterprise Middleware has enabled us to solve
problems once and share solutions across the entire
platform.”
though some of the questions that we put forth to them
might have been a little gray about where the problem lies,
it was really nice because they had the operating system
and the stack together. They were there to help support
us; and we were able to get through it.”
“We’ve been running mission-critical applications on
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a long time,” said Clark. “It
was that experience and those results that led us to
consider JBoss Enterprise Middleware, and we’re satisfied,
and not surprised, knowing that Red Hat’s middleware
solutions are as enterprise-class as its platform solutions.”
Cost savings: Due to the lightweight nature of JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, NYSE Euronext’s
application deployment required less hardware than its
legacy server deployment. Due to its simplicity and ease
of use, both developers and IT operations are now more
productive on the JBoss Enterprise Middleware platform.
By moving to JBoss, NYSE Euronext was able to achieve a
50-60 percent cost reduction.
JBoss Enterprise Middleware gives NYSE Euronext
developers a sense of control. “We can configure our
architecture when we need to, and if we have to build
out a stack to meet a certain need, we can do that,” said
Gendelman. “It’s not overly complicated. We can solve the
problems that we need to solve.”
“JBoss Enterprise Application Platform enables easy
environment control, integration, and deployment,” said Liu.
“It speeds environment processes, reduces development
lifecycles, and increases time-to-market.”
Performance, reliability, and scalability: “When we first
started with JBoss, we brought in the community edition
for some non-critical systems, which allowed us to get
our feet wet and gain confidence with the middleware
solutions,” said Gendelman. “As we started moving to
mission-critical systems—the ones that faced outside
companies, the ones that had the reputation of the
New York Stock Exchange on the line—we moved to the
supported version.”
Because NYSE Euronext uses both Red Hat’s platform
and middleware solutions, it can go to the same vendor
for support. “You don’t have one vendor pointing to
another vendor saying it’s the other vendor’s fault,” said
Gendelman. “When we’ve had issues, we were able to
call Red Hat Global Support Services and they bent over
backwards to help us figure out what the issues were. Even
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | NYSE
redhat.com/jboss
113
114
Maryland Automobile Insurance
Fund Begins Major Migration
from COBOL to JBoss Enterprise
Middleware
Geography
Maryland, United States
BACKGROUND
Founded in 1972 by the Maryland State Legislature, the Maryland
Automobile Insurance Fund (MAIF) provides automobile liability insurance to
Maryland residents who cannot qualify for insurance coverage in the private
insurance market.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Today, MAIF is required to take on any Maryland resident whose car
insurance has been canceled or who has been turned down by other
insurers. As an independent agency of the State of Maryland, the MAIF
reports directly to the governor of the state and is governed by rules
established by Title 20 of the Insurance Article of the Annotated Code of
Maryland. However, MAIF receives no state funding and must sustain itself
on the premiums it collects from customers.
legacy and proprietary systems
business challenge
subrogation system by consolidating data
For more than 15 years, MAIF ran its mission-critical systems in a
Tru64 UNIX, COBOL, PRO COBOL, Javascript, HTML, UNIX shell script
environment. These homegrown applications resided on aging HP
AlphaServer ES40 midrange systems, which were reaching the end of
their lifespan. “We knew it was time to begin migrating away from that
infrastructure,” said Herb Jordan, senior IT architect at MAIF. “The claims
system in particular really needed attention. Although extraordinarily rich
and robust, the system was also overly complex, having grown up from a
flat-file system that we then put a web front end on.” Claims processing
is one of the most important functions of an insurance firm, and MAIF has
nearly 200 employees involved in claims processing who use the system.
in a central repository and automating
In addition to the typical kind of functionality that the claims system of any
insurer would require, MAIF had some specific compliance and governance
requirements because of its relationship with the State of Maryland.
Although chartered by the state, MAIF is not taxpayer-supported; therefore,
revenues are solely derived from sales of insurance policies. “Although
we operate like any other property and casualty insurance company, our
relationship with Maryland makes us into a quasi-state agency,” said Diane
Williams, IT director at MAIF. “We have the usual insurance industry rules
and regulations to comply with, but we must also follow the dictates of the
state. The regulatory and legal requirements are quite complicated, and
needed to be programmed into the system. “
Increased revenues from subrogation
To streamline and simplify the processes,
which were only partially automated, for
performing subrogation using a variety of
migration path
COBOL to JBoss Enterprise Middleware
SOLUTIONS
To completely re-engineer the existing
the entire subrogation process end-toend using JBoss® Enterprise Middleware
HARDWARE
Application Server - HP ProLiant BL495c
G5 Server; Database Server (Oracle 10.2)
- HP DL380 G5
benefits
recoveries, achieved higher performance,
lowered system maintenance efforts,
increased worker productivity
Given the mission-critical nature of the claims system, MAIF completed
a proof of concept (POC) with a subset of functionality that pertained to
subrogation. Subrogation is the process by which an insurance company
tries to recoup expenses for a claim it paid out that should have been paid
wholly or partially by another party (e.g., the insurance company of the
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | MAIF
redhat.com/jboss
115
other party in an auto accident). It is a critical part of the
claims process, and without the subrogation system, the
claims workers would be unable to perform their jobs. Yet
the existing system at MAIF was highly inefficient.
“With the help of JBoss Enterprise
Middleware and Red Hat Consulting, we
met the project’s deadline and ended up
with such a rich system that has set the
stage for further successes. And we are
now constantly getting compliments and
thank yous for the completed system”
– Diane Williams, IT Director, Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund
“Although somewhat automated, most of our subrogation
processes were performed outside the main claims
system,” said Jordan. Since subrogation relied on
getting information from a variety of different sources,
including databases as well as flat files, there was no
central-ized coordination and the entire process was very
inefficient. “There was a lot of duplicate work, and a lot
of manual checking and tracking, including going through
batch reports and extracting information to enter into
spreadsheets.”
SOLUTION
MAIF had already made the decision in mid-2007 to
migrate its mission-critical applications from HP Tru64
UNIX to Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on industrystandard x86 systems. By early 2009, it had narrowed
its technology options for building a new web-based
subrogation application down to two: Microsoft’s .NET or
Java EE. With the help of an external consultant, MAIF
made its decision to go with Java EE and, at that same
time, shifted to the agile development methodology.
Because of its positive experiences with Red Hat Enterprise
Linux and with the help of Red Hat Consulting, MAIF
selected JBoss Enterprise Middleware for its Java EE
vendor. JBoss Enterprise Middleware allowed MAIF more
flexibility and performance at a significantly lower cost.
“And while the proprietary .NET environment’s lower
learning curve was attractive, its cons outweighed its
pros,” said Jordan. “We saw significantly higher costs and
a smaller pool of available programming talent with the
proprietary .NET environment. Most importantly, if we
went in the .NET direction, we would have had to follow the
direction that Microsoft took .NET in the future—no matter
what direction that was.”
Because MAIF’s IT staff had no experience with JBoss
116
redhat.com/jboss
Enterprise Middleware, Java, or object-oriented
programming, Jordan reached out to Red Hat Consulting
for support. Jordan especially liked Amentra’s “mentor”
model for collaborative application development, which
resulted in Amentra, a Red Hat company, training his
development team at the same time that the application
was being developed.
“It was really a co-development project,” said Jordan.
“Our developers did most of the coding. Amentra provided
mentoring to help our team transition from procedural
to object-oriented programming, from COBOL to JBoss
Enterprise Middleware, and from waterfall to agile.
Additionally, Amentra provided advanced programming,
software architecture, requirements, and design
assistance. “We wanted to be absolutely certain that when
the Red Hat consultants left, our developers would be able
to maintain and extend the subrogation application.”
With Amentra’s help, MAIF implemented JBoss Enterprise
Middleware using JBoss Seam Framework for the web
front end and JBoss Hibernate Framework to connect
to the back end databases. “We delivered a system that
exceeded our users’ expectations and that met our
aggressive deadline,” said Jordan. “We could not have
done this without Amentra’s help.”
Because Jordan’s team was under a tight deadline to
finish the system, he decided to use the agile software
development methodology that calls for a highly iterative
development process. “This significantly contributed to
the success of the project,” said Jordan. “We were able
to put new functionality in front of the users every 4-6
weeks. As a result, the implementation of the final system
was anticlimactic because the users had prior hands-on
experience with and input into every capability delivered.
By doing things this way, we were able to implement the
system with very few issues.”
BENEFITS
The application was finished in May 2010, and before
September of that year, the MAIF team had already
put out two new releases, which included additional
functionality requested by users.
The biggest difference between the new and the old
subrogation system is the ease of use and data integrity.
“Users can call up a claim, investigate responsible parties,
manage the payment process, and get the necessary
approvals without searching through multiple systems,
manually sifting through paper forms, or rekeying data,”
said Jordan. “It is vastly more efficient.”
Jordan expects large increases in worker productivity,
which will continue to grow as the learning curve becomes
less steep and as his staff continues to add functionality to
MAIF | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
the system. Jordan also expects to increase revenues MAIF
collects through subrogation. “With the new system, every
month we expect to see subrogation recoveries increase,”
he said. “This will directly impact MAIF’s bottom line.”
Not surprisingly, the subrogation project caught the
attention of MAIF’s senior business executives. “Everyone
from the CEO down was aware and involved in this project
and knew this was a top priority for the company,” said
Williams. “With the help of JBoss Enterprise Middleware
and Red Hat Consulting, we met the project’s deadline and
ended up with such a rich system that has set the stage
for further successes. And we are now constantly getting
compliments and thank yous for the completed system.”
Moving forward, Jordan intends to continue adding
functionality to the subrogation system while continuing
to wean MAIF off its aging Tru64 applications running
on the HP ES40 systems. Because of the success of the
subrogation system, JBoss Enterprise Middleware is a
prime candidate as MAIF continues its migration of the
claims system over to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
“MAIF has laid the ground work and built a solid foundation
that will be used as we progress through the development
of the entire claims system,” said Jordan. “Adopting the
agile development method was a significant paradigm shift,
and we’ve definitely seen the benefits. Our success speaks
for itself. Going with JBoss Enterprise Middleware was the
right choice.”
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | MAIF
redhat.com/jboss
117
118
NATIONAL CITY STANDARDIZED ON
RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX TO
SCALE IN SUPPORT OF RAPID
BUSINESS GROWTH
Geography
BACKGROUND
Prior to being acquired by PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (www.pnc.com),
National City Corporation was the eighth largest financial holding company in
the country, with core businesses of commercial and retail banking, mortgage
financing and servicing, consumer finance, and asset management.
As a part of PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., one of the nation’s largest
diversified financial services organizations–which provides retail and
business banking, specialized services for corporations and government
entities, wealth management, asset management, and global fund service–
PNC will become the fifth largest U.S. bank by deposits.
The acquisition of National City is expected to place PNC fourth among U.S. banks
based upon number of branches, and will give PNC the No. 1 deposit share position
in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky and the No. 2 position in Indiana and Maryland.
North America
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Re-engineering the datacenter
infrastructure with a cost-effective and
scalable platform that provided missioncritical reliability and superior performance
to accommodate fast-paced business
expansion
migration path
From UNIX systems, including Sun
Solaris, running on proprietary RISC
machines, to Red Hat Enterprise Linux
business challenge
Due to increasing business demands, rising costs, and an aging database
infrastructure, National City had made the strategic decision to reegineer its
datacenter infrastructure.
running on HP ProLiant servers with Intel
Xeon processor
SOftware
National City decided that reegineering its datacenter by migrating from
costly proprietary RISC machines running Sun Solaris and other UNIX
distributions to commodity x86 blade machines running Red Hat Enterprise
Linux would enable future growth. Two things drove this decision: a directive
from senior management to cut costs, and the need to scale capacity quickly
to accommodate the rapid growth of the business.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
“Our processing needs were going up, and we needed to find a way to meet
those needs at the lowest possible cost,” said Thomas McGinnis, a platform
engineer at what was then National City, in Cleveland. “Clearly, this pointed
to the deployment of Linux on commodity hardware as opposed to building
an entirely new datacenter.”
virtual blade servers with Intel Xeon
SOLUTION
cents per transaction, which has the
Reegineering National City’s datacenter infrastructure was vital in enabling
the continued growth of the bank’s business. The existing datacenter
contained costly systems running UNIX, with no opportunity to scale for
growth. The datacenter’s new infrastructure runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux
on a combination of physical and virtual HP ProLiant DL580 servers in a
production environment.
potential to save millions over the life of
Oracle DB
HARDWARE
600 HP ProLiant DL580 physical and
processors
benefits
Reduced IT operating costs down to two
the system, provided the ability to scale
for business growth, and re-engineered
datacenter without unscheduled business
interruptions
In evaluating Linux vendors, it became quickly apparent to National City that the
choice was between Novell SUSE or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. National City asked
its internal developers and administrators for feedback and their response was
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | NATIONAL CITY
redhat.com/jboss
119
quick and decisive: Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
“Their reasons centered upon the richer functionality
and performance that Red Hat Enterprise Linux provided,
as well as their familiarity with that particular Linux
distribution,” said McGinnis. “For our users, Linux was
synonymous with Red Hat, and we were also impressed
that we would get superior performance, reliability, and
stability at an attractive price point.”
The Intel Xeon Processor-based HP ProLiant servers
running Red Hat Enterprise Linux support the bank’s
most business-critical applications, from Oracle financial
software, to JBoss Enterprise Middleware-based
applications, online transaction processing (OLTP) systems
and customer-facing loan application systems. All are
replicated with immediate storage back-up.
National City’s datacenter has deployed 150 HP ProLiant
servers running 400 virtualized instances of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. “We did this primarily for cost reasons,”
said McGinnis. “We were purchasing increasingly powerful
hardware, and needed a way to condense things down.
We’re at a point where we can get as many as 1,100 guests
running on a single rack of blade servers natively running
Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”
One of the crown jewels of National City’s IT infrastructure
was a new high-density facility featuring water-chilled racks,
each of which could hold 54 blade servers. “It really improved
our ability to provision hardware quickly, as we could predeploy the hardware and pre-stage it,” said McGinnis.
A homegrown application allows users to request resources,
and the application designs and deploys the servers they
need automatically. “Users put requests in and we can
satisfy the requests within the day,” said McGinnis.
“In addition to its ability to scale, Red Hat Enterprise Linux
offers rock-solid reliability and has been extremely stable.
Our decision to standardize on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux
infrastructure was key to enabling rapid business growth
while maintaining customer service levels,” said McGinnis.
“In addition to its ability to scale, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux has rock-solid reliability
and has been extremely stable. Our decision
to standardize on the Red Hat Enterprise
Linux infrastructure was key to enabling
rapid business growth while maintaining
customer service levels.”
– Thomas McGinnis, platform engineer,
PNC (formerly National City Corporation)
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | NATIONAL CITY
BENEFITS
The price-performance of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux
platform has proven exceptional. In 2007, PNC evaluated
the best platform to run Oracle Financials Software.
“We tested UNIX running on a variety of machines including
a RISC server that cost a quarter of a million dollars and is
one of the most powerful boxes you can buy, and compared
it to a Intel Xeon processor-based HP Proliant DL580
running Red Hat Enterprise Linux,” said McGinnis, “The
Intel Xeon processor-based HP and Red Hat Enterprise
Linux combination blew everything away. Given those
performance results, we started migrating our Oracle
applications over to Red Hat Enterprise Linux immediately.”
“Red Hat is acknowledged by everyone in our
organization—from senior management on down—as key
to supporting the growth of our business,” said McGinnis.
“It has allowed us to scale at a cost we could not have
achieved with any other vendor.”
As Red Hat’s reputation within National City grew, the
bank’s business divisions began asking for their applications
to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Today it is the
standard operating system. “The internal performancerelated adoption made things a lot easier for us, as it
allowed us to phase out even more of our UNIX machines in
favor of Red Hat,” he said. The bank continues to perform
benchmarks to validate that its strategy is on course.
“We were able to improve the price-performance of our
financial applications on the Red Hat and Intel processor
based HP ProLiant servers to achieve two cents per
transaction, which will translate to millions in savings,”
said McGinnis, “and was far lower than what we were able
to achieve with the UNIX based systems.”
The large—and growing—community of application vendors
that certify their software on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
accelerated adoption throughout the bank. “A lot of
vendors were initially cautious, but we gradually saw more
and more application certifications as more businesses
moved to Red Hat Enterprise Linux from proprietary
operating systems,” said McGinnis. “This is now one of the
major attractions of Red Hat.”
Red Hat Enterprise Linux also paved the way for other,
indirect, cost savings. For example, its ease of use made it
possible for the bank’s IT employees to be more productive.
“Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a lot more user-friendly
than Solaris, which has a very high learning curve,” said
McGinnis. “This allows our team to do more. That, coupled
with the fact that Red Hat’s business model provides more
for less, gave us the opportunity to achieve even more
significant cost savings.”
redhat.com/jboss
120
Travelers Migrates MissionCritical SAS Applications From
Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux on HP ProLiant Servers
Geography
Hartford, Connecticut
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Aging IBM Power systems running AIX and
Sun Solaris needed to be replaced and the
SAS Analytics application needed to be
migrated to the new hardware, all under
BACKGROUND
strict cost constraints and with high-
Founded more than 150 years ago, Travelers is a leading provider of property
casualty insurance for auto, home, and business. The company’s diverse
business lines offer its global customers a wide range of coverage sold primarily
through independent agents and brokers. Travelers is the second-largest
writer of commercial U.S. property casualty insurance and the second-largest
writer of U.S. personal insurance. A component of the Dow Jones Industrial
Average, Travelers has more than 30,000 employees and operations in the U.S.,
Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. The company generated revenues of
approximately $25 billion in 2010. For more information, visit travelers.com.
performance requirements
business challenge
In 2005, after observing the insurance industry’s growing awareness of
and interest in Linux, Travelers began testing the viability of deploying
Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® in its datacenter. It wasn’t long before senior
IT management declared Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the strategic Linuxbased server operating system for the organization going forward.
At that point, Travelers ran a mixed environment that included IBM AIX
and Sun Solaris running on proprietary hardware from IBM and Sun. As the
price and performance advantages of deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux
on industry-standard machines became increasingly apparent, Travelers
began replacing legacy UNIX applications with Red Hat Enterprise Linux
applications that offered similar functionality. As a matter of course, all new
applications would run on x86 machines on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
migration path
AIX and Solaris on IBM Power systems
to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on HP x86
servers
SOftware
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SAS Analytics,
HARDWARE
HP ProLiant DL380 Generation 6 (G6)
Servers
benefits
Reduced costs and achieved doubled
performance improvements, faster timeto-market of new insurance products, and
a satisfied user community
Tim Nolan, Manager, Linux Engineering, Travelers said the path was clear: migrate
the SAS Analytics applications to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on x86 hardware.
“We knew we’d get great support from Red Hat,” said Nolan. “The
straightforward administration process for Red Hat Enterprise Linux was a
selling point as well. There were several people within the organization who
knew how to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux on commodity hardware vs.
AIX on IBM’s proprietary power machines. It was a green light all around.”
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | TRAVELERS
redhat.com/jboss
121
“Performance is easily twice as fast under
Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We also reduced
our total hardware and operating system
licensing costs by 25 percent. I’d say that
the case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is an
open and shut one.”
– Tim Nolan, Manager, Linux Engineering, Travelers
SOLUTION
As of early 2011, Travelers is halfway through the migration
of the SAS Analytics silos from the AIX and Solaris
environments to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Each business
unit that has been migrated now has SAS Analytics running
on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 on an HP ProLiant
DL380 Generation 6 (G6) Server.
A critical aspect of migrating each SAS Analytics instance
involved consolidating the two IBM p590 machines that
compose each silo of a single HP server. “This consolidation
was not a simple matter,“ admitted Nolan. “With more
than 150 pieces of software in each silo, there were lots
of moving parts. In addition to the Linux team, we had to
consult with people from multiple groups—for example,
our internal SAS experts—and figure out how to customize
all the scripts and user configurations for the new
environment.” Nolan estimated that 90 percent of the work
involved provisioning the operating system and application
software correctly and transferring the data. “There really
isn’t an easy way to get 60 terabytes of data from AIX and
Solaris to Linux quickly,” he said.
ways. In conjunction with SAS Analytics, Nolan’s team
implemented an ETL application in a Red Hat virtual
instance that pulls data from a variety of sources, batches
it, and delivers it to Travelers insurance professionals to
analyze. “Red Hat Enterprise Linux optimizes storage
throughput in a way that has made this process much
more efficient and moved the data from the original
source to users’ desktops much more rapidly,” said Nolan.
“For our research analysts to get their data hours earlier—
as they now do under Red Hat Enterprise Linux—is a major
boon. They can complete their analyses much sooner and
much faster.”
Nolan also appreciates that he can help the Travelers user
community speed new products and services to market.
“In the highly competitive insurance market, the quicker
you can get new products out the door, the better chance
you have of staking a claim in new market categories and
attracting new customers,” said Nolan. “We trust that
Red Hat Enterprise Linux will continue to be a supportive
partner as we continue to expand and innovate.”
Complicating matters, in parallel with the SAS migration,
Travelers was accelerating deployment of other business
critical workloads onto Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including
extract, transform and load (ETL) applications, enterprise
domain name service (DNS) software, email filtering,
data mining, backup and recovery, archiving, IP voice
applications, and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC).
BENEFITS
Travelers saw dramatic performance improvements across
the board once SAS Analytics was successfully running on
Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
“We’re seeing performance that is easily twice as fast as
we experienced under AIX,” said Nolan. “We also reduced
our total hardware and operating system licensing costs
by 25-30 percent. I’d say that the case in favor of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux over AIX is an open and shut one.”
Travelers has reaped cost savings in other, indirect
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | TRAVELERS
redhat.com/jboss
122
UNION BANK REINVENTS IT
ENVIRONMENT WITH RED HAT
ENTERPRISE LINUX AND JBOSS
Geography
San Francisco, California
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
An aging and costly IT infrastructure was
impeding the ability of Union Bank to scale
to growth and respond agilely to changing
market dynamics
BACKGROUND
Union Bank, N.A., headquartered in San Francisco, is a full-service commercial
bank providing an array of financial services to individuals, small businesses,
middle-market companies, and major corporations. Union Bank is California’s
fifth-largest bank by deposits. The bank has 335 banking offices in California,
Oregon, Washington and two international offices. Its holding company,
UnionBanCal Corporation, is the 16th largest commercial bank holding company
in the U.S., based on assets at March 31, 2009.
migration path
Union Bank was selected for its operating platform migration from AIX to Red
Hat Enterprise Linux and WebSphere to JBoss to support its mission-critical
applications at an improved price with greater performance and less upkeep.
Union Bank used open source solutions to increase time to market, reliability
and return on investment.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux™, Red Hat
business challenge
HARDWARE
When Mok Choe joined Union Bank in early 2007 as chief technology officer,
the Union Bank IT infrastructure faced a host of challenges similar to those
of many other companies at the time, mainly increasing costs and resources
associated with the maintenance and upkeep of legacy systems.
More than 150 Intel™ Xeon™ processor-
Over the years, Union Bank’s IT infrastructure had grown increasingly large,
cumbersome, and complex. Not only was it costly to operate and maintain,
but it couldn’t scale to accommodate the bank’s rapid expansion into new
markets. System availability was also a continuing challenge. And as the
financial services industry expanded into electronic banking products,
Union Bank’s reliance on IT was increasing. The bank thus required an IT
infrastructure that could speed new products to market with rock-solid
reliability and availability, and which could also scale as needed.
Improve reliability and scalability, cut
UNIX™ on high-end RISC machines to
Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on Intel
Xeon-based HP servers; WebSphere to
SOftware
Application Platform™, JBoss Seam,
JBoss Hibernate, Red Hat Consulting
based HP ProLiant servers
benefits
costs, and deliver new financial services
and products to market faster
The hardware environment embraced a “big box” approach with a few
massive servers at strategic locations that offered little relief when
significant impacts occurred. This environment required tremendous
overhead with constant monitoring and management of server problems.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | UNION BANK
redhat.com/jboss
123
“First, we migrated our entire Web-based
infrastructure over to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux. Next, we ported our teller platform
over to JBoss. And third, we wrote a
brand new web-based cash management
application built on the entire Red Hat
stack: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss,
Hibernate, and SEAM.”
– Mok Choe, chief technology officer, Union Bank
The hardware environment embraced a “big box” approach
with a few massive servers at strategic locations that
offered little relief when significant impacts occurred. This
environment required tremendous overhead with constant
monitoring and management of server problems.
The IT department at Union Bank was also under pressure
to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of its overall IT
operations. The solution needed to deliver a robust disaster
recovery environment with minimal mean-time-to-restore
(MTTR) and maximum mean-time-between-failures (MTBF)
times. Finally, the solution needed to better leverage Union
Bank’s most highly skilled IT workers. By enabling valued
staff workers to reduce the day-to-day support required
by overhead-intensive legacy systems, productivity would
improve, and the bank’s IT department could move from a
reaction to proactive support model.
“First and foremost, we needed to improve system
availability,” said Choe. “Secondly, we needed to speed
time to market of new financial services products. And at
the end of the day, we needed to decrease the cost per
transaction of delivering services.”
business challenge
Union Bank immediately focused on the task of establishing
a new and innovative technology environment. The first
decision: to create a new open-source-based enterprisewide IT platform to obtain improved availability, agility,
scalability and reduced TCO (total cost of ownership), while
enabling the support of the bank’s growing IT needs and
better alignment with the bank’s overall business plan.
“We did three specific things,” said Choe. “First, we
migrated our entire web-based infrastructure over to Red
Hat Enterprise Linux so we could go from a scale-up to a
scale-out architecture. Next, we ported our teller platform
over to JBoss. And third, we wrote a brand new web-based
cash management application built on the entire Red
Hat technology stack: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss,
Hibernate, and SEAM.”
The strategy started at the operating platform level
by replacing the aging UNIX-based RISC servers with
commodity x86 machines running Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, and migrating to JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform at the application server level. Union Bank
initially utilized Red Hat Network to set up centralized,
secure management of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux
systems.
Union Bank took advantage of Red Hat Consulting to
assist the IT group with the initial design of the first
phases of deploying the new architecture and web-based
applications. The bank’s infrastructure and application
development teams attended Red Hat Training to learn
valuable tools and lessons on integration and migration
issues.
The new strategy also encompassed building a new data
center that leveraged virtualization technology on top
of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to dramatically reduce the
bank’s hardware footprint. “The bank is very serious about
its green initiative, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a key
part of that,” said Choe.
One of the most strategic projects was to replace the
bank’s operating system environment on branch teller
systems with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Within just months,
the Union Bank development staff was able to create
a “silent” JBoss deployment package and distribute it
remotely to over 330 production branch servers.
“The JBoss-based teller application has been running
successfully at the 330 branch sites ever since,” said
Choe, “The small footprint of JBoss has freed up much
needed space on each branch server and has laid the
ground work for future expansion. We plan to migrate
other customer-facing web applications from WebSphere
to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.”
BENEFits
Union Bank’s innovative approach to its IT re-architecture
has resulted in improvements to system availability,
scalability, and, resiliency; increased ROI; enhanced
security, provisioning, and configuration management, and
improved time to market.
The most significant benefits have been improved system
availability and resiliency. Upon migrating to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, there have been improvements of the
bank’s hardware infrastructure, as seen by improved
mean-time-to-restore (MTTR), and mean-time-betweenfailures (MTBF).
The return on investment (ROI) was also substantial. For
example, the large RISC machines were running at less
redhat.com/jboss
124
than 50 percent capacity. To ensure redundancy, the bank
needed to double its hardware investment to allow for fail
over. “With Red Hat’s commodity model, we were able to
spread the load over multiple machines and reduce our
overall spend by approximately 80 percent,” said Choe.
“And these savings don’t take into account the reduced
maintenance costs of moving to the Red Hat platform,
which is easier—and therefore cheaper—to maintain.”
Additionally, because application performance increased
significantly under the new JBoss and Red Hat
architecture, the bank was able to reduce the time-tomarket of new products. The bank was also able to improve
customer service by boosting the performance of its
teller application. “The success of that project gives us
confidence to tackle the rest of our browser-based web
applications with a JBoss solution,” said Choe.
The move from a vertical to a horizontal architecture
and process enhancement have improved both system
availability and resiliency, which allows the bank to absorb
normal glitches without impacting customer transactions.
“The reliability of our web applications has improved to
the point where I can go to our business partners and
confidently say we have better than ‘four 9s’ availability,”
said Choe.
And ultimately many of the ongoing benefits that Choe
expects to reap in coming years as a result of transforming
the bank’s IT operations come from his expanded
technology options. “We’ve achieved tremendous cost,
reliability, and availability benefits, but in the end it all
comes back to the fact that we now have choices when
it comes to deploying hardware and software,” he said.
“We’re no longer locked into using a particular product or
vendor. Open source—and by extension, Red Hat—makes
that possible.”
“The high costs and overhead associated with
legacy proprietary software and infrastructure led
us to the decision to deploy Red Hat and JBoss
open source solutions, and this allowed us to provide
core infrastructure and development platforms at a
significantly lower cost and at a faster rate,” said Choe.
“Our use of Red Hat and JBoss solutions demonstrate
creative business innovation through the use of horizontal
architecture and the improvements allow Union Bank to
continue to increase our customer experiences.”
The Red Hat/JBoss solution requires less maintenance and
enables Union Bank IT to reduce their efforts on day-to-day
support of legacy systems, allowing for better resource
utilization. This also helped the IT group move from a
reactive to a proactive model more expediently.
Additionally, the bank’s overall cost-per-transaction
declined 25 to 40 percent, something that Union Bank’s
business centers appreciate. “We have a charge-back
system in which our departments pay for the IT resources
they consume,” said Choe. “They’ve seen their charges go
down month by month.
“We benefited greatly from Red Hat
Consulting as they provided valuable input
and assistance in helping us migrate to Red
Hat technology and dramatically improved
our ability to achieve our goals. With Red Hat
Consulting, we felt there was an immediate
knowledge transfer, and we were very
satisfied with the level of involvement and
quality of knowledge provided to our team.”
redhat.com/jboss
125
126
INDUSTRY:
HEALTHCARE &
LIFE SCIENCES
HEALTHCARE
& LIFE SCIENCES
127
LifeSpring Hospitals powers
its entire IT infrastructure
on Red Hat and open source
solutions
Geography
Pan India
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
LifeSpring Hospitals Pvt. Ltd. (LifeSpring) is a growing chain of
maternity hospitals providing affordable, high-quality healthcare to
lower–income women in India. Through its network of medium-sized
(20-25 beds) hospitals, its goal is to provide safe, clean, and affordable
maternity services. By increasing access to high-quality healthcare,
LifeSpring encourages women to take advantage of the health benefits
associated with institutional delivery and maternity care, which
contributes to a reduction in the rate of maternal mortality/morbidity
in India. With its modern medical facilities and strong customer-focused
healthcare, LifeSpring treats lower-income women and their families
with dignity and respect.
LifeSpring is jointly promoted by Hindustan Lifecare Limited (HLL), a
mini Ratna enterprise under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
of the Government of India; and Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture
philanthropy fund that invests in social enterprises addressing poverty.
The company is a 50/50 equity partnership between HLL and Acumen
Fund and is incorporated in Trivandrum. Currently, LifeSpring has nine
maternity setups in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, out of which six
of them are in Hyderabad.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
LifeSpring’s vision is to provide affordable, high-quality healthcare
to lower-income women in India by setting up a chain of maternity
hospitals. Maternity charges inclusive of all costs are as low as $40
per patient, while the quality of services is top-class. “We follow three
business philosophies while running our business—quality, affordability,
and personalized care,” said Sujeet Kumar, manager, IT, LifeSpring.
“So, we look at IT as an enabler that can help us in providing affordable
healthcare without any compromise in quality,” he added.
LifeSpring has ambitious aspirations to grow in the near future. “From
nine hospitals today, we have set the target to reach the mark of 30
by 2012 and about 100 by 2015,” said Sujeet. LifeSpring also plans to
expand geographically to other states of India, such as Maharashtra
and Karnataka. This would mean a massive increase in the number
of employees and the number of patients the company would be
able to reach. The company expects to employ approximately 4,500
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | LIFE SPRING
To design a reliable, scalable, highperformance, flexible, and cost-effective IT
infrastructure to handle the rapid growth
of the organization and to provide quality
and affordable healthcare to its customers
SOLUTION
LifeSpring chose Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, and
a number of Red Hat certified, enterpriseclass, open source software solutions to
build its entire IT infrastructure
SOFTWARE
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Standard
and Advanced Platform, included
integrated virtualization, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, Red
Hat Network Satellite, Red Hat Directory
Server, Zimbra Collaboration Suite, Open
Source Trouble Ticketing System OTRS,
Elastix 2.0, Alfresco Community Edition,
Moodle 1.8.12, and Zabbix version 1.8
Hardware
Sun X4140 with dual 64-bit Quad-Core
AMD Opteron processors and Hitachi
AMS2100 iSCSI storage
Benefits
Increased flexibility and choice by freeing
the organization from vendor lock-in,
decreased IT costs, simplified management,
reduced systems maintenance, increased
scalability and performance, gained higher
customer satisfaction
redhat.com/jboss
128
people by 2012. As a process-oriented organization,
LifeSpring faced the challenge of maintaining the
same quality standards across all of its hospitals. For
a company that has aggressive growth plans, training
and continuously developing the skills of an increasing
number of employees was anticipated to become more
of a challenge. Communications between hospitals would
also become difficult as LifeSpring expands its reach. It
was essential for the company to find a way to manage
its growing database of customer information, as well as
smoothly coordinate its operational logistics.
Mr. Anant Kumar, CEO of LifeSpring Hospitals, has a
vision of an integrated IT platform across all LifeSpring
operations. From the very beginning, LifeSpring’s
management team has been solidly focused on IT
and IT-related processes and decided to formulate a
comprehensive plan for LifeSpring’s IT infrastructure.
This infrastructure needed to provide manageability
across all functions and departments, build a high degree
of collaboration amongst its members, improve service
delivery to patients, and facilitate systems to increase
productivity and responsibility.
“In short, we wanted to build a state-of-the-art strategic
IT infrastructure to enable us to scale rapidly. It also had
to be flexible to give us freedom to customize and tune
the infrastructure to our requirements. This makes it
easier to manage our IT operations, while at the same
time delivering cost efficiency,” said Sujeet.
SOLUTION
With flexibility, scalability, cost, performance, and
manageability criteria in mind, LifeSpring’s IT team
chose Red Hat as its trusted technology partner. It
selected Red Hat’s open source solutions, including Red
Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Network Satellite, and
JBoss Enterprise Middleware, as an ideal technology
base on which to build its IT infrastructure.
Before zeroing in on open source solutions, LifeSpring’s
management team conducted a rigorous evaluation
that lasted for almost 18 months. “We estimated the
total cost of ownership (TCO) for both the proprietary
options compared against the open source alternatives,”
said Sujeet. LifeSpring’s management considered a
variety of parameters for the calculation of TCO. “We
considered parameters, including manageability and
cost of acquisition as well as recurring costs, scalability
of the solution, and flexibility to customize, amongst
others,” he added. Additionally, the decision to use open
source technology was also strengthened by the rapid
and significant return on investment (ROI) that the open
source solutions were capable of providing.
“The implementation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
JBoss Enterprise Middleware, along with other open
source products, was one of the key milestones in our
129
redhat.com/jboss
IT deployments, as it was the first time LifeSpring was
implementing open source solutions,” said Sujeet. When
LifeSpring decided to base its entire IT infrastructure
on open source technology, Red Hat, as the world’s
open source leader, was the preferred choice. “Red
Hat has built a strong ecosystem of open source
technology-based products and services,” said Sujeet.
Red Hat’s partner Taashee Linux Services completed
the implementation.
Taashee, a Linux and open source technology solution
provider based in India, presented LifeSpring with an
overview of enterprise open source software. As a Red
Hat Business Partner, Taashee was able to provide
detailed information about Red Hat Enterprise Linux
solutions and addressed concerns regarding the
quality and consistency of Red Hat’s technical support.
“Enterprise-ready open source solutions deliver the
traditional advantages customers have come to expect
from open source software along with guaranteed SLAbased support,” says Abhishek Datt, chief technology
officer, Taashee Linux Services Ltd.
“We are already starting to see more and more
organizations choosing open source software in order
to take advantage of the numerous benefits over
proprietary products, including the high-quality, and
cost advantages.”
LifeSpring chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 as its
standard operating system for its servers with dual
64-bit Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, Red Hat
Directory Server as its centerpiece for authentication,
and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform as the
application server for all J2EE applications. LifeSpring
also used the integrated virtualization technology built
in to Red Hat Enterprise Linux to help in maximizing its
resources and in increasing its deployment flexibility
and responsiveness.
Red Hat Directory Server takes care of the
authentication and unified sign-on needs. “It is a
“Red Hat, along with enterprise-class
open source solutions from its certified
ISV partners, helped us leverage our IT
resources to strategically build the right
platform for tomorrow.”
– Sujeet Kumar, manager, IT, LifeSpring
standard solution with a user-friendly interface,”
said Sujeet. Currently, Red Hat Directory Server is
implemented along with a replica server for high
availability. Most of the applications running in
LIFE SPRING | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
LifeSpring use JBoss Enterprise Application Platform as
their application server. Its critical Hospital ERP system
is also running on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.
“With JBoss Enterprise Application Platform providing
services like clustering, failover, and load balancing, my
IT team has more time for other high-priority tasks,” said
Sujeet.
In addition to Red Hat’s robust open source solutions,
LifeSpring also implemented a number of Red
Hat certified ISV solutions on top of the Red Hat
infrastructure. “Because Red Hat has an extensive ISV
catalog, it was easy to ensure that we choose products
that are certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux,” said
Sujeet. LifeSpring implemented Zimbra Collaboration
Suite Network Edition for fulfilling the mail and
collaboration needs and Open Source Trouble Ticketing
System (Open Ticket Request System, or OTRS) for
tracking all the complaints raised by the internal as well
as external customers.
For setting up a reliable VoIP communication solution,
LifeSpring used Elastix, which is appliance software that
integrates the best tools available for Asterisk-based
PBXs into a single, easy-to-use interface. To build a
scalable, secure, and cost-effective enterprise content
management solution, LifeSpring used Alfresco. To
address the employee training challenges that kept
accumulating with the organization’s rapid growth,
LifeSpring implemented a Moodle-based learning
management solution. Finally, for monitoring the entire
IT infrastructure, LifeSpring used Zabbix, an open source
monitoring system.
Since the implementation of its Red Hat-based
infrastructure, LifeSpring has never faced any unplanned
downtime and is very satisfied with its overall open
source architecture. “We are confident in the capability
of Red Hat solutions to provide reliable, scalable, and
cost-effective business solutions,” said Sujeet. “In fact,
in accordance with our IT philosophy, we would only
consider Red Hat-certified enterprise open source
solutions for our future IT deployments,” added Sujeet.
gave enough flexibility to customize the applications to
generate high performance,” he added.
Red Hat solutions also provided LifeSpring with lower
IT costs, simplified management, reduced systems
maintenance, and increased scalability and performance
to cater to the rapid growth of the organization. “Red
Hat solutions allow you to extract more from your
systems, enabling business growth,” said Sujeet.
The maintenance of the entire IT infrastructure has
been highly simplified. “Our IT team consists of only
three people, and until now, we have comfortably
managed to run the entire show without any major
hiccups,” said Sujeet. LifeSpring could also respond to
rapid business growth with the robust backbone of a
Red Hat-based infrastructure. “In the last 10 months,
there has been near zero downtime,” Sujeet added.
The implemented open source solutions also improved
the productivity of the organization’s business process.
“Our customer satisfaction has increased multi-fold,
as with such a state-of-the-art infrastructure, we could
reach them easily and in a timely manner. The costeffective nature of open source allowed us to pass
those benefits on to our customers, thereby providing
affordable healthcare,” said Sujeet.
Overall, Red Hat provided LifeSpring with enterpriseclass solutions that are robust and scalable at
an affordable price without any compromise on
performance. “Red Hat, along with enterprise-class
open source solutions from its certified ISV partners,
helped us leverage our IT resources to strategically
build the right platform for tomorrow,” said Sujeet.
In the future, LifeSpring plans to utilize the power
of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. “We plan to
migrate all of our virtualized systems to KVM-based
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization from our existing
set of Xenbased servers and VMware vSphere 4-based
virtualization in coming months,” said Sujeet. “This
would help us to standardize all of our IT infrastructure
on the robust Red Hat platform.”
SOLUTION
“With open source in general and Red Hat in particular,
we were able to extract tremendous value from our
systems and applications,” said Sujeet. “Red Hat-based
open source solutions freed us from vendor lock–in and
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | LIFE SPRING
redhat.com/jboss
130
131
RED HAT AND Y3 TECHNOLOGIES
HELP MOUNT ALVERNIA HOSPITAL
PIONEER OPEN SOURCE BED
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Geography
Singapore
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Mount Alvernia Hospital (MAH) began as a 60-bed private hospital in
Singapore in 1961, and has since grown to a 303-bed general hospital.
The hospital provides services to local medical, surgical, pediatric, and
maternity patients, and offers a comprehensive range of specialities.
In addition, MAH has two medical centres, which are occupied by
consultants who provide a wide range of medical and surgical specialist
services.
MAH ensures that its facilities are constantly upgraded to keep abreast
of advancements in medical technology and techniques.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
As MAH operates around the clock, patients can be admitted at any
point in time. The hospital relied heavily on telephone, email or fax
coordination with different departments to ensure that patients are
assigned the correct beds.
Bed information gathered was consolidated on paper, which was used
by the night manager to verify bed status when performing the hospital
round from room to room. Recognizing that MAH was faced with these
challenges, Y3 Technologies, a Red Hat Alliance Partner, proposed an
open source Bed Efficiency and Management (BEAM) system, which
would allow the hospital to better manage admissions, and track bed
usage with the use of wireless and mobile technologies. BEAM should
provide visibility on the hospital’s bed capacity, bed demand forecast
and status of pending discharges for resource planning.
Needed a solution to enable them to
proactively monitor, track and respond
in terms of bed usage and associated
resources
MIGRATION PATH
Paper-based system to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise
SOFTWARE
Hardware
IBM PowerSeries 2 P6-570 virtualized
server running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Benefits
Bed management solution improved bed
turnaround, and thus staff productivity,
and real-time information enables staff
to provide improved patient care
While other vendors also proposed solutions for MAH, the hospital chose
Y3 Technologies’ BEAM solution for its rich interface architecture and
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) enabled framework based on Red
Hat and Oracle technologies.
BEAM was evaluated on the following criteria: ease of integration with
existing IT infrastructure and resources, reliability, performance and
availability of technology, cost-effectiveness, and vendor independence.
In addition, MAH wanted a provider that had experience in implementing
the proposed solution in a hospital.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | MAH
redhat.com/jboss
132
“Open source is known to be cost effective and we are
finding value as the technology is now stable, mature
and of low risk to us. Furthermore, open source is well
supported by major vendors such as IBM and Oracle,
thus the time is right for Mount Alvernia to embark
on this journey to use the technology to improve and
enhance the current operations,” explained Fong Yong
Choi, MIS Manager at MAH, on why he chose to adopt
open source and Red Hat.
SOLUTION
The solution comprised Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, Oracle databases,
and Java Platform Enterprise Edition 2, running on a
virtualized IBM PowerSeries 2 P6-570 server. Red Hat
Enterprise Linux sits on top of the enterprise backup
software, with the systems management server as
gateway. JBoss Enterprise Application Platform supports
the hospital’s mission-critical applications, one of which
is BEAM. JBoss Hibernate forms part of the object
relational mapping (ORM) for the application framework.
Employee productivity has increased as a result of
an online, electronic whiteboard that minimizes bed
location confusion.
As the system proactively notifies the housekeeping
department on pending discharges and discharges
for the day through the use of mobile devices,
dependence on the nursing department is reduced. The
housekeeping department no longer has to perform
room-to-room checks for vacated beds prior to cleaning.
MAH’s booking department has also benefitted as bed
status is available in real-time. Booking staff can now
make more informed decisions and quickly locate and
assign available beds for urgent admissions. These
assignments can be made any time and at any location
using wireless mobile devices.
BEAM was implemented in all wards that run 24 hours
a day, and other departments such as front office,
admission, housekeeping, nursing, and nurse wards.
The MAH management team is also positioned to make
better decisions, as key performance indicators are
readily available from the management dashboard.
These indicators include cutting bed turnaround time
to less than 30 minutes, and quality monitoring of
housekeeping now achieves excellent or good ratings. It
used to take around 40 minutes to turn a bed around.
With the successful deployment of BEAM, MAH plans to
explore the feasibility and benefits of extending the open
source platform to other systems within the hospital.
By creating a paperless environment, BEAM has
enabled the hospital to support the green environment
campaign.
“We are more than satisfied with the overall performance
of the system and the underlying system software
running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform. From the solution point
of view, we are happy that it has achieved the objectives
that were set up. Our expectations have been met with
outcome of the project” said Yong Choi.
“The key to the success of the project is knowledge
sharing and strong management support. Given that
MAH has the healthcare domain, Y3 and Red Hat
provided the needed technology and solution to be
able to meet the business objective,” said Jocelyn
Austria, bed management system project manager, Y3
Technologies.
The collaborative project among MAH, Y3 and Red
Hat has broken new grounds in terms of information
technology strategy and business operation.
“MAH has shown its pioneering spirit by embarking on
this project. It is truly a leader in the field of healthcare
and has shown technology proficiency as it has used a
unique solution to improve its operations and services,”
said James Loo Wai Kheong, COO, Y3 Technologies.
“Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, together
with Y3, offered a unique solution
that met our needs and exceeded our
expectations.”
– Fong Yong Choi, MIS manager at MAH
BENEFITS
Following its successful deployment, BEAM has brought
about many unforeseen benefits.
133
redhat.com/jboss
MAH | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
ResMed Breathes Easy with
Impressive Cost Savings
Thanks to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux and JBoss Enterprise
Middleware
Geography
Australia
Business challenge
Replacing end-of-life proprietary system
with a stable and reliable platform that
would facilitate lower-cost hardware and
ongoing savings on platform maintenance
BACKGROUND
ResMed is a leading developer, manufacturer, and marketer of products
for the screening, treatment, and long-term management of sleepdisordered breathing (SDB) and other respiratory disorders.
Established in 1989, the organization operates in more than 70
countries through direct offices and a network of distributors, and has
grown dramatically via the introduction of highly innovative product
lines based on sleep medicine and non-invasive ventilation that advance
the diagnosis, treatment, and management of SDB.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
As a traditional SUN Solaris and Sun One Application Server user,
ResMed was becoming increasingly aware of the mounting hardware
and licensing costs of its existing proprietary infrastructure. And,
as its Tru64 UNIX hardware approached end of life, the organisation
recognised an opportunity to reduce its short-term server replacement
costs, as well as its longer-term licensing and operating costs.
According to Mike Ingram, UNIX Team Lead, ResMed, “Carving costs out
of our hardware investment was a big driver for us, so rather than look
to Hewlett Packard and Sun again for servers for our refresh, we were
interested in looking at how an enterprise-ready open source platform
could work for us.”
MIGRATION PATH
From SUN Solaris running Sun One
Application Server to JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, and Tru64 UNIX
servers running Oracle E-Business
Financials; both onto Red Hat Enterprise
Linux on Dell servers. The six Solaris
Sunfire V240 servers were replaced by
the same number of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux servers running on Dell.
SOFTWARE
Hardware
80 Total servers running Red Hat
Enterprise Linux including four-node Red
Hat cluster on Dell 2950’s, front-ended
with a Load Balancer.
Benefits
Substantial savings on hardware and
“At the same time, we really wanted to look at the prospect of starting
to use iSCSI as opposed to fibre for our SAN connectivity, because our
existing fibre environment was already well utilised and to expand this
was going require a significant financial investment,“ said Ingram.
licensing costs for all new deployments
SOLUTION
stability and reliability, higher
ResMed first introduced Red Hat solutions into the organisation in
2005, when it began successfully migrating it’s E2E Java Applications
running on Sun One to JBoss Application Server as its application layer
on SUN Solaris.
availability, and excellent local support
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | resmed
redhat.com/jboss
and savings of approximately $200k on
replaced Tru64 server licensing fees,
increased and impressive performance,
134
It was due to its positive middleware experience through
JBoss, and a recommendation from its Linux software
developer, that in early 2006, ResMed began its Red Hat
Enterprise Linux deployment. Over a period of four years,
V its use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux expanded to 50
Dell 1950 and 2950 servers based in Australia, Europe,
and the United States, with three servers running Red
Hat virtualization clusters for 10 guests.
In 2009, ResMed replaced two production Tru64 servers
with four Red Hat servers and implemented another two
Red Hat servers in place of its two UAT Tru64 servers.
Its three Solaris Sunfire V240 production servers were
replaced with three Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based
servers and the three Solaris Sunfire V240 UAT servers
were replaced with an additional three Red Hat servers.
The remainder of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based
servers were implemented for development, UAT, and
production purposes, to host Oracle databases and
applications, along with internally developed JBoss
applications.
The organisation also finally implemented the muchanticipated iSCSI for its SAN connectivity. “We set
up a couple of servers into a cluster running Red Hat
Enterprise Linux virtualization and we now have three
hosts in the cluster connected to the SAN and are using
the Red Hat operating system cluster and global file
system,” said Ingram.
In addition, running its Red Hat Enterprise Linux
virtualization cluster has proven to be considerably
cheaper than any other virtualization offering ResMed
investigated.
Finally, replacing its fibre SAN connectivity with iSCSI
has also enabled ResMed to cut costs. While the cost of
extending the fibre switches is approximately $60,000,
it cost ResMed only $20,000 to install Ethernet
switches for iSCSI.
Furthermore, the cost of an HBA is approximately
$2,000 per server while the cost of an Ethernet card is
close to just $400 per server.
Throughout the migration process, ResMed found Red
Hat’s on-the-ground support to be very reassuring. With
its Brisbane-based engineering and support center, Red
Hat provides local expertise and experience on a 24x7,
‘follow the sun’ basis.
“Compared with many other vendors where support is
outsourced internationally to various time zones, Red
Hat’s quality support is reliable and available if and
when we need it,” said Ingram.
“We’re using a mixture of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
installations, including our original Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 4 installation, and more recently, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5.2 and 5.3. In the coming months, we
will migrate to version 5.4 across the board.”
ResMed also continues to value its JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, which it uses for a number of
critical internal applications including IPMS (Intellectual
Property Management System), POS (Point of Sale),
and PRS (Performance Review System), as well as for
externally hosted websites (including www.resmed.com).
BENEFITS
By replacing its Tru64 UNIX server cluster with nonproprietary Dell servers, ResMed estimates it saved
approximately $200k on licensing costs.
“Previously we had replaced a Tru64 UNIX cluster, which
at the time cost about $200k in maintenance per annum
and is an end-of-life operating system. We replaced this
Tru64 cluster with a Red Hat cluster, which has cost us
just $40k in hardware and $10k for licensing,” said Ingram.
Importantly for ResMed, the impressive cost savings are
coupled with solid performance for the administrators
and users, along with rock-solid stability and maximum
uptime, which is crucial for the business.
135
redhat.com/jboss
RESMED | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
American Psychological
Association Relies on Red Hat
Solutions to Re-launch Website
with Unified Architecture
Geography
United States
SOLUTION
BACKGROUND
JBoss® Enterprise Middleware, including
Based in Washington, D.C., the American Psychological Association (APA)
is a scientific and professional organization that represents psychology in
the United States. With more than 165,000 members, APA is the largest
association of psychologists worldwide, and operates under the mission of
advancing the creation, communication, and application of psychological
knowledge to benefit society and improve people’s lives. In addition
to being a membership organization for academics, practitioners, and
psychology students, the APA publishes books and academic journals and
fills an important public service role of educating the general public.
JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform; JBoss
“Our academic publishing area includes about 70 peer-reviewed journals,
60 books a year, and the PsycINFO database, which is like the National
Library of Medicine’s Medline for psychology, and contains three million
records,” explained Beverly Jamison, senior director of IT, architecture, and
publishing solutions at the American Psychological Association. “In addition
to the database, we provide a platform that distributes information to our
members and the public and to university libraries that distribute our
academic publishing products. Academic publishing is a key part of our
business, delivering approximately 70 percent of our annual revenue, so
availability is critical.”
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
While the APA’s flagship website, APA.org, is one of the primary means
of communication and knowledge distribution within the APA community,
an internal audit revealed that APA’s web presence was not achieving
its full potential. Previously, the web presence consisted of a series of
non-cohesive web properties. The properties were built on a homegrown
content management and e-commerce system that was more than 10
years old and integrated many diverse legacy technologies.
Enterprise Application Platform (including
JBoss Seam Framework, JBoss Cache,
Red Hat Enterprise MRG Messaging, JBoss
Clustering); Red Hat Enterprise Linux®
HARDWARE
HP
benefits
Re-launched flagship website,
www.apa.org, achieved a unified,
secure, and scalable platform allowing
the organization’s more than 165,000
members to share information with
peers, deployed a cost effective, open
source architecture that leveraged
existing applications and removed
requirements to purchase new ones
As the APA grew, its disparate legacy web architecture was limiting
the organization’s ability to quickly and efficiently add new features.
With more than 1.5 million total hits per day and 500,000 unique user
views per month, the APA wanted to improve the user experience it was
providing to its members and visitors via APA.org. The APA wanted more
intuitive features, better support for the organization’s activities, enhanced
availability of psychological information for the public and its members,
and improved e-commerce capabilities. The relaunched APA.org also
required improved search, identity, and authorization, as well as content
management capabilities and a more personalized experience for MyAPA,
the organization’s web-based member portal.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | APA
redhat.com/jboss
136
“As technology grows, our members, the
academic community, and the public have
growing expectations for how and when
information will be available to them. It’s
critical for us to maintain agility and embrace
new technologies and opportunities. With Red
Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise
Middleware, we are able to experience the
benefits of open source combined with the
support and uptime that we require.”
– Beverly Jamison, senior director of IT, architecture, and
publishing solutions, American Psychological Association
SOLUTION
A long-time open source proponent, the APA has been
using a variety of open source solutions since the
earliest days of the Internet.
“As an association, we need to be economical with our
IT budget and provide the best services that we can,
so Linux and Apache are easy starting places for us,”
said Jamison. “However, as our practices matured,
we could no longer have unsupported software; our
uptime requirements were too high and our software
development was too complex. We chose Red Hat
Enterprise Linux for its robustness and high levels of
support that ensured our requirements were met after
putting the full weight of our UNIX systems on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. Today, we’re running all of our systems
on HP hardware using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”
After using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a few years,
the APA embarked on a project to integrate its disparate
systems and web architecture.
availability and functionality,” added Abroo Shah, APA’s
director of applications. “With that, the service layer
and the use of Java became essential.”
Before selecting JBoss Enterprise Middleware, the
APA embarked on a broad competitive evaluation in
conjunction with its website redesign project. As part of
that project, the APA evaluated identity management and
e-commerce solutions, and the tools they would use for
the integration. The APA needed a new solution to support
high availability of applications and platforms—one that
was also flexible in its support of web services, especially
for planned future integrations with external systems and
additional internal systems. The APA also needed to make
key application services, including identity management
and e-commerce, available as web services.
“We evaluated solutions across the board—from large
commercial vendors to smaller integration tools—
keeping in mind that the nature of the application stack
and web services support were essential for day-today operations.” said Jamison. “JBoss Enterprise
Middleware not only met our support requirements and
constraints, but was also able to manage the workload
while guaranteeing service levels. An added bonus? It
was the most economical option.”
“JBoss Enterprise Middleware gives us a number of
advantages compared to competing technologies in the
market,” said Shah. “The first is robustness, and the second
is making our systems versatile. With JBoss Enterprise
Middleware, our architecture is now expandable.”
The APA turned to Red Hat to recommend a partner to
work with them on the launch of the new APA.org,
ultimately selecting Vizuri, a Red Hat Advanced
Business Partner and Preferred JBoss Certified
Systems Integrator. Vizuri was selected to design the
solutions architecture, encompassing the integration
of the content management, control access, and the
custom-developed APA applications.
“Like many organizations, the approach to integration
was handled three different ways—by the public website,
the association, and the academic publishing unit ,” said
Jamison. “When it came time to integrate the member
services, the academic communication services, and
e-commerce, we needed to address the challenge of
integrating siloed pieces of software with legacy systems.
The only solution that enabled us to keep the legacy
systems while decreasing dependence on the deprecation,
was to create synchronization. We needed a robust,
web-facing system with e-commerce and registration
functionality, as well as a member-access only section.”
“The relationship with Vizuri worked out extremely well,”
said Jamison. “Vizuri sent us two consultants who were
engaged with us full-time when we were in a very intense
mode, and they served us in a number of capacities. They
acted as a true partner, participating in our architectural
design, integrating those pieces, handling our deployment,
and training our in-house technical team.” Working
closely with the APA, Vizuri built a solution using JBoss
Enterprise Middleware that better leveraged the APA’s
existing legacy solutions, reducing costs and avoiding
unnecessary technical headaches.
“Our web project demanded a service-oriented
architecture (SOA) and as our needs became more
complex, JBoss Enterprise Middleware from Red Hat was
selected as the ideal solution to ensure the new website’s
“When we came on board, the technical challenges were
significant,” said Joe Dickman, senior vice president at
Vizuri. “We needed to have what’s called an ‘activeactive sync,’ so it was critical that the APA was able to
utilize messaging to keep the systems in sync and to
137
redhat.com/jboss
APA | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
ensure that there was integrity between both systems.”
The new solution was based on two primary JBoss
Enterprise Middleware platforms: JBoss Enterprise
Portal Platform, and JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform, which includes JBoss Seam Framework,
Clustering, Red Hat Enterprise MRG Messaging, and
support for the popular RichFaces framework.
With this solution in place, the APA leveraged Red Hat
Enterprise MRG Messaging to help synchronize and
better leverage legacy assets, JBoss Clustering to
ensure high availability, and JBoss Seam Framework to
integrate the identity management system with the rest
of the APA. org web ecosystem, creating a seamlessly
unified user environment.
“Red Hat Enterprise MRG Messaging was probably the most
critical to the synchronization piece,” said Jamison. “JBoss
Clustering was important for our ability to be robust, avoid
downtime deployments, sustain failures in certain portions
of the system, and be able to have a clean restart.”
“We needed the identity management component to
interface with our legacy systems, which required a
queuing mechanism to enable messaging back and
forth,” said Shah. “For this, Java Messaging Queue, as
part of JBoss Enterprise Middleware, was critical.”
JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform has also emerged as
the core foundation for APA’s complex Digital Rights
Management solution.
“JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform provided us with an
integration platform that was able to integrate at the
glass,” said Dickman[ “There were also new JBoss Seam
Framework applications that were utilized by e-commerce
and the publishing systems, while at the same time we
were able to integrate legacy applications.”
“JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform supports every
authentication that comes through our high-traffic
PsycNET site,” said Jamison. “It also supports the
e-commerce, all the way through the completion of the
transaction when we assign digital assets to user profiles.”
BENEFITS
When the new APA.org launched using JBoss Enterprise
Middleware solutions, the APA achieved its initial goals
of creating an engaging web experience, full of rich
features and functionality. Among the biggest benefits
that the APA has experienced with its overhauled
website is an enhanced web presence.
“Single sign-on provides a number of benefits to our
membership by allowing quicker and more nimble
navigation between different sections of the website,”
said Jamison. “As our members move between our public
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | APA
website to the members-only section for information on
upcoming conferences or APA governance, they can now
sign in on any of those systems and be recognized as
they move from one system to another.”
“Open source provides us choice,” said Dickman. “The
complex nature of the Digital Rights Management at
APA could not have been completed as easily had we
used closed source, proprietary software.”
The organization’s members also benefit from the
ability to use APA’s applications and platforms without
having to experience downtime.
“The most meaningful result was the decrease in
downtime,” said Jamison. “Previously, we could not sustain
some of the single points of failure. However, with JBoss
Enterprise Middleware, the robustness has increased
greatly. High availability allows us to recover from downtime
of other components and to introduce no-downtime
deployments and patches, which are critical to the business.
We are now long past the days where we said we needed a
four-hour window to get a particular deployment out.”
“What Red Hat provides to my customers is sustainability,”
said Dickman. “They are assured that the support costs they
purchase are valuable investments, allowing them to direct
savings into the assets they are doing for their businesses.”
As the APA integrates more internal and external services
and applications via web services, they are considering
moving to an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) approach to
manage rules via JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform.
“As the organization evolves, our SOA will likewise grow,
and we’re envisioning applications that will use this
architecture,” said Shah. “As other applications move
into our architecture, which is built on JBoss Enterprise
Middleware, we’ll expand our use of JBoss in order to
deliver more services.
“We’re also exploring using Red Hat Enterprise MRG
Messaging for our disaster recovery, which is an option
that I hadn’t visualized when we first started working
with the Java Messaging Queue,” said Shah. In that
sense, Java has demonstrated itself to be highly versatile
and flexible, and an environment that we can use for a
variety of applications.”
“As technology grows, our members, the academic
community, and the public have increasing expectations
for how and when information will be available to them,”
said Jamison. “It’s critical for us to maintain agility and
embrace new technologies and opportunities. We have
found that with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise Middleware, we get to experience the many
benefits of open source, combined with the levels of
support and uptime that we require.”
redhat.com/jboss
138
139
CRIX TRUSTS RED HAT,
ALFRESCO, AND JBOSS TO
QUICKLY AND SAFELY SPEED
NEW DRUGS TO MARKET
Geography
United States
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Create an electronic information
exchange for all stakeholders involved
in getting new drugs to market from
research and development, to clinical
trials, to government approval
BACKGROUND
Clinical Research Information Exchange (CRIX) International is a notfor-profit collaborative consortium that includes government agencies,
members of the biopharmaceutical industry, academic researchers,
healthcare providers, and other stakeholders in development of new
drug therapies. CRIX has created a secure and standards-based
electronic information exchange for everyone involved in clinical drug
research that facilitates faster, less-expensive, and secure alternatives
to exchanging clinical research information. Open to everyone involved
in clinical drug research and development, the CRIX community
currently includes more than 20 companies ranging from smaller clinical
research organizations to pharmaceutical giants like Merck & Co. Inc.
and Pfizer Inc.
softWARE
Enterprise Portal Platform, JBoss
jBPM Framework, Alfresco Enterprise
Content Management (ECM), and
TriCipher
benefits
Will enable previously unmatched levels
of collaboration among pharmaceutical
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Getting new drugs to market has always been a complex, costly,
and labor-intensive process. One of the most painful aspects of this
procedure has been the vast amount of paperwork involved in collecting,
processing, and distributing documentation of clinical trials to submit
to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As it currently works,
all the various parties involved in clinical research—the biopharma
companies themselves, the doctors and hospitals performing the trials,
and the FDA, as well as numerous other organizations—communicate
with one another on a one-on-one basis: The bio-pharma organizations
exchange data with the healthcare providers and academic institutions
performing the trials; the bio-pharma groups interact with the FDA
and other government entities, and the organizations involved in the
marketing and distribution of the approved drugs have to establish
independent connections with all parties.
companies, government agencies,
academic institutions, and health care
providers to make the drug development,
testing, and approval process more
secure and efficient while reducing costs
and safeguarding the safety of the end
consumer
Although most of the large bio-pharma businesses have implemented
proprietary IT systems that attempt to automate most or all of the
process, frequently, this information is still collected, processed, and
exchanged manually. In either case, the result has been “siloed” data
as well as investments in technology by different organizations that
overlap and even outright conflict with each other.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | crix
redhat.com/jboss
140
“The biggest reason we went the Red
Hat route, in addition to the technical
excellence of its products, was its
legendary support. And its reputation
for it is well deserved.”
of scale unprecedented in the pharmaceuticals industry.
Lower transactional costs will free up more funds for
research; human errors will be reduced because manual
data entry will be minimized or outright eliminated; and
patients will reap the benefits of new therapies much
faster. Perhaps more importantly, the fact that the
entire clinical trial process will be easier will motivate
project participants, which in turn will improve quality
of health and life for people around the globe.
– Mark Vermette, product manager for CRIX International
SOLUTION
Initially created under the auspices of the National
Cancer Institute in 2005, CRIX’s first pilot deliverable,
called Firebird (for the Federal Investigator Registry of
Biomedical Information Research Data), automated the
FDA’s Form 1572 submission process. Form 1572 is the
FDA-required document in which clinical investigators
agree to conduct investigational new drug clinical trials
according to federal regulations. The much-needed
Firebird applications enabled the electronic completion,
signing, and submission of the copious amount of
paperwork that the doctors and other health-care
providers have to complete during a clinical trial.
But although useful, Firebird was limited in scope, as it
automated just a fraction of the clinical trials process.
So in 2007 CRIX International was formed, and the CRIX
project was placed under its jurisdiction.
The first decision that Vermette and his team made
was to use open source to build what would be called
the CRIX Collaborative Platform. To that end, CRIX
International worked with Rivet Logic, the Reston,
Virginia-based, open source systems integrator.
“This would ensure the end result would be based
upon established standards, and also that it would
be easier for participants to contribute their efforts
to the general innovation and contribution we were
making to the industry,” said Vermette. Once he started
looking at actual products, “it was clear we wanted
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Alfresco Enterprise Content
Management and JBoss Enterprise Middleware to
support our efforts,” he said.
The CRIX Collaborative Platform was developed using
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Portal
Platform and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform,
including JBoss Hibernate for database access. It
also utilized TriCipher as a unified authentication
infrastructure.
Because Red Hat technologies promote a modular
approach to development, one of the biggest benefits
of the CRIX Collaborative Platform will be that
independent software developers will be able to
create and own modules that reside on top of it. Biopharmaceuticals stakeholders will thus have an entire
menu of open source functionality from which they
can choose. “They will have a choice of implementing
content management functionality, clinical analysis
tools, or the document publication capabilities—there
will be an entire laundry list of options they will have
based upon their needs,” said Vermette.
Red Hat products were an integral part of the CRIX
effort, said Vermette. “Although this would have been
possible without Red Hat products, it would have been
substantially more difficult,” said Vermette. “The
biggest reason we went the Red Hat route, in addition
to the technical excellence of its products, was its
legendary support. And its reputation for it is well
deserved.”
Alfresco ECM was also a critical part of the solution.
“Alfresco provides us with an enterprise-scale
content management solution, based entirely on open
standards, enabling consortium members to accelerate
collaboration and information flows for clinical
research,” said Vermette.
Looking ahead, Vermette is anticipating implementing
JBoss jBPM and Alfresco ECM to bring process
automation capabilities to the CRIX Collaborative
Platform.
“The pharmaceutical industry has some very complex
regulatory requirements, and—historically—binders and
binders of paper documents with complicated rules
on who gets to author them, how they are edited, and
how the content is controlled,” said Vermette. “The
JBoss jBPM Framework and Alfresco ECM are very
sophisticated technologies that will provide these
capabilities, and should be the ‘tipping point’ for
getting organizations to adopt the CRIX Collaborative
Platform.”
BENEFITS
Launched in June 2008, the CRIX Collaborative Platform
will create a shared knowledge base, enable increased
opportunities for collaboration, and facilitate economies
141
redhat.com/jboss
CRIX | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
DST Health Solutions makes
Better Business Decisions
through the use of JBoss
Geography
United States
BACKGROUND
DST Health Solutions is a wholly owned subsidiary of DST Systems, Inc.
[NYSE: DST] and has worked closely with leaders across the healthcare
delivery continuum for 35 years. The global organization offers information
technology and outsourcing services to meet the needs of health insurers,
administrators, physician organizations, and staffing companies. DST Health
Solutions delivers advanced, cost-effective approaches for supporting
the entire healthcare enterprise, combining the best applications with
outsourcing, systems integration and implementation services, process
re-engineering, and integrated e-business capabilities that deliver reliable,
functionality-rich enterprise administration and marketplace connectivity.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Great business decisions happen at the intersections of data from across
a company. This presents a unique challenge to businesses that outsource
operations as the information needed for executives to make great
business decisions may exist outside the four walls of their company.
While these companies may save money on administrative costs, much of
their data is buried, which requires them to either fund timely searches
or make uninformed decisions. “The loss of transparency is what terrifies
health plan executives, and rightly so,” said Christopher Creel, knowledge
management director, DST Health Solutions. The goal of DST Health
Solutions was to not only restore that transparency, but to provide a new
and unprecedented level of transparency and accountability. DST Health
Solutions needed to provide its clients with this new level of transparency
and accountability by removing barriers to data previously frozen in manual
processes. This would further reduce companies’ administrative costs and
help executives make informed business decisions quicker.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
A complicated data infrastructure
resulted in employee and time
dependencies and expensive and timeconsuming processes, which slowed the
business decision process and obscured
opportunities
softWARE
JBoss Enterprise Data Services, Drools,
Jaspersoft JasperServer, Talend
benefits
Emancipated data from previously
opaque data sources and organized
that data into an easily searchable and
manageable, customer-specific virtual
database, reduced overhead expenses
and dependencies, expedited reporting,
enabled employees to quickly locate data
and thus make better business decisions
Creel relates the data infrastructure of many companies to a mass of computers
and wires. “This mass contains legacy data that is managed by different people
who are responsible for different parts of the data landscape,” said Creel. This
disorganization creates what Creel identifies as data warlords, “people who
control pieces of system turf and have made their careers out of guarding
those pieces of turf,” creating a cultural dynamic that dramatically slows down
the decision-making process. Not only is it expensive to manually gather,
aggregate, and reconcile data, but it also requires additional support and often
an insufficient amount of time. With this disorganization, “critical reports that
should be run daily or even hourly, end up getting run monthly,” said Creel.
DST Health Solutions is in a common situation, growing organically over
the years and acquiring new systems through acquisitions and new
business. Consequently, DST Health Solutions’ has a rich technology
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | DST
redhat.com/jboss
142
“JBoss Enterprise Data Services has given
us the ability to help our executives be more
informed, automatically monitor for trouble
before the trouble arises, and bring claims
processing, timekeeping, financial, and HR
systems together, which has enabled us to
make better business decisions.”
– Christopher Creel, knowledge management director, DST Health Solutions
environment of approximately 30 different data sources and
five claims engines, each of which runs on a different platform
(both modern and legacy) that runs different databases and
is written in a combination of various languages including
COBOL and Java. This complicated infrastructure created data
management and data integrity problems common in many
companies that have expensive manual processes.
SOLUTION
“We realized that if we could provide a level of transparency
greater than what a health plan has to begin with then
not only can we save them administrative costs by doing
their claims processing, we can also give them a level of
transparency that they’ve never had before,” said Creel.
In order to achieve this level of transparency, DST
Health Solutions enlisted the support of JBoss. JBoss
Enterprise Data Services has contributed to DST Health
Solutions’ ability to offer its clients data organization and
instantaneous data retrieval. Prior to selecting JBoss,
DST Health Solutions considered creating an enterprise
data warehouse, but realized that this data warehouse
would only move the problem. “We needed a solution that
would allow us to leave the system data in place, rather
than move it,” said Creel. “If we had created an enterprise
data warehouse, we would have had static schema sitting
in enterprise data warehouses in the same way that
they sat in source systems. We would have also had all
the maintenance and overhead involved in creating and
maintaining the enterprise data warehouse.”
Creel relates the DST Health Solutions’ technology
infrastructure to an orchestra, as each piece serves a
different purpose, and JBoss Enterprise Data Services as the
orchestrator. “JBoss Enterprise Data Services enables us to
connect to all of these data sources regardless of what they
are—flat files, Excel spreadsheets, XML, databases of every
walk of life,” said Creel. “The way that it works is
fascinating. You issue a query from your report to the
virtual database, JBoss Enterprise Data Services then
fires off queries specialized for each platform, and
optimized for the report and for each data source. That
query goes down to the appropriate platform, grabs results,
brings the results back up, cobbles them all together using
the SQL statements you provided previously, and gives you
what looks like a unified, rationalized result that could have
143
redhat.com/jboss
come from any data source.” Additionally, JBoss Enterprise Data
Services enables users to not only read information from the data
systems, but they can also put information back into the data systems.
SOLUTION
“JBoss Enterprise Data Services has given us the ability to help our
executives be more informed, automatically monitor for trouble
before the trouble arises, and bring claims processing, timekeeping,
financial, and HR systems together, which has enabled us to make
better business decisions,” said Creel.
With JBoss Enterprise Data Services, DST Health Solutions can now
easily reconcile and aggregate data into manageable cubes. Unlike
enterprise data warehouses, JBoss Enterprise Data Services allows
DST Health Solutions to solve its data problem virtually rather than
simply moving it. “JBoss Enterprise Data Services lets us leave all the
data in the systems, we don’t have to move it out,” said Creel. “We
can simply issue queries to the virtual tables in order to pull data out
in real-time and present it to clients as though it were a database,
which gives us the intoxicating power to deliver information quickly.”
JBoss Enterprise Data Services also expedites reporting. “Now when
the CEO comes to us and says, ‘I need this piece of data,’ we can say,
‘I’ve got it, all I have to do is recombine the virtual tables we already
have’.” This process of recombining data requires minimal training.
“The beauty of this approach is that it leverages the very skills that
your people already have,” said Creel. Employees who used to write
SQL queries as one-off experiences, now use the same skills to build
the virtual tables in JBoss Enterprise Data Services.
After information is put into the virtual tables, employees can easily
search, access, rename, combine, repackage, and reconcile it, thus
increasing data organization and reducing employee dependencies
and time restraints. These capabilities “enable us to solve the really
scary problems,” said Creel. “They enable us to craft custom solutions
(e.g., write specialized functions) at that challenging part between the
virtual tables and the old, messy, unplanned data,” said Creel. “For
example, in order to reconcile data across legacy and modern databases,
we can write a function that breaks integers apart to create dates.”
Red Hat Global Support Services has offered continued assistance
throughout DST Health Solutions’ adoption of JBoss Enterprise
Data Services. “When we told Red Hat what we wanted to do, they
were excited and extraordinarily supportive,” said Creel. “They
helped us the entire way, despite the fact that the problems we
had were very specific to us. What we were looking for was a partner
in this process; and we found that partner in Red Hat.”
Flexibility and security are additional benefits of JBoss Enterprise
Data Services. Unlike other data solutions, JBoss Enterprise Data
Services allows you to create individual virtual databases and set
permissions around those unique databases. This feature is especially
beneficial for DST Health Solutions as it allows the company to give
its clients a secure connection to individual databases, which they can
read from as well as write to. Additionally, clients can connect their
own business intelligence tools and applications to the virtual databases.
“Where we were once an independent company separated by email,
now we are a company tied intimately to our clients,” said Creel.
DST | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Florida Hospital Enhances
I.T. Performance and
Patient Care with Red Hat
Virtualization Technology
and Consulting
BACKGROUND
With eight facilities, 18,000 employees, and over 3,000 beds throughout
Central Florida, Florida Hospital is the largest hospital and is the
second largest employer in the state. Florida Hospital sees more
patients through its Emergency Room than any other hospital in the
U.S. Established in 1908, the hospital provides care to more than one
million patients each year and is part of the Adventist Healthcare
System—the largest not-for-profit healthcare provider in the nation.
Florida Hospital’s MIS Department, which includes approximately 100
developers, manages one centralized datacenter for all of its facilities,
making it one of the busiest centers in Central Florida. Its over 500
servers and 350 applications are responsible for the life-critical
healthcare-delivery machines that rely on its systems. The hospital is
also known for its excellent quality of healthcare. US News and World
Report magazine has ranked Florida Hospital as one of “America’s Best
Hospitals” consecutively for the past six years.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
To deliver the best patient care, Florida Hospital is constantly evaluating and
improving its IT systems—ensuring the most reliable, high-performance
infrastructure is always in place. In the mid 1990s, the hospital decided
to undergo a new web initiative to publish its internal applications to the
Internet, but the project soon became cost-prohibitive.
Additionally, Florida Hospital’s IT infrastructure was becoming
extremely complex with over 300 different places where patient records
could be stored. Data stored on the system must be instantly accessible
in locations across the hospital, mandating a high-performance and
scalable platform for its IT infrastructure.
“As our environment grew, we couldn’t afford to use an expensive
proprietary operating system anymore,” said Jack Velazquez, Sr.,
Systems Engineer for the Open Systems Team at Florida Hospital. In
addition, the hospital began reevaluating its disaster recovery system.
As part of the patient-care continuum, Florida Hospital’s IT must
be highly available and highly recoverable. “Because of the way our
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | FLORIDA HOSPITAL
Geography
Orlando, Florida
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Design a new disaster-recovery system that
would ensure seamless business continuity
for the hospital; determine a solution to
aid in delivering high-performance, secure,
cost-effective systems to ensure optimized
patient care; identify a solution to enable
internal hosting and support for the growing
number of external websites
MIGRATION PATH
IBM AIX to Red Hat Enterprise Linux
softWARE
Platform with integrated virtualization,
Red Hat Global File System and Cluster
Suite; Red Hat Network Satellite; JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform; JBoss
Operations Network, Red Hat Consulting;
MySQL, Oracle, Caché, FoxPro, and Postgres
databases; proprietary applications for
reporting and management of patient data
and for mail, security, and virus protection
HARDWARE
HP and IBM servers
benefits
Streamlined disaster recovery and gained
higher system availability and resource
efficiencies that translate into better
patient care; achieved 35-percent growth
in its datacenter without needing to
expand its hardware footprint or internal
resources through its use of virtualization;
gained expertise through the knowledge
transfer resulting from virtualization and
clustering-focused engagements with Red
Hat Consulting
redhat.com/jboss
144
disaster recovery system was designed, it could have
taken up to two days to restore our file systems and data
if anything went wrong. We knew we needed to deploy a
smarter system that would provide seamless business
continuity for the hospital,” said Velazquez.
“With the highly transactional nature of Florida
Hospital’s business and our need to access patient data
with immediacy, we needed a solution that could provide
high performance, reliability, and secure backup and
recovery,” said Barbara Schleider, director of Technology
Services, Management Information Systems (MIS) at
Florida Hospital. “Our first priority is security and our
second is performance. When you can get security
and performance needs met, and it costs less than the
alternative, you go for it. That’s the quadrant that Red
Hat Enterprise Linux plays in.”
Solution
Initially, Florida Hospital turned to Red Hat because it
provided the combination of high performance, security,
and cost efficiencies it needed for its web initiative, but
it quickly found many more advantages for its disaster
recovery project. “We realized that using Red Hat in our
data warehouse would help us resolve hardware-software
compatibility issues that can cause unnecessary system
downtime. Red Hat’s large network of certified vendors
ensures that most drivers are built into the operating
system kernel, resulting in smoother operations,” said
Velazquez. Florida Hospital also chose to use the Red
Hat Network Satellite, Red Hat Cluster Suite, and Red
Hat Global File System (GFS) to restructure the way its
disaster recovery system was designed and managed.
Today, 116 HP and IBM servers run Red Hat Enterprise
Linux Advanced Platform, which runs a number of
databases, including the hospital’s eight-terabyte Oracle
data warehouse. Red Hat Enterprise Linux also runs
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and the hospital’s
proprietary applications, which include patient care,
financial, and data management solutions. A group of
servers is also dedicated to communication and system
protection applications, such as authentication, user ID
management, mail, and virus scanning.
To protect all of this critical information, the Open
Systems Team created a unique disaster-recovery
system by offloading all applications and data to the
Red Hat Global File System running on the SAN. Using
Red Hat Cluster Suite, the team created a six-node
cluster. Each of the clusters shares two volumes on the
GFS: one for the applications and the other for data.
“With Red Hat GFS, we no longer need to replicate data
or applications if a server goes down,” said Velazquez.
“The servers simply provide CPU and power. Everything
else runs from GFS. Though millions of transactions are
processed each day at Florida Hospital, today it only
takes minutes to back up the Red Hat Enterprise Linux
145
redhat.com/jboss
servers.” To upgrade or restore a machine in the cluster,
the team simply installs Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
attaches the computer to the SAN. Within minutes, it’s
ready to go.
As part of its evolutionary partnership with Red Hat,
Florida Hospital also implemented the virtualization
technology delivered as an integrated part of the Red
Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform operating
system. “With Red Hat virtualization, we’ve been able
to manage 35 percent growth in our datacenter without
augmenting our hardware infrastructure or staff. We’ve
done some exceptional things with virtualization,” said
Schleider.
To date, Florida Hospital’s servers running Red Hat
Enterprise Linux have produced over 1,200 days of solid
uptime, thriving despite a number of serious datacenter
challenges, including air conditioning malfunctions
that caused the server room to overheat. “Our Red Hat
Enterprise Linux systems have been very resilient and
have survived the most catastrophic conditions with
great stability. We’ve never had a problem with our
Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers — it’s really a selfsufficient datacenter,” said Velazquez.
“Our first priority is security and our
second is performance. When you can
get security and performance needs met,
and it costs less than the alternative, you
go for it. That’s the quadrant that Red
Hat Enterprise Linux plays in.”
– Barbara Schleider, director of Technology Services,
Management Information Systems (MIS) at Florida Hospital
The Open Systems Team also implemented Red
Hat Network Satellite to facilitate infrastructure
management, security compliance, and new system
deployment. “Red Hat Network Satellite makes
system management easy, enabling us to deploy new
applications and security patches to all servers at
once,” said Velazquez. Florida Hospital’s data security
office continually conducts security audits, and Red Hat
Network Satellite tracks all system activities, making it
possible for the Open Systems Team to provide detailed
reports for HIPAA compliance.
To provide expertise during its virtualization and
clustering deployments, Florida Hospital relied upon
Red Hat Consulting. “The knowledge transfer that
resulted from our work with our Red Hat consultants
was extremely valuable,” said Velazquez.
“As a mission-oriented, non-profit organization, we’re
FLORIDA HOSPITAL | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
conscious of financial stewardship and had not used
outside consulting previously,” said Schleider. “We saw
the value of investing in Red Hat Consulting and we made
the right decision—the expertise we gained from the Red
Hat Consulting experience helped us achieve our goals
and work toward our mission.”
Benefits
As a result of deploying Red Hat, Florida Hospital
streamlined its disaster recovery processes and gained
higher system availability that translates into better
patient care. “Red Hat solutions enabled us to create a
highly efficient disaster-recovery system that expedited
restoration time from days to seconds. This means
we make patient data readily available and provide
the highest level of care at all times,” said Velazquez.
Average recovery time now takes between 30 seconds
and five minutes to sync the data and one hour to
recover.
been impressed by our efficiency, ROI, and performance
gains from using Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux
makes it possible to meet cost pressures, but also still
meet mission-critical demands,” said Velazquez.
“There’s nothing more critical than lives at risk, so our
systems must be highly recoverable. Having highly
available systems means that Florida Hospital can
deliver the quality care that our patients need,” said
Schleider.
Having faced the challenge of growing numbers of
external websites being developed by third parties
that translated into mounting expenses, using Red Hat
Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with integrated
virtualization technology, the team was able to start
migrating these sites to internal hosting. To date,
89 websites have been migrated in-house, providing
expanded security and reduced costs for the hospital’s IT
infrastructure.
“The strength of Red Hat virtualization for us has really
been through paravirtualization,” said Velazquez. “It
blows the performance of other virtualization solutions
on the market away.”
Florida Hospital also experienced significant efficiency
gains from its Red Hat deployment. “Red Hat Network
Satellite makes it possible for us to manage 110 servers
with only two engineers. Provisioning systems only takes
minutes when it used to take us hours or even days,” said
Velazquez. With the new Red Hat disaster recovery
system, the hospital continues to save on resources.
“Red Hat GFS enabled us to create an innovative
design that saves on storage costs, network bandwidth,
and processing power,” he said. In addition, Red Hat
Consulting helped the Open Services Team to implement
the Linux disaster recovery system, helping them build
and break clusters during on-site training. “Thanks to
Red Hat Consulting we were able to deploy the system
within a couple of weeks,” said Velazquez.
Red Hat also helps Florida Hospital maintain a
technological and competitive edge. As the largest
hospital systems within the Adventist Healthcare
System, the hospital strives to stay ahead of the curve.
“With 100 developers on our team, we rely on Red Hat to
save us time on everyday management issues so we can
focus on creating new solutions. Our parent company has
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | FLORIDA HOSPITAL
redhat.com/jboss
146
147
Red Hat Helps MedQuist
Streamline Clinical
Documentation Workflow
with JBoss and Red Hat
Enterprise Linux
Geography
Mount Laurel, New Jersey
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Enabling a rapidly growing, high-volume,
24x7 business through the creation of an
agile and highly productive development
environment for building and running
mission-critical applications.
BACKGROUND
MedQuist Inc. is a leading provider of medical transcription software
and related services. By delivering solutions that automate document
creation and workflow to hospitals, doctors, and other healthcare
providers, MedQuist helps its customers efficiently manage large
volumes of complex clinical information.
The company has two separate but connected sources of revenues.
First, it offers comprehensive software solutions that include digital
voice capture, speech recognition, electronic signature, medical coding
systems and services, and mobile dictation devices. It currently sells
these solutions to more than 1,500 healthcare organizations throughout
the United States. Secondly, MedQuist employs more than 4,000 skilled
medical transcriptionists who process approximately 2 billion lines of
text annually. The company employs more than 7,500 employees and
earned $327 million in revenues in fiscal 2008.
MIGRATION PATH
From many database-centric Windows
platform components towards a SOA
enterprise architecture providing service
orchestration, platform independence
and loose coupling of coarse-grained
application modules. The latter allows
for an evolutionary approach to replatforming of a very large enterprise
system without a large up-front cost and
significant business risk.
softWARE
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Because of rapid growth since the early 2000s, MedQuist was looking for
innovative ways to keep pace with ever-increasing system demands.
HARDWARE
“We process more than 100,000 distinct dictated medical reports and
notes per day,” said Kirk Elder, director of software engineering for
MedQuist. “Our systems have to categorize them, classify them and
route them through our workflow processes—from the time we receive
the digital recordings until the final report is delivered to the customer.”
MedQuist currently has 10 clusters of speech recognition servers with each
cluster containing 30+ servers, for a total of more than 300 servers to
perform the all-important task of converting voice recordings to text-based
documents. The voice recordings and related text files are than sent to
medical transcriptionists (MTs) to correct and edit. After the MT finishes
transcribing the report, the MedQuist platform sends the report to physicians
to electronically sign the documents. Those documents are then routed back
to the hospitals or clinics to printers, automated systems and/or their
electronic health record (EHR) system, depending on whether the customer
requires the information to be in paper or electronic form.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | MEDQUIST
x86 servers
benefits
A highly productive, flexible and robust
application development environment that
enables MedQuist to proficiently produce
innovative functionality for customerfacing solutions and to quickly take
advantage of newly acquired applications
by efficiently integrating them into its
DocQment Enterprise Platform.
redhat.com/jboss
148
Before 2007, most of the MedQuist software used for this
complex workflow routing was developed using various
proprietary technologies, including C++ among others,
making it more and more challenging to quickly respond
to new market requirements and opportunities. Because
MedQuist was quickly growing through acquisition, it also
became difficult to efficiently incorporate the systems of
newly acquired companies into the MedQuist DocQment
Enterprise Platform.
“We are in the process of moving to an n-tiered SOA
architecture based on Java middleware. With the JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, we are positioned with the
tool set to evolve our product suite towards SOA, without
the upfront costs of re-writing everything at the same,”
said Brian Ellenberger, development manager at MedQuist.
SOLUTION
Due to the economics of re-platforming a system this large,
MedQuist has taken an evolutionary approach to moving
its application platform to a JBoss-based environment. In
fact, Elder’s group chose JBoss in 2002-2003 when their
division was a separate company. At the time, there were
two reasons for doing this: price and performance.
• “As JBoss is an open source, it was much less costly than
proprietary application server options,” said Elder. “JBoss
was a bargain compared to proprietary application servers.”
• There were technical advantages to the platform itself.
“JBoss seemed to be a very good platform for ourdevelopers,
as the open architecture gave us lots of options. It was highperforming, too, and easy to understand,” continued Elder.
“Our applications are mission critical and
absolutely need to be available 24x7. Red
Hat’s JBoss and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
products just work, enabling us to focus on
building industry-leading software, which
in turn helps our customers reduce their
costs and improve patient care.”
– Dan Garnett, Vice President of Product Development, MedQuist.
When his company was acquired by MedQuist, the IT team
at the parent company evaluated what Elder’s team had
done using JBoss, and was so pleased with the results
that it decided to make JBoss the platform for developing
new software modules.
“We have 20 to 50 software modules that run on
hundreds of servers that must all work in concert with
each other,” said Kirk. “Previously, because of all the
acquisitions, there was not development standards for
making sure everything worked together.”
Today, the JBoss Application Server is embedded in the
149
redhat.com/jboss
developer platform that Elder’s team releases to all of
MedQuist’s software engineering teams each quarter.
“So everyone is developing software in a standard way
with standard third-party libraries,” said Ellenberger.
“Because we do development all over the world, this
keeps us in sync and helps us maintain efficiency, while
simultaneously reducing our overall development costs.”
Today, in addition to the JBoss Application Server itself,
MedQuist uses Hibernate. Although just starting to use
JBoss Seam for reporting, it is considering basing all
future thin-client development platforms on Seam.
Underpinning all this, in mid-2007, MedQuist moved from a
Microsoft Windows-based infrastructure to one based on Red
Hat Enterprise Linux. “When we were looking to upgrade our
enterprise database operating system to a more scalable,
reliable, and cost-effective solution than windows, Linux was
the obvious choice. We looked at which company would be
a partner and help ensure our success. Red hat proved it
then and every day since,” said John McKenna, Director of
Software Engineering.
BENEFITS
The fact that JBoss is built using open standards has
been a major boon for MedQuist. Indeed, its JBoss
implementation has been so successful that MedQuist
made an enterprise-wide decision to eliminate its
dependence on vendor-specific solutions.
“We like the fact that JBoss is so open,” said Elder. “With the
JBoss micro kernel architecture, we can even replace JBoss
modules with other modules without any trouble. This allows
us to avoid the vendor lock-in we had experienced before.”
How critical are JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and
Red Hat Enterprise Linux to MedQuist’s business? “Our
applications are mission critical and absolutely need to be
available 24x7. Red Hat products like JBoss and Red Hat
Enterprise Linux just work enabling us to focus on building
industry-leading software, which in turn helps our customers
reduce their costs and improve patient care,” said Dan
Garnett, Vice President of Product Development, MedQuist.
The open nature of the JBoss platform has delivered other
benefits as well. For example, in the case of JBoss, “His team
“can debug all the way through the code, and work around
and fix even the most complex development issues by
utilizing the source code,” said Elder. “JBoss also integrates
well into our build process. We’ve been very successful at
creating build scripts that get standard JBoss environments
up and running for new developers or projects very quickly
and painlessly.”
Finally, Red Hat as a company has proven to be solid and
reliable. “Over time, we’ve developed a solid relationship
with Red Hat and JBoss, and anticipate that our
partnership will only get better over time,” said Elder.
MEDQUIST | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Vizuri Partners with
Red Hat and JBoss to
Deliver Technology
Solutions that Drive
Healthcare Innovation
Geography
United States
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
To build an Enterprise Portal Platform
as the foundation for strategic
initiatives designed to aggregate critical
information, reduce operational costs,
and increase performance to internal and
BACKGROUND
external users, and increase availability
Vizuri is a Red Hat Advanced Business Partner and Preferred JBoss
Certified Systems Integrator that specializes in advanced technology
and business solutions. The consulting firm has experience with
implementation spanning Identity Management (IdM), Business Process
Management (BPM), Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Enterprise
Messaging, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Portal, Web 2.0, Seam,
and RichFaces. Vizuri is a consulting firm committed to delivering
innovation by utilizing open source solutions to provide cost-effective,
enterprise solutions for strategic client initiatives.
of research to a wider audience.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Alfresco ECM, Alfresco WCM
The Red Hat and Vizuri partnership helped a non-profit medical
research organization complete a side-by-side evaluation and selection
process that compared the solution benefits of open source software
to proprietary software. Through customer experiences, JBoss and
Vizuri were able to outline to the customer that the cost savings
would allow the customer to leverage Alfresco Enterprise Content
Management. The Red Hat and Vizuri solution was selected as a
finalist against IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic. Vizuri hosted the
customer for a capabilities demonstration of the JBoss Portal Platform
utilizing real-world client business situations that included many thirdparty applications that would be integrated to meet the customer’s
requirements.
During the capabilities demonstrations, Red Hat and Vizuri simulated
Integrated Single-Sign-On (SSO) leveraging Oracle Identity Management
(IdM) with PKI, and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) from
Alfresco that met the customer’s requirements.
By presenting related customer experiences, Vizuri was able to present
the JBoss Portal Platform with Single Sign-On integrated with Oracle
and Alfresco ECM demonstrated key items that the customer could now
consider due to the value of open source software.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | VIZURI
softWARE
JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform (32cpu), JBoss Rules (32-cpu), JBoss jBPM
(32-cpu), Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Advanced Platform, JBoss Developer
Professional, JBoss Developer Studio,
benefits
The Red Hat and Vizuri partnership
helped a non-profit medical research
organization complete a side-by-side
evaluation and selection process that
compared the solution benefits of
open source software to proprietary
software. Through customer experiences,
JBoss and Vizuri were able to outline
to the customer that the cost savings
provided by the selecting an open source
solution would allow the customer to
leverage Alfresco Enterprise Content
Management.
redhat.com/jboss
150
SOLUTION
Red Hat and Vizuri enabled the non-profit medical research
organization to select the JBoss Portal Platform, JBoss
Rules, and JBoss jBPM, to deliver the technology platform
that will increase the customers ability to aggregate
information, increase performance and meet the needs
of its internal and external customers and also bring
significant cost savings to the company.
Moving to a portal platform was an essential first
step in implementing the non-profit medical research
organization’s initiative, as multiple diverse systems and
data sets needed to be integrated to collect, process, and
disseminate all the relevant customer and operational
information.
Establishing a portal platform based on industry standards,
along with open source visibility, provided the customer
great confidence that legacy and custom developed
applications would be integrated seamlessly as part of the
overall solution.
The Red Hat and Vizuri team uncovered a strong need for
work flow and rules management due to the different types
of research grant application processes and the complex
rules for awards. JBoss Rules, JBoss jBPM, and Alfresco
Enterprise Content Management (WCM) capabilities were
presented in a similar business case scenario that met the
stringent requirements and customer needs.
Displaying the impact and value of open source
relationships, Red Hat and Vizuri worked with Alfresco,
to provide Alfresco Enterprise Content Management
(ECM) and Web Content Management (WCM) solutions
that positioned the customer for growth that would not
have been able to be considered due to limited financial
resources, if the customer selected proprietary solutions.
From the very beginning of the project, open source
partnership was vital to success. “With open source, we
were able to work effectively and with a strategic mission
to standardize and enable next-generation systems, that
were positioned for growth,” said Dickman.
“With the costs saved from selecting the open source
solution JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform, the customer
had the ability to purchase the Alfresco solutions,” said
Dickman, “The functional advantages and the value of
open source provided options to the customer that would
not have been available with a proprietary solution.”
The company did not want to implement legacy and
complex custom development projects in a non-standard
environment, and the JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform
delivered the tools to develop and establish a solid portal
reference architecture that simplifies the integration of
disparate systems and data.
“The JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform comes with
everything we need to enable simplified integration of
disparate systems and data. This platform serves as the
foundation for many of our client solutions and we trust
Red Hat to align with our future objectives and customer
needs, and to deliver solutions for innovation,” said
Dickman.
The company is also very pleased with the partnership it
has forged with Red Hat. Other Red Hat clients can now
leverage the experience Vizuri gained during its work with
the company, “It’s a win-win situation for us both,” said
Dickman.
“Our ability to provide a robust Portal
Platform capable of complex technology
integrations coupled with proven client
solutions, enabled the non-profit medical
research organization to trust that
professional open source was strategic to
their organization.”
– Joe Dickman, Managing Director, Vizuri
BENEFITS
The non-profit medical research organization needed to
modernize its infrastructure, and put a plan in place to
build next-generation systems that would allow for agility,
growth, and efficient daily operations.
151
redhat.com/jboss
VIZURI | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
INDUSTRY:
PUBLIC SECTOR
& GOVERNMENT
PUBLIC SECTOR
& GOVERNMENT
152
C-DAC designs a
high-performing, flexible
system for the NSDG project
with Red Hat solutions
Geography
Pan India
BACKGROUND
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) was
established in March 1988 as a Scientific Society of the Department of
Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology, and Government of India. It is primarily an R&D institution
involved in the design, development, and deployment of advanced
information technology solutions. Over the years, C-DAC has diversified
its activities to address requirements in various areas, such as financial
and capital market simulation and modeling, network and Internet
software, healthcare, real time systems, e-governance, data warehousing,
digital libraries, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing.
NSDG (National e-Governance Services Delivery Gateway) is one of the
e-governance projects that was entrusted to C-DAC for its development.
NSDG is one of India’s Mission Mode Projects (MMP). NSDG is a standardsbased messaging middleware for e-governance services that was conceptualized
with the aim of providing a single-window service to a citizen of India for
services such as passport and land records, among others. NSDG was
conceptualized by Intel, BEA, and Oracle in 2002. A proof of concept was shown
to the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the government of
India in 2003. After its approval by DIT, C-DAC was called by the government
to develop the entire infrastructure. After more than two years of dedicated
development efforts, the gateway became operational in August 2008.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The key objective of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of the
Government of India is to collaborate and integrate information across
different departments in the centre, state, and local government. NSDG was
specifically aimed at integrating the services offered by the departments
of central government, such as issuing a birth certificate, passport, and
land records, among others, so as to provide a single-window service to
the customer. Government systems are characterized by islands of legacy
systems using heterogeneous platforms and technologies and spread
across diverse geographical locations, in varying states of automation.
Business challenge
To design a stable, high-performance,
scalable, and flexible architecture for the
development of National e-Governance
Services Delivery Gateway (NSDG)
SOLUTION
C-DAC chose open source systems
based on Red Hat’s infrastructure stack,
which helped them to design a highperformance, flexible, and customizable
gateway
SOFTWARE
Platform, including clustering
technologies, JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform 4.3, Hibernate,
JBoss Messaging, J2EE, Axis2,
XMLBeans
Hardware
36 Intel processor-based servers from
HP and IBM
Benefits
Increased flexibility, achieved freedom
from vendor lock-in, performance, and
scalability
NSDG needed to simplify the above task by acting as a standards-based
messaging switch and providing seamless interoperability and exchange
of data across the departments. NSDG, acting as a nerve centre, needed
to handle a large number of transactions and to help in tracking and time
stamping all government transactions. Apart from the process and people
challenges, there were loads of other challenges in front of C-DAC while
designing the entire architecture of the gateway.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | C-DAC
redhat.com/jboss
153
“The high performance and flexibility that
comes with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux
operating platform makes it the natural
choice for developing mission-critical turnkey
systems. The excellent support network and
ecosystem available for Red Hat solutions
provide a strong sense of comfort, allowing
one to sleep well at night.”
– Zia Saquib, executive director, C-DAC
To begin with, the gateway was a first of its kind to get
developed in the world. “We didn’t have any role model to
follow,” said Zia Saquib, executive director, C-DAC.
“The only gateway project before ours was that in the UK,
but our architecture was much more difficult and complex.”
Protocol specification was also very complex and
challenging, as there was a lot of asynchronous
messaging traffic due to a non-existent IT infrastructure
at the back end. Performance was another big challenge.
“The system needed to be designed in such a way so as to
handle a traffic of 250 messages per second, and to add
to that, it also should not take more than three seconds
of processing time within the gateway. There can’t be
any compromise on the performance,” said Saquib. “As
the initial stage of the development is very crucial, we
didn’t want to restrict ourselves in any kind of proprietary
vendor lock-in. The flexibility of fine tuning the software
component that we use was extremely important.”
To address these issues, with the guidance from DIT,
C-DAC decided to build its infrastructure based on
open source solutions and chose Red Hat as its trusted
technology partner to implement these solutions.
SOLUTION
With performance, scalability, and flexibility criteria
in mind, for C-DAC to implement the NSDG project
successfully, Red Hat’s open source solutions were an
ideal fit. They not only met the criteria of performance,
scalability, and flexibility, but also allowed C-DAC to avoid
proprietary vendor lock-in, while taking advantage of the
rapid innovation of the open source community.
“We have used the complete Red Hat stack: the
operating system and the middleware for the
development of the NSDG system,” said Saquib.
Currently, there are a total of 32 servers on which Red
Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform has been
implemented. “We have also used Red Hat Clustering
Suite to address the failover issues,” said Saquib.
154
redhat.com/jboss
C-DAC has based NSDG’s core framework on JBoss
Enterprise Middleware. “We started with JBoss.org for
the development and are now moving on to the supported
enterprise-class version as we move to production
environments,” said Saquib. “Over the last one-and-a-half
years, we have found that JBoss is quite stable and sturdy.
It matches our performance requirements.”
“In addition to Red Hat’s reliable products, Red Hat
Support is a benefit that is so important for our
mission-critical projects, such as NSDG,” said Saquib.
Red Hat helped C-DAC in getting a sound understanding
of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.3.
“Our core technical team is also well-versed in Red
Hat Enterprise Linux, which helped us a great deal in
building this system,” said Saquib.
The system is capable of processing any request in less
than three seconds within the gateway, and is quite stable,
with close to zero downtime in the last one-and-a-half
years.
The NSDG project was so successful that in the same
time that it took to go live, NSDG won the e-governance
category at The World Is Open awards in 2008, organized
by Skoch Consultancy Services.
BENEFITS
“Red Hat freed C-DAC from vendor lock-in and enabled
it to build the NSDG system, which is flexible and
delivers high performance,” said Saquib.
“General purpose application servers such as JBoss
are not particularly meant for an application such as
NSDG. Hence, there is a large amount of fine tuning,
which becomes compulsory in the application servers,”
said Saquib. “JBoss as an open source product helped
us tremendously in this regard, as we had control of the
source code level, available for customization as per
project needs. That adds on to an extra layer of confidence
for our specialist team.” With JBoss, C-DAC did not have
to seek any developer licenses or await arrival of trial
media, which usually happens with proprietary platform
providers. C-DAC also had almost zero waiting time to get
started with development of NSDG on JBoss.
“With the right blend of performance with flexibility,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux became the natural choice
while developing mission-critical turnkey systems,” said
Saquib. “With an excellent support network at the back,
Red Hat products gave us a sense of comfort.”
With the successful completion of NSDG at the national
level, C-DAC in collaboration with Red Hat has once
again proved that open source can surely be applied to
mission-critical projects and reap rich benefits from it.
C-DAC | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Swedish Railways
Implements JBoss
Enterprise SOA Platform
Geography
Sweden
Business challenge
Build a new development platform to
rapidly deliver integrated IT projects
BACKGROUND
across the business
Swedish Railways (SJ AB), the national railway operator in Sweden,
travels between 350 stations and carries 100,000 passengers per day.
The company maintains approximately 3,500 employees and boasts a
yearly revenue of 1.3 billion dollars.
software
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
EnterpriseDB
In May 2006, SJ AB recognized the need to upgrade its internal
software delivery system in order to provide a shared platform for all of
its IT systems. The integration of the IT systems is essential for SJ AB
as it uses a diverse range of applications relevant to human resources,
sales, and other departments. Each applications needs to be accessed
across a range of interfaces from PCs to PDAs. A new department called
the Integration Competence Centre (ICC) was established within SJ AB
with assistance from Redpill. The ICC is responsible for establishing the
Integration platform and deliver service-based integration solutions and
new service according to SJ AB requirements.
SOLUTION
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, JBoss
Enterprise SOA Platform (JBoss AS
4.2, ESB 4.2, JBoss Messaging 1.4),
Hardware
2 IBM xSeries 346 servers
benefits
Increased time-to-market of services for
customers, increased ROI and interest in
rail travel, eliminated licensing costs for
the platform, integrated IT systems, and
avoided vendor lock-in
SJ AB first explored and implemented JBoss solutions in 2005
after lack of satisfaction with its existing application server. When
deploying a new Intranet application, the existing solution caused
performance problems for the railway, so SJ AB turned to JBoss for
a trial of JBoss Application Server. The JBoss Application Server trial
delivered a dramatic performance improvement in comparison to the
railway’s current application server, and SJ AB decided to migrate to
JBoss solutions. With integration and training services from Red Hatauthorized partner Redpill, SJ AB migrated all of its systems to JBoss
Enterprise Middleware, today amounting to over 120 CPUs.
In searching for an upgrade to its internal software delivery system,
SJ AB explored solutions from IBM, BEA, and Redpill, together with
JBoss. The full solution incorporates IBM Intel servers running Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 on the SJ AB Integration platform, built using the
JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform. SJ AB also uses JBoss ON to monitor
and manage updates.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SJ AB
redhat.com/jboss
155
“With our new Integration Platform
built on JBoss Enterprise SOA
Platform components, new Integration
projects can be delivered faster than
ever. With JBoss ESB, our previously
disconnected IT systems can now
gradually be integrated in a loosely
coupled architecture, and as a result,
our IT department can react much
more dynamically to the demands of
the business.”
– Anders Nilsson, IT-Architect at Swedish Railways
The Integration Platform, utilizing Red Hat and JBoss
solutions, was launched in October 2007. The first major
project for the ICC was the creation of a ticket-auction
system to sell unsold tickets on Tradera.com, the Swedish
auction website owned by eBay Inc. Using JBoss ESB,
any tickets which have not been sold by SJ within two
days of departure are automatically transferred to the
eBay-owned Tradera system, where they are available for
auction until six hours before departure.
Now, with a successful Integration Platform, the ICC
plans to deliver a new project every two months. The
upcoming projects come from both internal and external
demand and include consolidating existing systems and
creating new products.
BENEFITS
With Red Hat and JBoss solutions, the SJ AB Integration
Platform has delivered increased ROI for the railway.
Through its Tradera.com ticket-auction project, which
took just four months to complete, SJ is now able to sell
an extra 1,500 tickets per week. Previously, these tickets
went unsold. “We saw the return on our investment very
quickly, best measured in weeks rather than in months,”
said Anders Nilsson, IT-Architect at Swedish Railways.
With the creation of the SJ AB Integration Platform,
the ICC is now able to rapidly deliver cost-effective,
integrated IT projects across the entire business. As an
indirect benefit, the collaboration with Tradera.com has
also given SJ enhanced recognition as an innovator in
online consumer sales, attracting new interest in train
travel in Sweden.
156
redhat.com/jboss
SJ AB | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Swedish National Police
Board Experiences
Impressive Cost Savings
with JBoss Enterprise
Geography
Sweden
Business challenge
To replace costly proprietary software
with reliable open source solutions to
BACKGROUND
Swedish National Police Board (SNPB) is the law enforcement agency
for the country of Sweden. The Police Board consists of the 21 Police
authorities in Sweden, in addition to the National Laboratory of Forensic
Science. The Police Board employees 25,000 staff, including 16,900
policemen and 535 IT department workers.
reduce acquisition and ongoing costs for
the organization’s IT department
MIGRATION PATH
Proprietary software and hardware,
including Hewlett Packard PA-RISC
chip-architecture, HP-UX UNIX operating
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The Police Board uses approximately 500 separate IT applications, 70
percent of which are developed in-house by the SNPB IT department.
The applications are used to support the functions of the Police
force, covering a wide range of activities, including incident reporting,
investigations, traffic surveillance, forensics, human resources,
and accounting.
The IT department at SNPB has historically used a number of propriety
solutions to provide the required services for the organisation’s
underlying IT infrastructure. Faced with the large costs associated with
licensing, support, and maintenance for its proprietary solutions, the
Police Board searched for ways to reduce acquisition and ongoing costs
for its IT department.
The long-term goal of the Police Board is to replace all the proprietary
software running on its servers with open source solutions. In addition
to cost savings on licenses, support, and maintenance, the Police Board
would benefit from the open standards, freedom of choice, increased
competition between vendors, minimized vendor lock-in, reduced TCO,
and increased ROI that is associated with open source solutions.
SOLUTION
system, Oracle database and BEA
WebLogic Server, to open source
solutions, including JBoss Enterprise
SOLUTION
Hardware – HP Blade System C-class
servers with 300 AMD Opteron Dual-Core
CPUs
Operating System – Novell SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server 10
Application Server – JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform 4.2
Database – MySQL Enterprise Server 5
benefits
Experienced reduced TCO, increased
reliability, enhanced performance,
freedom from vendor lock-in, and expects
As it explored open source solution alternatives to its costly proprietary
software, the SNPB IT department embarked on a pilot proof-of-concept
project to test the viability of using open source solutions within its
organization. Looking to replace its existing BEA WebLogic application
server with an open source alternative, the SNPB saw only one realistic
option, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.
estimated cost savings of approximately
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SNPB
redhat.com/jboss
€20 million over the next five years
157
“The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform was able
to deliver the performance that was required and
had the professional support necessary to enable us
to confidently deploy the software in a production
environment,” said Per-Ola Sjöswärd, Executive IT
Strategist at the Swedish National Police Board. “The
IT department required very little convincing to its
suitability as it is well known in the industry as the
leading open source application server. Additionally,
training was not an issue, as many of the in-house
developers had been using JBoss technology before.
From a development perspective, JBoss fit well into our
existing setup, as all of its in-house development is done
in Java.”
The pilot scheme for SNPB’s open source architecture
was the migration of the Police photo database, named
“PICTURE.” The PICTURE database fulfills three roles at
the Police Board. First, it is used to store and search for
passport photos — all citizens applying for a passport in
Sweden must have their photo taken in a police station,
which is then stored on the central database. Second, the
PICTURE database is used to store and archive photos
taken by police officers with digital cameras. Finally,
the database is used as a common service for any other
police application which requires access to photographs.
As the system uses web services, the application can
potentially be accessed by a large range of devices, such
as mobile devices. In the near future, police officers will
be able to use smartphones and PDAs to access the
photo database to verify identification while they are out
on duty.
“The JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform was able to deliver the
performance that was required
and had the professional support
necessary to enable us to confidently
deploy the software in a production
environment.”
– Per-Ola Sjöswärd, Executive IT Strategist at the Swedish
National Police Board
The existing PICTURE system was built using entirely
proprietary software and hardware, including Hewlett
Packard PA-RISC chip-architecture, HP-UX UNIX
operating system, Oracle database and BEA WebLogic
Server. The SNPB’s pilot was built by replacing all
of these proprietary solutions with open source
alternatives. The new architecture utilizes commodity
x86-architecture, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server,
158
redhat.com/jboss
MySQL and the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform,
which replaced the BEA WebLogic server. The JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform performs a vital role
in the new infrastructure, running the PICTURE
application, handling user requests, and accessing the
picture database.
System integrator Red Pill provided assistance for
the project, with integration and training services.
Additionally, the Police Board relies on JBoss for
ongoing support and updates through a subscription to
JBoss Operations Network.
BENEFITS
During its evaluation of the potential benefits of open
source alternatives for the PICTURE system, the Police
Board calculated the costs associated with the potential
solutions for its IT system. Taking into consideration
cost savings from volume discounts, the TCO of the
proprietary solution for three years was estimated at
€260,000. The team similarly calculated the cost of its
proposed open source and commodity x86-architecture
solution. At full list price, without allowances for volume
discounts for the open source products, the TCO for the
open source alternative over three years was valued
at €70,300—a massive 73 percent cost savings when
compared to its current proprietary solution.
The SNPB has estimated that by switching to open
source solutions and commodity x86-architecture for
all new IT-systems, will save approximately €20 million
Euros in IT costs over the next five years. With its IT
cost savings, the SNPB now has the opportunity to
purchase 400 new police cars or hire 70 new system
developers during the same five-year time frame.
In addition to costs savings, SNPB’s new open source
system has also delivered performance advantages over
its former proprietary solution. The average load for the
PICTURE system is 3,500 new passport images per day.
“Our initial project with JBoss Enterprise Middleware
has been such a resounding success in terms of
meeting our performance requirements and the level of
professional support we received from JBoss, that the
Swedish Police Board is planning on migrating a further
four large IT systems to the open source architecture
in 2008, of which JBoss Enterprise Middleware is a
key part, with another 15 new projects in the pipeline,”
concluded Mr Sjöswärd.
SNPB | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
ANSES Recognizes Cost
Savings and Greater
Flexibility with JBoss
Enterprise Application
Platform
Geography
Argentina
Business challenge
To find a solution that would address
BACKGROUND
The Administración Nacional de la Seguridad Social (ANSES, in its Spanish
acronym) is a decentralized government agency within the scope of the
Social Security Secretariat. ANSES reports to the Ministry of Labor,
Employment and Social Security of the Government of the Argentine
Republic.
ANSESs’ main function is to manage and disburse all social security
contributions in Argentina destined for active and retired workers and
their families, including national retirement and pension funds, funds of
employees under an employment relationship and self-employed workers,
subsidies, family allowances, and unemployment benefits.
ANSES has 14,000 employees and 600 offices spanning the Argentine
territory connected through a modern multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)
network. Its systems are centralized in a datacenter that has two primary
functions, running the online applications that support 600 customer
service locations, and running web applications that the social security
system beneficiaries access through a web portal.
Each month these systems perform about 170 million transactions. The
processes engaged in the settlement of payments involve over 1.5 million
monthly records. In order to support this entire infrastructure, ANSES’
IT department has a permanent staff of 490 employees, 180 of which
are developers. This area is also assisted by 100 to 300 independent
developers depending on the demand.
multiple challenges including:
recording changes in laws without
impacting transnational systems;
allowing non-IT professionals to make
legal and regulatory changes without
manipulating source code; separating
management and disbursement
processes from applications
SOFTWARE
4.3, JBoss BRMS (Business Rules
Management System) 5.0, JBoss Data
Services Platform (DSP) 5.5
Hardware
SUN M9000 with 8 Quad Core Sparc
VII processors of 64 bits and 192
Gbytes of Ram, Storage Tek 6740 and
SO Solaris 10
Benefits
Greater flexibility, lower total operating
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
costs and streamlined architecture
Over the years, ANSES employees have developed a broad knowledge
base and expertise on the processes and rules used to settle and
manage social security payments in Argentina. During the last 50 years,
not only have new concepts and methods of settling benefits been
created, but laws have been subject to numerous changes as well.
Significant efforts have been made to translate and incorporate the
expertise of employees into systems that ensure a single source of
information at the time of making material decisions, like the right
to benefit payment. However, in the case of entitlements, evidence
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ANSES
redhat.com/jboss
159
has demonstrated that the same situation could be
successfully handled differently at various customer
service locations based on the expertise of individuals
serving in specific regions. As such, ANSES needed
a system that could both systematically account for
rules and changing laws and be flexible enough to
accommodate specific situations. In 1996, an attempt
was made to organize the regulation of the social
security system according to a business rules format
based on the proportional logical writing method. At that
time technology was incapable of supporting the 60 MB
of spreadsheets resulting from such work.
Due to the high volatility of business rules that are based
on regulations and laws, keeping the systems in perfect
working order is extremely difficult. The successive
changes in the Argentine retirement system over the
years caused many of the primary systems to become
unpredictable given the complexity of their logic and
their many outdated components. What makes this issue
even more complicated is the need to link systems and
rules to laws and regulations. Rules must be prioritized
based on the administrative attributes (laws, opinions,
requests for amparo - a form of constitutional relief
found in the legal systems supporting them). This
complexity is increased when laws amend other rules
that must govern the set of benefits falling within the
rule in force at the time of its issuance. Therefore, the
systems must be capable of understanding and managing
which set of rules are applicable to each case. This
reality entails an intricate network of dependencies and
hierarchies between laws and rules which is very difficult
to organize in closed information systems.
In order to appropriately and successfully handle the
complexity, ANSES incorporated within its modernization
program (PRISSA) a solution to the logical volume
problem and the permanent growth of these business
rules.
The main goal of PRISSA was to cut system management
time for the IT department by separating the tasks
required to successfully maintain the system. Under the
new structure, the Standards and Process Management
team, which is the relevant legal authority, would
control the definition of rules, while the IT department
would be solely responsible for the definition of the
architecture, data modeling, resource deployment and
other tasks that traditionally fall to IT teams. This new
process represented a paradigm shift, where developers
and business specialists share the workload in order
to more efficiently and effectively manage the entire
architecture that controls the management of millions of
transactions.
Additionally, the system needed an easy-to-understand
graphical user interface that non-technical business
analysts could manipulate. Attorneys, legal assistants
160
redhat.com/jboss
and business managers at ANSES would need the basic
knowledge of desktop tools. This new structure would
allow rules to be deployed in an inference engine and
executed by means of transnational systems.
SOLUTION
As part of the modernization project, a solution
called Business Rules Generation Assistant (APRN, in
its Spanish acronym) was designed based on JBoss
Enterprise Business Rules Management System. The
APRN allows for the folllowing:
• The development, testing, and documentation of
rules by people only knowledgeable about office
automation tools by means of a Wizard Web interface
• Data discovery in order to eliminate loopholes when
the law fails to indicate what to do and when the
conditions being regulated have values different from
those anticipated
• Aligning each decision rule to the regulation
supporting it (law, rule, request for amparo, etc.)
• Data modeling and simulation of the behavior of
the rule with different values of productive data, by
answering the question “what if”
• Ensuring the accurate implementation of new rules
without affecting transnational systems
ANSES leveraged the flexibility and robust combination
of a number of solutions within the JBoss Enterprise
Middleware portfolio. Because the standards-based
open source middleware architecture sits between
the application and the operating platform, it serves
to seamlessly manage loading, prioritizing and rule
simulation (APRN). Additionally, JBoss Enterprise
Middleware serves as the transnational system
infrastructure layer, operating and warehousing the
historical data sources of the organization. ANSES
deployed a combination of JBoss Enterprise Middleware
solutions to create a flexible, efficient and simplified
architecture including:
• Rule Generation Assistant — Seam-based web
application running on JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform 4.3, which generates a rules meta-code in
MVEL
• Rule execution and testing — Rules in MVEL are
executed for simulation in JBoss Enterprise BRMS
• Real-time rule and data simulation — Users define the
logical entities involved in the rules through APRN.
These entities are materialized as Java objects and
associated with a DSP virtual view by the IT staff.
The virtual view is finally associated with the actual
data required for the view and may reside in relational
databases, web services, VSAM files or structured
text. After rules are compiled and virtual views are
associated, the Rule Generation Assistant allows
simulation of the execution of a rule against a real set
of organization’s data in real time.
ANSES | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
The Rule Generation Assistant was used in virtual
partitions of a Sun M9000 unit with 8 Quad Core Spark
VII 64 bit processors and 192 GB RAM, Storage Tek
6740 and Solaris 10 OS, SQL Server and DB2 databases
supported in Mainframe z/10 of 900 mips and connected
through a DB2 connect. There are also over 250 servers
running on various operating platforms including Linux
and Windows.
A critical issue is the volume of information within the
organization’s databases that contain records for the
entire active and retired population of Argentina, which
totals about 4 billion. The records of social security
beneficiaries amount to 1.4 billion and the history of the
social security current account is 275 million.
At present there are 50 new applications being
developed that will have their logic externalized in the
rules engine, without their own business logic.
BENEFITS
By unifying the decision criteria of the entire
organization, ANSES was able to eliminate the potential
for discretionary use and fraud furthering a reduction in
the number of lawsuits (approximately 30,000 lawsuits
are filed against ANSES each month), resulting in a
direct impact on the solution ROI. The development
team’s application maintenance workload was also
reduced, allowing resources to be allocated to the design
of new solutions.
Response-time-to-change was minimized due to
the ability to take immediate action to build system
solutions. Response time is further minimized when this
benefit is coupled with the swift implementation of new
programs and benefits by legal authorities. Ultimately,
the result is an improvement in the quality of life of the
beneficiaries.
ANSES will migrate from their existing Mainframe
environment (4.5 million dollars on equipment cost plus
1.4 million dollars for maintenance and annual support)
to a lower-cost open system. Using Red Hat’s open
source technology reduced the total cost of the solution
and has allowed for the allocation of a greater portion of
the budget to train internal resources and develop a task
force fit for the challenge. The Red Hat suite of solutions
and services also allowed ANSES to realize other open
source advantages, such as lower cost of acquisition,
along with the support of proprietary systems and the
guaranteed presence of a partner to accompany and
ensure project success. Gains in efficiency were also
realized due to access to open source industry and
community experts and most notably, product experts.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ANSES
redhat.com/jboss
161
162
BRAZIL’S MINISTRY OF
HEALTH GAINS GREATER
SECURITY AND RELIABILITY
WITH RED HAT
Geography
Brazil
Business challenge
To ensure total security in the
operation of applications
SOFTWARE
BACKGROUND
The Ministry of Health is the federal agency responsible for organizing
and preparing public plans and policies related to healthcare for
Brazilians. Brazil’s National Health System (SUS), coordinated by the
Ministry of Health, is one of the largest public health systems in the
world. It ranges from simple outpatient care to organ transplants,
ensuring comprehensive, universal, and free access for the country’s
entire population.
JBoss Operations Network, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux
Hardware
Dell Edge R900 servers
MIGRATION PATH
Sun Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Because the Ministry of Health was using several different systems,
which hindered some tasks and functions, it wanted to standardize its
environment.
In order to standardize, as well as increase information processing,
application performance, security for applications, and the reliability
of its programs, the Ministry of Health selected Red Hat Enterprise
Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. These mission-critical
programs include the People’s Pharmacy, Platform Brazil, the Disease
Notification System (SINAN), the Certification of Social Assistance
Bodies in the Area of Education (CEBAS), and the National Health Card.
The constantly fluctuating volume of data stored for the operation of
these programs is enormous, as it contains information on every person
who uses the public health service, as well as health professionals.
In addition, the Ministry of Health had an urgent need to prevent system
failings while managing this data. Red Hat was selected as the solutions
provider that would guarantee the optimal functioning of the Ministry
of Health’s platform.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SUS
Linux; Tomcat to JBoss Enterprise
Benefits
Increased information processing,
application performance, security for
applications, and the reliability of the
Ministry of Health’s programs for the
general public; achieved an approximate
savings of 80 percent when compared to
proprietary software; received enhanced
technical support from Red Hat Global
Support Services
redhat.com/jboss
163
SOLUTION
With these goals, the Ministry of Health found the ideal
solutions provider for its needs in Red Hat. In addition to
providing a complete offering with an operating system,
middleware platform, and management tool, Red Hat
also provided consulting, training, and technical support
services to guarantee the implementation and operation
of the new environment.
Ministry of Health. “We are supported by consultants
who are speci-alists in the entire migration process
and the implement-ation of the new environment,
with a service level suited to the Ministry of Health’s
demands,” said Jose Marques. “Red Hat offered us
total support and consulting, giving our team enough
background to manage the new environment with full
efficiency.”
“We hope to guarantee greater
security and reliability in our missioncritical applications, which include
data management for the entire
public network of hospitals and clinics,
as well as information from private
insurance plans.”
– Jose Marques, general coordinator of analysis and
maintenance for the Ministry of Health
In addition to migrating all of the Ministry of Health’s
applications to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, the Ministry of Health
will also migrate its database to Red Hat solutions. All
the applications are monitored and managed by JBoss
Operations Network, which allows greater control of the
environment and ensures greater availability.
Red Hat Consulting is responsible for planning and
executing the migration following best practices for
security. The migration process will include the use of a
virtual environment in the implementation phase. The
Red Hat Consulting team has prepared templates that
allow each virtual machine running the new environment
to be delivered in an average of 15 minutes, plus five
more minutes per application, ensuring faster delivery of
new systems.
BENEFITS
This new standardized environment will offer a
higher level of security and stability, while simplifying
implementation, administration, and maintenance
processes. The Ministry of Health also expects increased
system performance and speed.
With the adoption of Red Hat, the Ministry of Health is
saving about 20 percent of what would be implemented
with proprietary software solutions.
Red Hat Consulting, Red Hat Training and Certification,
and Red Hat Global Support Services, considered to be a
reference on the market, are also greatly benefiting the
164
redhat.com/jboss
SUS | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Spanish Ministry of
Education and Science
Migrates Its Critical
Applications to Red Hat
Solutions
Geography
Spain
Business challenge
Replace mixed proprietary IT
environment to simplify manage-ment
and improve system performance and
availability
MIGRATION PATH
BACKGROUND
The Ministry of Health is the federal agency responsible for organizing
and preparing public plans and policies related to healthcare for
Brazilians. Brazil’s National Health System (SUS), coordinated by the
Ministry of Health, is one of the largest public health systems in the
world. It ranges from simple outpatient care to organ transplants,
ensuring comprehensive, universal, and free access for the country’s
entire population.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
After the 2004 government elections, a number of changes that
affected the MEC IT structure were implemented. As part of these
changes, the culture area was separated from the department of
Education, while the Ministry of Science and Technology was dissolved.
As a result, a new Ministry, called Ministry of Education and Science,
was created, assuming the responsibilities of the former department.
The Ministry, which already had highly heterogeneous environments,
assumed 400 new users and 60 new applications after the new
structure took affect. The integration with the rest of the systems
was completed within a six-month period. Additionally, by assuming
responsibility for innovation and with the increase in importance of
electronic administration, the department was required to provide a
greater number of IT services, requiring more servers. This presented
the Ministry with an opportunity to renew hardware and software
solutions for its IT systems.
Sun Solaris and IBM z/OS to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 and JBoss Enterprise
SOFTWARE
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 virtualization,
Tomcat
HARDWARE
HP, Dell, and Fujitsu Siemens servers
benefits
Achieved simplified system management
and improved system availability,
performance, reliability, stability, and
platform flexibility
SOLUTION
The IT department began the project to renew its hardware and
software solutions by virtualizing a large number of machines and
executing a project to consolidate various operating systems into
a single platform. The department made the decision to replace its
existing Sun Solaris and IBM z/OS proprietary operating systems with
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. “We were already using Red Hat solutions in
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SUS
redhat.com/jboss
165
network-service areas, such as perimeter security.
It was this positive experience with Red Hat, combined
with the knowledge of the operating system within the
department, that made us select it as our operating
system of choice across the Ministry,” said Africa
Cabañas, Head of IT for the Ministry of Education and
Science.
The compatibility between Red Hat Enterprise Linux
and the EMC Storage Area Network (SAN), assured by
Red Hat certification, was an important factor in the
Ministry’s decision. “All storage-cabin manufacturers
certify against certain operating systems and Red Hat
Enterprise Linux is normally one of the first. We could
not choose just any Linux distribution; it had to be
certified, because the SAN is of core importance to our
IT infrastructure,” said Cabañas.
The project involved all three architectural levels of
MEC’s IT system: database servers, application servers,
and web servers. “All systems were built on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 with virtualization. In cooperation
with development areas, we migrated everything that
could be moved from proprietary environments to Red
Hat solutions,” continued Cabañas.
In addition to implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 and virtualization, MEC also migrated its application
servers to Tomcat and JBoss solutions to benefit from
the solution’s superior technology and to extend the
freedom of open source to its middleware layer.
performance has increased five-fold in comparison with
our previous solution.”
For the Ministry of Education and Science, changing
from Solaris and z/OS proprietary platforms z/OS to
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 virtualization has resulted in
cost reduction, which has enabled increased investment
in hardware renewal. Moreover, the administration’s IT
system has been simplified after system consolidation.
In terms of citizen services, the new platform is
especially beneficial for grant requesters, who can
now connect at any time of the day. The virtualization
capabilities have enabled increased platform availability,
which is clustered and migrated automatically in the
event of system failure.
The Ministry’s migration to an open source environment
is ongoing. The organization is looking to remove
its existing Windows platforms and has plans to test
new functionalities on Red Hat solutions, including
virtualization, GFS, and desktop Linux.
The Ministry’s IT department is satisfied with the
results of its migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
and JBoss Application Platform. “As the migration only
affects the back-end systems, the only difference that
end users see is faster response times. Acceptance has
been good. Changing from a proprietary platform to Red
Hat solutions enables us to guarantee the future agility
of the platform,” concluded Cabañas.
The project was executed in two phases. The application
servers were migrated to Tomcat and JBoss solutions
during 2006. At this point, the Ministry chose 5 JBoss
Application Servers as well as solutions from other
providers. In June 2007, the Ministry completed the
migration of its corporate Oracle database servers.
In addition to its internal data centre, the Ministry had a
number of applications and a large database which were
located at an outsourced hosting service. During the
migration, the ministry found that the hosted service did
not provide the performance required, and decided to
also move these services to the new Red Hat servers.
BENEFITS
With server consolidation and 24x7 support provided
by Red Hat, the Ministry of Education and Science has
resolved its previous performance problems and has
successfully reduced system response times.
“We have objective details. It took one-and-a-half days to
resolve a lecture-transfer process with the proprietary
system. It now takes five hours with Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5,” said Cabañas. “After moving MEC’s IT systems
to Red Hat Enterprise Linux with virtualization,
166
redhat.com/jboss
SUS | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
SRi ecuador implements red
hat solutions: A Scalable,
Reliable Platform to
provide online services
to taxpayers
Geography
Ecuador
Business challenge
To develop a technology solution on a
stable, secure, and affordable platform
for an Internet-based tax return project
SOFTWARE
BACKGROUND
The Internal Revenue Service—SRI—Ecuador’s tax management agency,
provides services to over one and a half million taxpayers throughout
the country’s 24 provinces. It maintains a workforce of 2,400 and
recorded an annual income of over USD 5 billion as per 2007 data.
SRI services include: taxpayer register, reception of tax returns,
authorization of sales receipts, taxpayers’ claim and inquiry handling,
and tax audit, among others.
SRI invested in information technology to provide over 15 different
services through its portal for taxpayers and for the 60 applications on
its Intranet for internal management, all Web-based. In addition, it keeps
automatic information exchange processes with other government
entities.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
SRI developed plans to implement a new tax service program that
would promote voluntary compliance with tax obligations among its
taxpaying customers. It investigated different ways to make it easier
for its customers to comply with fiscal procedures and created easier
processes.
In 2002, SRI decided to pilot an Internet-based tax return project aimed
at encouraging taxpayers to submit their tax returns online instead
of submitting papers through the banking system. This called for a
technology solution that could offer a stable, secure, and affordable
platform.
Red Hat Linux, Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5, JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform
Hardware
HP blades with dual-core AMD
processors and quad-core Intel
processors on a 64-bit architecture
MIGRATION PATH
From proprietary software to Red Hat
Linux 6, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5, and from JBoss Application Server
2.4 to JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform
Benefits
To promote and enable Internet-based
tax return filing by taxpayers to reduce
processing times and avoid increasing
the customer service infrastructure at
its own counters and bank tellers
SOLUTION
SRI first began using Red Hat solutions in 1999 when it implemented
Red Hat Linux 6 on Intel Pentium III processors for a variety of internal
projects but mainly to implement the Internet-based billing issuance
control system. It turned to Red Hat solutions after analyzing product
capabilities and the freedom from licensing costs. This last detail
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SRI
redhat.com/jboss
167
allowed SRI to move ahead with the project as it avoided
the red tape typical of government procurement, with
the ensuing time saving.
After experiencing success with its initial implementation
of Red Hat Linux 6, SRI analyzed Red Hat solutions for
use in its Internet-based tax return project.
“Our experience with open source has
been successful. We have achieved
an efficient, reliable, scalable and
affordable platform. Having access to
Red Hat’s source code has allowed us
to customize the functionality of the
products in terms of our needs. The
success achieved with Red Hat solutions
has encouraged us to explore open
source solutions for other areas of our
business.”
– Engineer Alejandro Subía, National Director of
Technological Development at SRI
“SRI started a solution evaluation process that included
Novell’s SUSE and Red Hat Solutions. Red Hat Linux was
chosen for cost savings and reliability. Likewise, when we
searched for an application server solution, we
investigated offerings from Oracle, BEA and JBoss.
JBoss was the option that best met the standards
and budget set for the project. Thus, we opted for
implementing JBoss Application Server 2.4,” explained
Engineer Alejandro Subía, National Director of
Technological Development at SRI.
With the combination of Red Hat Linux and JBoss
Application Server, the Internet-based tax return system
was implemented as a pilot project by the end of 2002.
The project introduced the Internet as a massive
interaction platform with taxpayers for the first time.
Three years before, in 1999, SRI implemented the
Internet-based billing control system, but this is used by
a limited number of users (authorized printing houses) in
order to authorize sales receipt printing for taxpayers.
Technological Development Management at SRI.
Today, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is used on 90 percent
of the HP Blade servers with dual-core AMD processors
and quad-core Intel processors on a 64-bit architecture.
It supports the 60 Intranet applications and 15 Internet
applications, and approximately 95 percent of SRI’s
employees rely on Red Hat solutions daily to execute
their job.
BENEFITS
SRI has achieved the goal it set out to accomplish with
its Internet-based tax return project, and today, the
number of taxpayers approaching bank tellers and SRI
counters looking for help to submit their tax returns has
dropped remarkably, especially high-income taxpayers
that account for 70% of the tax collection aggregate.
“We’ve experienced hardware and software cost savings
after migrating to Red Hat solutions. In terms of
hardware, we were able to purchase servers with lower
cost architectures, such as x86 in place of Sun’s Sparc,
which was SRI’s primary platform. In terms of software,
Red Hat offered the best total cost of ownership – TCO –
against proprietary competitors,” commented Alejandro
Subía.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform have provided SRI with a robust
platform for reliable Internet services for its taxpaying
customers.
“Our experience with open source has been successful.
We have achieved an efficient, reliable, scalable and
affordable platform. Having access to Red Hat’s source
code has allowed us to customize the functionality
of the products in terms of our needs. The success
achieved with Red Hat solutions has encouraged us to
explore open source solutions for other areas of our
business. As a matter of fact, SRI’s planned software
architecture up to 2011 mostly contemplates open
source solutions as certain risks relating to support
availability have been eliminated with the Enterprise
version alternatives,” explained Engineer Subía.
“From the beginning of the project, Red Hat has
been the operating system of choice for our internal
application servers and we’ve updated it with each new
version released to the market. We are currently using
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. JBoss has served as our
primary J2EE application server, and today we rely on
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform” said Engineer
Patricio Albuja, Head of the Planning Department of the
168
redhat.com/jboss
SRI | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
BRAZILIAN FEDERAL
SUPREME TRIBUNAL
ADOPTS JBOSS
Geography
Brazil
Business challenge
Needed a service-oriented architecture
that improved Brazil’s Federal
Supreme Tribunal’s (STF) system
integration process and the database
and deployment governance in the
BACKGROUND
STI (Technology Information of Office
Brazil’s Federal Supreme Tribunal’s Information and Technology Office
(STF) provides systems development for the Brazilian High Court’s
coverage area, which involves all Brazilian regional tribunals for second
court appeal, which means something about 35 tribunals from all Brazil
states.
Secretary)
SOFTWARE
This includes providing new technology adoptions, computing and
database net management, and software and equipment technical
support and specialized assistance.
ESB, JBoss jBPM, JBoss Rules, and
All the systems that are supported by the Technology Office have both
internal and external users who constantly demand new functionality.
Among these demands is system integration, which was one of STF’s
most critical functionalities.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
While STF had a functional level system and solid applications
development, there was a lack of performance in information sharing.
Users complained about slow access and shared files did not appear in
real time.
In addition to a low performing system and a great demand of trials,
STF experienced system integration problems. The team needed an
architecture that could offer a quick and easy integration between
systems.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss SOA
Platform, including frameworks: JBoss
Hibernate, JBoss Operations Network
(Jboss ON)
Hardware
x86 commodity servers with Intel Xeon
Processor-based servers
Benefits
Reduced costs and increased agility,
functionality, and flexibility with a
combination of Red Hat and JBoss
solutions
STF needed components, applications, services, programs and users
to easily integrate with one another to successfully share critical files,
such as contracts and processes.
STF also needed system integration capabilities that could handle
requests per file and setup procedures for remote calls by shared
database and message lines.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | STF
redhat.com/jboss
169
JBoss ON allows the STF IT team to
focus on specific system issues as
JBoss ON will resolve issues that can
be addressed by an enterprise SOA
management solution.
SOLUTION
When considering various platform options, STF
researched:
• The Federal Government guidelines for open software
usage
• STI’s prior experience with Red Hat
• Evaluation of the capabilities and experience of
system administrators, developers, and other IT
professionals with the platform vendor’s technology
The team determined that an Enterprise Service Bus
(ESB) was the best solutions to meet its demands and
requirements in a message system with the capability
to implement several open integration patterns. After
researching several SOA and ESB options and various
open source software providers, the team chose Red
Hat’s JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform.
JBoss Enterprise SOA provides automatic message
routing and supports several information exchanging
providers and channels, such as FTP, SMTP, JMS and
Web Services. JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform enables
business execution, responsiveness, and flexibility in a
cost-effective, open platform and aggregates pluggable
security, auto-discovery, localization independence, and
integration patterns implementation functionalities.
Every STI/STF architecture is now developed on open
source software with Java technology. For software
development and support needs, STF now uses Red Hat’s
JBoss Enterprise SOA running on Red Hat Enterprise
Linux. STF uses (ESX 3.5) Virtual Machine, 2 Processors
3 GHz, 2 GB and JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform
memory.
The JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform (customized by
STF for services patronization) is currently in the
implementation phase. STI has a subscription for
Red Hat’s technical support for four CPUs in Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform.
STI’s governance project will begin generating its
services still in 2009, which STI expects to improve
the aggregate value and transparency of the entire
organization. Ninety percent of its new projects will be
based off JBoss Enterprise SOA and 100 percent of its
170
redhat.com/jboss
legacy is currently in migration from JBoss.org and
Fedora to JBoss Enterprise SOA. By using more efficient
services, all of those who communicate with STF are
expected to have benefits. For example, the lawyers win
agility when they have to introduce a petition to the
ministers of government. It can be done electronically,
which represents a great evolution of government
service.
Every STF service in production must be monitored and
manageable. Such capabilities are achieved using JBoss
ON—JBoss Operations Network—which offers accurate
information about the processing of the Services hosted
in the JBoss ESB, as well as the quality and metrics
delivered by the JMS technology. Based on the Alerting
features of JBoss ON, STF can receive alerts in order to
prevent any unpredictable service behavior. In addition
to this, in certain cases, some default actions can be
taken according to the alerts, which allow the IT team
to focus on actual potential problems, letting JBoss ON
resolve issues that can be addressed by an enterprise
SOA management solution.
For the STI team the most important benefit has been
getting an infrastructure more flexible and maturity
with development systems to assist the STF needs.
Also, the IT team got governance, being able to
manager and measure its contribution for the Supreme
Tribunal’s strategies.
BENEFITS
STI reports positive experiences with Red Hat’s support
as the team receives quick and informative responses.
Red Hat’s support model eliminates the need for STI to
staff Red Hat specialists in-house, thus cutting costs..
The STI also finds great benefit in the Red Hat Business
Partner Tecnisys, which provides specialized technology
consulting and support, as training and specialist
technicals to assist STI needs.
STI has experienced increased agility and flexibility with
JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform. From a commercial
point of view, the cost savings are significant with the
usage of open source software, and from a technology
perspective, the infrastructure is more stable and
failure tolerant; the service buses allow the IT team to
work on more strategic work deployments, by the reuse
of the available services in the service buses.
An additional, unexpected benefit from using Red Hat
and JBoss is the STI developers’ attitude shift. Instead
of thinking in components, developers now think in
terms of aggregating services. This attitude shift
contributes to increased service performance, agility,
and maintenance economy.
STF | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Global Combat Support System:
Focused Logistics; Red Hat’s
MetaMatrix Enterprise Data
Services Platform enables
the transition to a ServiceOriented Architecture
Geography
North America
Business challenge
Fusion of information, logistics,
engineering, planning and transportation
technologies to enable military mobility
and versatility
BACKGROUND
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is responsible for
planning, developing, fielding, operating, and supporting command,
control, communications, and information systems. DISA serves the needs
of the President, Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, the Combatant Commanders, and the other Department of
Defense components under all conditions of peacetime and war.
SOFTWARE
MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services
Platform
benefits
Legacy systems are leveraged in DISA’s
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Net-Centric environment, information
Fast-developing problems and hot spots around the world require
governments to respond quickly with the right teams and the proper
support. Many of the systems in place today need to be leveraged to
maximize their value in support of troop deployment. The ability to
capture essential data, transform it into usable information, and gain
information superiority is paramount to the success of maintaining force
readiness and winning conflicts.
is securely shared across agencies and
task forces, America’s troops are able
to be more mobile and versatile, in any
location, at any time
Recognizing the need to provide commanders in the field with a better
and more integrated source of logistics information, DISA has developed
the Global Combat Support System-Joint (GCSS-J-J), a current operational
capability. GCSS-J is an initiative that integrates existing combat support
information to gain efficiency and interoperability in support of the warfighter.
One of the major elements of war is ensuring the flow of personnel and
supplies to and from the battlefield throughout all phases of an operation
across military commands. In order to develop and sustain this flow, logistics
commanders in the field need to have information that will allow them to
completely see and understand both the tactical and logistical situation.
The current combat support environment does not fully achieve system
interoperability and asset visibility because of several shortfalls, including:
stovepipe information systems, lack of visibility and limited access,
inability to present a common picture, limited joint-decision support tools.
SOLUTION
DISA selected Red Hat’s MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform
to support the GCSS-J Program in its transition to a new Enterprise
Information Integration (EII) strategy. MetaMatrix enables the transition
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | DISA
redhat.com/jboss
171
from stovepiped systems to a loosely coupled serviceoriented architecture, DISA’s Net-Centric environment.
With unsurpassed extensibility and a rich
set of information source connectors,
the MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services
Platform enables organizations to
integrate information across physical and
political bounds.
Information integration and management solutions
from MetaMatrix enable the GCSS-J to provide real-time
information from transportation, supply, maintenance,
personnel, acquisition, health services, finance, and
engineering systems. MetaMatrix makes distributed data
accessible and manageable, breaking through the traditional
barriers of location, structure, semantics and context.
MetaMatrix enforces security on the Virtual Databases
within the system and offers features to manage users,
groups, and entitlements. In addition to the run-time
security, MetaMatrix also supports design-time security,
ensuring that developers have access to only data entities
for which they are entitled.
MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform provides
integrated real-time access to disparate information.
With unsurpassed extensibility and the most complete
set of information source connectors, MetaMatrix enables
organizations to integrate information across physical
and political bounds. With MetaMatrix, organizations
can create cross-agency applications to support joint
responsibilities. The MetaMatrix system provides
bidirectional access to information on native systems,
delivering the most up-todate information possible.
MetaMatrix supports GCSS-J data integration and legacy
migration requirements.
MetaMatrix retrieves and aggregates data from multiple
data sources and makes it available to client
applications through a single query against the virtual
database. This provides a simple client interface and
contributes to a modular architecture with applications
loosely bound to data sources.
MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform ensures that
all information is visible, accessible, and understandable.
MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform extends legacy
applications to modern Service-Oriented Architectures.
The MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform is the
only comprehensive EII solution to address both data
management and information integration in a scalable,
standards- based manner. The MetaMatrix metadata
repository enables users to discover, share, and
analyze information and the way information is being
used. Through standard interfaces reporting tools can
provide the visibility developers need so they can find
information entities, understand the context of those
entities, and provide access to the right information.
MetaMatrix is unique in its ability to expose integrated
information, including legacy or proprietary data,
as standard web services. One key feature of the
MetaMatrix System is that it does not impose an XML
schema on the user; instead, the user selects a schema
as an end point or goal of the integration and maps data
entities to the schema. In addition to publishing data as
a service, the MetaMatrix System provides query access
to integrated data sets through a SOAP interface, and
supports both SQL and XQuery. In service-oriented
architectures, MetaMatrix can be both a consumer and
a provider of web services.
BENEFITS
MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform creates
loosely coupled data environments, eliminating the
development of stove-piped solutions.
MetaMatrix uses a model-driven approach to integration.
Authoritative information sources and data entities
are represented in metadata models; the integration
of information is achieved through these models.
This approach decouples the information-consuming
applications from the authoritative information sources,
creating a flexible information environment. MetaMatrix
delivers uncompromising security.
A key requirement in information integration is information
security and information ownership. MetaMatrix does
not move data; the data is stored and maintained on its
native system. The MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services
Platform integrates with the data sources security systems.
172
redhat.com/jboss
MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform supports
migration to the Net-Centric Environment.
Driven by transformation, Us forces now enjoy rapid
decision superiority, streamlined logistic support, and
effective information operations in a true joint-forced
world. The DOD is transforming Intranets into serviceoriented architectures under the Net-Centric Enterprise
Services (NCES) program. The Global Combat Support
System is one example of the agency modernizing its
information technology systems under this program.
MetaMatrix provides a common data environment capable
of integrating and including virtually any information
source. The MetaMatrix System couples the metadata
management and the information integration capabilities
necessary to support this modernization effort.
DISA | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
State of Tennessee Migrates
Middleware Environment to
JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform running on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux
Geography
North America
Business challenge
Implement a cost-effective, flexible
middleware software, JBoss Enterprise
Middleware, resulting in lower costs,
increased performance and scaling for
BACKGROUND
The State of Tennessee’s OIR provides direction, planning, resources,
execution and coordination in managing the information systems needs of
the State of Tennessee. OIR is a division within the Department of Finance
& Administration (F&A), guided by Mr. Mark Bengel, Chief Information
Officer. OIR’s clients primarily consist of State agencies, departments
and commissions. OIR serves as staff to the Information Systems Council
(ISC), and under the ISC’s guidance, provides technical direction, services,
and infrastructure to the State of Tennessee.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The State of Tennessee used proprietary middleware software for its
middleware environment, but found the licensing terms of the software to
be inflexible, inhibiting its ability to add new functionality to its existing
systems, develop new ones, and scale to meet market demands.
Additionally, the proprietary system was expensive. “We were spending
a lot of money supporting these solutions, and in order to scale for
our growth, we knew we needed to find a cheaper alternative, without
compromising quality and performance,” said James Elkins, team lead for
middleware, business intelligence and testing, OIR, State of Tennessee.
growth
SOlution
Red Hat Consulting, Red Hat Training
migration path
Proprietary middleware software to
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform on
benefits
Substantial savings on hardware and
licensing costs for all new deployments,
increased and impressive performance,
stability and reliability, higher availability,
and excellent support
SOLUTION
Though the State’s experience with open source middleware solutions
was limited, it decided to migrate to the more cost-effective and flexible
platform offered by open source solutions in a virtualized environment.
The State of Tennessee, a long time Red Hat customer for its use of
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, completed an environmental assessment of
the various application servers available to meet the state’s growing
middleware infrastructure. The OIR based the evaluation on a number of
factors including cost to acquire and maintain, functionality in a virtual
environment, and the application server’s ability to scale for expected
and future growth.
OIR evaluated a number of middleware solutions that could offer
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | OIR
redhat.com/jboss
173
reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), expanded
flexibility, and unmatched scalability. They required a
J2EE-compliant Application Server that would integrate
seamlessly with its standard operating system, Red
Hat Enterprise Linux, which offered support and would
enable OIR to meet the growing technology demands of
the state.
Ultimately, OIR selected JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform in a virtualized environment and is also
planning to utilize JBoss Operations Network (JON) for
monitoring activities.
The solution ecosystem consists of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. The
overall solution includes more than 60 servers used for
the custom applications that serve the state agencies.
Although the OIR team had no previous experience with
JBoss solutions, after attending a Red Hat Training class
for JBoss, combined with existing Java programming
experience, the team found JBoss to be easy to use,
manage and deploy. The OIR plans to send additional
staff members to Red Hat Training for JBoss in the near
future.
“The JBoss Training class was delivered using
comprehensive use-case scenarios and featured
hands-on labs, which provided the skills and knowledge
necessary to handle our organization’s JBoss
workloads,” said Elkins. “After completing the JBoss
Training class, I felt prepared and equipped to maximize
our use of JBoss solutions and better understand,
maintain and troubleshoot our middleware environment.”
The migration involved no integration with the incumbent
platform and was a full-system port. The OIR staff
implemented the product, but utilized Red Hat
Consulting to fine-tune the application servers for
performance.
The State of Tennessee OIR selected JBoss solutions
for the offering of reduced TCO and increased
performance, flexibility, and availability of resources
with familiarity in the market. One of the distinct
advantages of the JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform is that it enables ease-of use for development.
The solution integrates easily with each of the custom
applications that support the state agencies.
“We’re very impressed with JBoss and its support of
mission- critical state-wide applications,” said Kitchens.
“We are very satisfied with the results and with JBoss’
support.”
The platform has enabled significant efficiency as
the OIR team is now able to manage and monitor the
performance of applications. The time required for
startup up with the new JBoss-based system has been
reduced considerably. Now, with JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, OIR can quickly and easily add
new servers to its architecture. The new architecture
has allowed OIR to buy, deploy, and re-deploy additional
servers at competitive prices.
In addition to reduced TCO amounting to savings, OIR
also achieved enhanced performance from its newly
implemented JBoss platform. “It’s now easier to scale a
number of CPUs up and down in the current model, and
the system really brings us a lot of value, especially in
terms of efficiency and effectiveness. We have saved a
significant amount of budget in terms of licensing and
hardware costs on TCO,” said Kitchens.
In addition to all of the valuable benefits delivered
by JBoss solutions, OIR also found that many of its
development staff perceived the use of JBoss and open
source solutions in general as positive. “If we had to
make the same decision all over again, we would have
done the same exact thing,” said Elkins. “We trust Red
Hat’s solutions, and it has always met our challenges.”
Overall OIR has engaged Red Hat Consulting on two
separate occasions and has found the experiences to be
extremely useful as they were provided with the skills
and tools to fully manage and fine-tune the applications
on their own.
“As we migrate more and more of the state agencies’
custom applications to JBoss Enterprise. Application
Platform, the provisioning and deployment time has been
reduced from six months to a matter of days. JBoss has
allowed us to do more with less, increase our reliability,
and allowed us to increase the service we provide to
our citizens,” said Tricia Kitchens, director of enterprise
services, OIR, State of Tennessee.
BENEFITS
174
redhat.com/jboss
OIR | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
INDUSTRY:
RETAIL
RETAIL
175
UDN SHOPPING BUILDS
ROBUST E-COMMERCE
WEBSITE WITH JBOSS
ENTERPRISE APPLICATION
Geography
APAC
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
UDN Shopping, a member of the United Daily News (UDN) Group, was
established in 2010 and provides customers with products that strongly
represent Taiwan. The hope is that customers get the most authentic,
distinctive products available in the region.
UDN Shopping is a comprehensive commerce platform, showcasing more
than 300,000 items and offering customers secure transactions with
personal privacy protection, rapid shipment of products, and supreme
customer service.
The United Daily News Group has one of the largest readerships in Taiwan.
Over the past 60 years, the United Daily News Group has adhered to the
spirit of objective independence, supplying readers with first-hand news
information. This has made the United Daily News Group the premier
choice for readers in Taiwan.
To build a successful online shopping
experience with high stability
and strong system performance
SOLUTION
Platform 5.1
Hardware
HP x86-based servers ProLiant DL380
SOFTWARE
(64 cores)
Benefits
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
After 60 years of leading the Taiwan media industry, the United Daily News
Group decided to expand their business model to include online shopping.
In the highly competitive online shopping market, the United Daily News
Group needed to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) while providing
a highly stable and high-performing online shopping experience. The
company understood that these factors were extremely crucial to business
growth.
Gained an incredible return-oninvestment (ROI) of 300 percent,
increased performance, and built a high
concurrent user rate
As a leader in the media industry, United Daily News Group also wanted to
become a leading e-commerce platform provider throughout the greater
China region. To achieve this goal, the company understood that service
quality and vendor support of the platform were going to be the keys to
continuous business success. Therefore, UDN Shopping set out to acquire a
cost-effective, high-performing commercial solution to support these new
business initiatives.
SOLUTION
UDN Shopping evaluated a number of open source and proprietary
solutions that could offer the flexibility and stability that its e-commerce
platform required. They felt that proprietary applications didn’t offer the
cost-effective price that they were looking for in a long-standing partner.
In addition, UDN Shopping was looking for a platform that could provide
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | UDN
redhat.com/jboss
176
a fault-tolerant, high-availability architecture. JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform is enterprise-ready,
supported, and tested—and these features are instrumental
in providing UDN Shopping customers with a superb online
shopping experience.
In the end, the company selected JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform—with a built-in session replication
function—to provide extremely high performance and
high availability in a cost-effective way. Deploying JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform resulted in 300 concurrent
users in a single node, with the company targeting more
than 2,000 concurrent users in an eight-node cluster. In
the end, not only is the front-end web system benefiting
from JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, but additional
UDN Shopping departments (such as customer support,
help desk, and product administration) are reaping the
rewards as well.
BENEFITS
Prior to migrating to JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform, UDN Shopping’s IT department risked running
an unsupported community solution, which could result in
scalability and performance issues. Now, the company can
safely rely on a high-quality, certified solution.
Due to the powerful nature of JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform, UDN Shopping’s application deployment is on less
hardware and generates high throughput. Now there are
more than 40,000 daily unique visitors, with page views
of near 300,000, and more than 80,000 transactions per
day—compared to only hundreds of users and thousands
of transactions with the previous solution. In comparison
with other proprietary solutions, UDN Shopping has been
able to achieve a 70-80-percent cost reduction using JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform. Furthermore, the Red
Hat enterprise subscription model meets the company’s
needs with faster, more accurate, and more valuable
support. In short, UDN Shopping was able to achieve a highperformance, highly reliable, and highly scalable platform
with Red Hat technologies and support.
177
redhat.com/jboss
UDN | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
RED HAT SOLUTIONS HELP
ICE.COM SHINE BY SAVING
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS
OF DOLLARS THROUGH MORE
NIMBLE BUSINESS CONTROL
Geography
Montreal, Canada
New York, New York
Business challenge
Online jewelry store Ice.com wanted to
Revamping IT and giving control back to the business
replace its e-commerce solution with
In February 2011, Jason Ordway was asked to join Ice.com as the company’s
chief operating officer (COO) and chief information office (CIO). Ordway
was to undertake the monumental task of restructuring the company’s IT
infrastructure. From applications to datacenters, inefficient IT operations
were limiting growth and profitability.
a technology model that allowed the
The company had been using Blue Martini, an e-commerce solution that
was tightly integrated with a warehousing management back-end system
from Ecometry (both are now part of the RedPrairie Commerce Suite). The
implementation of these systems took over two years and was a costly
endeavor. After several more years of trying to make the solution work,
Ice.com gave up. “As an e-commerce solution, it wasn’t supporting the
business,” said Ordway. ”It was very limiting, with any significant changes
in functionality requiring months of development and costing up to twenty
or thirty thousand dollars. That’s unheard of in e-commerce.”
deploying Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®
The limitations of the e-commerce solution were felt throughout the
company. “The business people wanted to make changes that were
impossible because the back-end system couldn’t accommodate them,”
said Ordway. “The IT staff said ‘no’ a lot, which is the last thing you want
to say to a business team that’s looking to increase revenue. Our job is
to make it easier for them to bring sales in the door.” When he was hired,
Ordway was asked to find an IT solution that gave control back to the
business. “The CEO wanted me to set a new technology direction for the
company,” said Ordway. “Once on board, I quickly recognized that the
existing software wasn’t sufficient, and that the costs associated with
the software and its maintenance far exceeded what we should be paying.”
business to respond more quickly and
effectively. The company transformed
its on-premise proprietary system to
a cloud-based open source solution,
and JBoss® Enterprise Application
Platform with Amazon Web Services
(AWS). The new solution has reduced IT
costs, and the company is now able to
respond to new market opportunities
quickly and efficiently.
SOLUTION
Platform 5.1
Hardware
HP x86-based servers ProLiant DL380
SOFTWARE
Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®
Platform
Moving to a more cost-effective, flexible solution
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
To support the needs of the business, Ordway recommended a migration
from two costly on-premise datacenters to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
(Amazon EC2), which is part of the infrastructure and applications services
available with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Ordway also suggested
moving from proprietary shrink-wrapped software to open source products
that included Red Hat Enterprise Linux as its new operating system
environment and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform for its middleware
solution.
Amazon Simple Storage Service
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ICE
redhat.com/jboss
(Amazon S3)
178
In addition to the flexibility of an open source solution,
Ordway chose Red Hat for its ability to provide support on
a contractual basis. “Knowing we can pick up the phone and
get a response was key,” said Ordway. “In fact, the ability to
get support with an open source solution was the deciding
factor in our selecting Red Hat.”
Nine months to a successful launch—and
New business opportunities
A mere nine months after kicking off the project, Ordway
and his team launched a completely overhauled IT
infrastructure. “It was a very aggressive schedule because
we moved everything to a new system—the web store as
well as our content management solution,
business intelligence platform, and ERP system,” said
Ordway, “we went from having everything on premise to
running it all in the cloud.”
“The launch represented a monumental shift in business.
Everyone in the company had something new to do on
the day of the launch, whether it was to log on to a new
system or work in a new process,” said Ordway. “The new
infrastructure gave us back control, and now everyone has
the power to do what they need to do, rather than only
what the old system allowed them to do.”
As to concerns regarding whether the move to a cloud
was the right choice for Ice.com, Ordway is enthusiastic.
“If your systems are architected correctly in the cloud,
you’ll be able to have an outage in one datacenter with
systems automatically failing over to another,” said Ordway.
“Performance is still good when that happens, and that’s
what matters.”
Putting the business back in contrOl
The new e-commerce solution allows Ice.com to respond
more quickly to the demands of the business. “Our
development is more iterative and much faster than
before,” said Ordway. “The applications are also easier to
maintain because we don’t have to outsource proprietary
code changes. We have in-house developers who are skilled
in Linux, Java, Red Hat, and JBoss. We’re in control, which
is an interesting cultural change.”
Ordway believes that if his team is not delivering
functionality that allows changes on a timely basis, they
are inhibiting revenue. “To make changes in the store with
the old system, there was a formalized process that took
at least 24 hours to be deployed. And the tech team had
to make the changes,” said Ordway. “Now, 75% or more of
the changes in the store are made by a merchandising team
in real time. A technologist does not touch them. We can
get 3 or 4 times more product up in one day than we could
before, and this team now has more free time to do other
strategic tasks and innovate.”
179
redhat.com/jboss
Ready for peak times and new markets
The combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform and AWS has helped the
company not only better serve current customers, but also
explore new market opportunities that weren’t possible
before. For instance, because of the integration with AWS,
Ice.com has been able to quickly scale up capacity to
acommodate the peak cycles of its business and reduce
capacity during slow months. “We have huge capacity
requirements from November through February. It’s great
to be able to spin off instances very quickly and pay for
what we need,” said Ordway. “This is saving us significant
money and allows us to ramp up quickly and also scale
down if needed.”
Additionally, Ice.com is bringing new products to market
that were not possible with the old system. “We recently
launched m.ice.com and a couple of new mobile apps,” said
Ordway. “In addition, we’ve also developed our own suite
of web services for our partners. These offerings, which
we couldn’t have deployed with our previous technology,
represent significant business opportunities that are all tied
into the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform middle tier.”
Significant savings now — and into the
future
Besides creating a system that is much more responsive to
the needs of the business, the new solution has significantly
reduced the company’s IT expenditures. “We are saving
close to $250,000 annually because of our move to open
source applications and the cloud,” said Ordway. “The
savings on hardware are more difficult to quantify because
the systems were more than 7 years old. However, we can
now purchase reserved and on-demand instances that save
us from having servers sitting idle for 6 to 7 months of the
year in non-peak times, and that is significant.”
The company is excited about its cloud-based open
source system and new opportunities in the future. Ice.
com’s technology road map includes expanding its
mobile solutions and developing a social loyalty program.
The company will also continue to work with Amazon
to optimize its cloud scalability for greater computing
efficiency.
RED HAT PROVIDES
PRICELINE.COM WITH
COST-EFFECTIVE, HIGHPERFORMANCE SOLUTIONS
Priceline.com Incorporated (Nasdaq: PCLN) operates Priceline.com, a
leading US online travel service for value-conscious leisure travelers, and
Priceline Europe, a leading European online hotel reservation service.
In the US, Priceline.com offers customers more ways to save on their airline
tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, vacation packages, and cruises than any
other Internet travel service. In addition to getting the best published
prices, leisure travelers can narrow their searches using Priceline.com’s
TripFilter™ advanced search technology, creating packages that save even
more money and take advantage of Priceline.com’s famous Name Your Own
Price® service, which can deliver the lowest prices available.
Priceline Europe operates one of Europe’s fastest growing hotel reservation
services through its Booking.com network of hotel reservation services,
Activehotels.com, and Priceline.co.uk. Priceline Europe operates in 40
countries in 12 languages and offers its customers in Europe and the United
States access to approximately 25,000 participating European hotels.
Priceline.com also operates the following travel websites: Travelweb.com,
Lowestfare.com, RentalCars.com, and BreezeNet.com. Priceline.com has
a personal finance service that offers home mortgages, refinancing, and
home equity loans through an independent licensee. Priceline.com licenses
its business model to independent licensees, including Priceline Mortgage
and certain international licensees.
Priceline.com’s technology execution has been recognized with multiple
awards in the past year. Keynote Systems, an Internet performance metrics
measurement company, voted Priceline.com number one for reliability in
the field of online travel agencies and number one for speed in the field
of online travel agencies. Network World magazine also acknowledged
Priceline.com’s data center innovation with an award this year.
Geography
United States
Business challenge
Priceline.com regularly sees millions of page views
and thousands of bookings per day. As an
Internet-based travel service provider, downtime
and outages are not an option. The company
decided to shift to Red Hat and open source
solutions in order to provide the highestperforming services and applications possible
and to realize cost savings. Priceline com
also evaluated JBoss due to the company’s
predisposition toward developing in Java and to
potentially generate further savings based on the
open source model.
SOLUTION
Today, Priceline.com has about half of the
infrastructure converted over to a mixture of Red
Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Network Satellite
Server, and JBoss Application Server with Tomcat
and Apache web servers.
Hardware
Sun V20z servers with AMD Opter-on, HP
ProLiant DL385 servers with AMD Opteron, and
HP ProLiant DL380 with Intel Xeon.
SOFTWARE
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Network
Satellite Server, and JBoss Application Server
with Tomcat and Apache web servers.
Benefits
“Even before I came to Priceline.com, I already had a history with Red
Hat as a key vendor providing enterprise-level Linux distributions for
The combination of Red Hat and JBoss has
been a win-win for Priceline.com. Priceline.com’s
application availability runs >99.97 percent and
hits 100 percent for most quarters. With Red
Hat Enterprise Linux, the company has realized
reduced security patching requirements than
with some proprietary application servers.
Through a series of initiatives, like the company’s
JBoss implementation, Priceline.com IT has
been successful in proportionally reducing its
relevant domestic operational IT budgets for
this type of infrastructure, despite increases in
product complexity and product unit volumes.
Forward-looking, Xen support and virtualization
technologies are extremely attractive to Priceline.
com. The company has been testing Xen in its
development environments to reduce hardware
costs and lower TCO.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | PRICELINE
redhat.com/jboss
OPPORTUNITY
Ron Rose, CIO at Priceline.com, knows the value of open source and
Red Hat. After leaving his position as CTO at Standard and Poor’s
Retail Markets where he implemented one of the first large-scale Linux
infrastructures in the financial services industry, he arrived at Priceline.com
with a plan to implement and deploy Linux once again.
180
demanding, real-time, highly available online applications.
I was also fully aware of the technical sophistication
required from vendors and customers alike in using Linux
successfully. After the initial company build was achieved,
I knew we would inevitably need to make a change to open
source at Priceline.com,” said Rose.
Priceline.com regularly sees millions of page views and
thousands of bookings per day. As an Internet-based travel
service provider, downtime and outages are not an option.
Rose knew they needed to shift to Red Hat and open source
solutions not only for cost reduction, but to provide the
highest-performing services and applications possible.
“Our success, however, is more than
controlling costs. As our industry
awards demonstrate, we’ve been
able to attain world-class levels of
availability and performance too. Red
Hat and JBoss, as a division of Red
Hat, have proven themselves to have
enterprise-level tools that, when used
well, help us attain what all companies
want – great availability, great scale,
and at a reduced cost when compared
to proprietary solutions.”
Initially, there was a large degree of skepticism within
Priceline.com IT about whether open source tools could
obtain the levels of availability and stability that they
required. But, according to Rose, “It did not take very long
for people to realize, once they started using Linux and
JBoss, that these are really good tools and are head-tohead competitive with proprietary tools.”
Priceline.com also evaluated JBoss due to the company’s
predisposition toward developing in Java and to enable
further cost savings based on the open source model.
“We took a look at the leading J2EE application servers
and we found the feature set and reliability of the JBoss
implementation to be as good as, if not better than, the
licensed alternatives,” said Rose. “JBoss was also extremely
attractive since we would avoid proprietary application
server costs.”
SOLUTION
Today, Priceline.com has about half of its worldwide server
infrastructure using such tools as Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
Red Hat Network Satellite Server, and JBoss Application
Server with Tomcat and Apache web servers. Much of the
181
redhat.com/jboss
hardcore plumbing underneath the product lines has been
ported over and “works very well,” said Rose.
Priceline.com is best known for its Name Your Own
Price business model, but over the last several years
has complemented this offering with a more traditional
retail sales model. Some of the company’s retail
implementations are done almost entirely using Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and JBoss. The implementations are a
typical 3-tier MVC pattern using STRUTS, Apache http
server, Tomcat, JBoss, and Oracle databases.
Priceline.com found Red Hat and JBoss training a great
resource. Many Priceline.com Linux system administrators
utilized Red Hat training, and several engineers received
their certification. In particular, the company found JBoss
onsite training indispensable during their application
server roll-out.
“In support of our initial JBoss
application server deployment, we
engaged JBoss Professional Services
in training our staff. We continue to
rely on JBoss support so we can get
access to the engineers who know
the code the best—the authors. This
is an area where JBoss excels,” said
Rose. “JBoss is fostering the growth
of an open source ecosystem by
compensating the authors of quality
open source offerings. It is great to be
able to have access to these talented
developers.”
BENEFITS
The combination of Red Hat and JBoss has been a win-win
for Priceline.com. Priceline.com’s application availability
runs >99.97 percent and hits 100 percent for quarters at a
time, according to Rose.
With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the company has realized
less security patching requirements than with some
proprietary application servers. Priceline.com also found
semi-automated patching success with Red Hat, which
allowed them to maintain a high velocity of application
changes without having patching challenges get in
the way. From a Linux and JBoss support perspective,
Priceline.com benefited significantly from having a single
vendor manage and help drive quicker resolutions of
support issues.
PRICELINE | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
“Our total cost of ownership (TCO) story clearly shows
lower manpower requirements by using Red Hat Enterprise
Linux from a support, patching, and management
standpoint,” said Rose. “The added benefit of the Red Hat
and JBoss combination eliminates what we at Priceline.com
call ‘the index digit syndrome—where two vendors point
fingers at each other when engaged in debugging exercises.
It is great to have one vendor for our support and this
enables faster resolutions to issues.”
Through a series of initiatives, like the company’s JBoss
implementation, Priceline.com IT has been successful in
proportionally reducing its relevant domestic operational IT
budgets for this type of infrastructure, despite increases in
product complexity and product unit volumes.
get to reliable, scalable software configurations is a true
benefit for the industry.”
“Working with Red Hat and JBoss as a single company
helps lower our costs and increases our uptime by
providing a complete software stack, from the operating
system through the application layer. It reduces the time
required for troubleshooting, configuration complexity,
and contracts and vendor management,” said Rose.
“We consider Red Hat and JBoss both to have great
products that we respect. Now that they are combined,
we can’t wait to benefit from their future cooperative
developments.”
Rose noted, “Our success, however, is more than controlling
costs. As our industry awards demonstrate, we’ve been able
to attain world-class levels of availability and performance
too. Red Hat and JBoss, as a division of Red Hat, have
proven themselves to have enterprise-level tools that,
when used well, help us attain what all companies want –
great availability, great scale, and at a reduced cost when
compared to proprietary solutions.”
Forward-looking, Xen support and virtualization
technologies are extremely attractive to Priceline.com.
The company has been testing Xen in its development
environments to reduce hardware costs and lower TCO.
“With the release of Xen support in Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5, we see more validation for virtualization
technologies by another major software supplier,” said
Rose. “Virtualization will have a dramatic TCO advantage
next year as we begin to mainstream this technology
with our application servers. As a result of virtualization
technology implementation, we estimate that we can
reduce box counts and enhance recurring TCO up to 33
percent in the corporate portion of our infrastructure. In
addition, virtualization should help us enhance the power
of our development/QA infrastructure thus increasing the
speed of product development. Virtualization has already
started helping us eliminate server TCO and complexity and
we see it continuing to do that effectively.”
Overall, Rose has found Red Hat’s acquisition of JBoss a
favorable development for Priceline.com and the industry
as a whole.
Rose noted, “Integration and configuration complexity and
variability is often what I consider to be one of the most
challenging things about open source. Although, we’ve
seen relatively few issues at Priceline.com because we are
a relatively skilled shop, we do know that people have had
issues with configuration complexity for open source in the
past. Anything that helps simplify the configurations and
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | PRICELINE
redhat.com/jboss
182
183
SHERWIN-WILLIAMS
CONSUMER GROUP TAKES
ON ROSY HUE WITH HELP
FROM RED HAT
Geography
APAC
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Founded in 1866, The Sherwin-Williams Company is a global leader in the
manufacture, development, distribution, and sale of coatings and related
products to professional, industrial, commercial, and retail customers
around the world. The company manufactures products under well-known
brands such as Sherwin-Williams®, DutchBoy®, Krylon®, Minwax®,
Thompson’s® Water Seal®, and many more.
For more than 143 years, Sherwin-Williams has been committed to making
and marketing innovative products of superior quality; operating a safe,
clean and friendly workplace while observing the highest ethical standards
in business conduct.
To develop and deploy functionally rich
Web applications using a standardsbased platform supported by a single
vendor for both home office and field
use.
SOFTWARE
MIGRATION PATH
HP/UX and Windows to Red Hat
With global headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio Sherwin-Williams-branded
products are sold exclusively through a chain of more than 3,300 companyoperated stores and facilities, while the company’s other brands are sold
through leading mass merchandisers, home centers, independent paint
dealers, hardware stores, automotive retailers, and industrial distributors.
The Sherwin-Williams Global Group distributes a wide range of products in
more than 30 countries around the world. For more information, visit www.
sherwin.com.
Enterprise Linux
Hardware
x86 servers
Benefits
Improve time to market of missioncritical applications increase staff
productivity and efficiency using JBoss
“JBoss has been a great fit for solving
our primary business and technical
challenges. We’ve accelerated the
process of getting developers trained
and up to speed. We’ve managed to
get our arms around a vast set of web
technologies by limiting our scope
while providing our business users
with the applications they need to be
successful.”
Enterprise Middleware achieve higher
quality applications
–Alan Flowers, manager of Java-Web-Integration
Services team at Sherwin-Williams
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SHERWIN-WILLIAMS
redhat.com/jboss
184
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Sherwin-Williams operates in three segments: Paint Stores
Group, Consumer Group, and Global Finishes Group. The
Consumer Group segment engages in the development,
manufacture, and distribution of paints, coatings, and
related products to third party customers primarily in the
United States and Canada, as well as to the Paint Stores
Group.
In 2005, the Consumer Group segment of The SherwinWilliams Company migrated its web application
infrastructure from a combination of HP/UX and Windows
to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, primarily for standardization
and reliability reasons. Last year, the Consumer Group
embarked on an ambitious plan to develop web applications
that run in a standard browser in this environment. Among
other goals, Sherwin-Williams wanted this standard
platform to create a new portfolio of applications to
promote operational excellence and green initiatives.
“We hoped to create a desktop-like user experience
even though these would be web applications,” said Alan
Flowers, manager of the Java-Web-Integration Services
team at Sherwin-Williams. Among other criteria, “we
needed something we could support over the long term
and sought a trusted relationship with our main vendor,” he
said.
Sherwin-Williams was pleased with both the quality of the
technology and the “excellent” level of support received
from Red Hat for their infrastructure deployment. Flowers
didn’t hesitate to evaluate JBoss Enterprise Middleware
when it came time to consider a middleware platform.
not to use, and what will be around down the road.” By
standardizing on the Red Hat product line, “we know our
platform, we know it will be supported, and we can get our
people up to speed quickly and efficiently,” he said.
Flowers also liked the access he was given to senior Red
Hat and JBoss engineers. As part of his due diligence, he
attended JBoss World, the JBoss annual user conference,
last year, and was “ pleased to meet the actual engineers
who created the products I’d be using,” he said. “That kind
of direct access is rare among top-tier IT vendors.”
BENEFITS
One of the benefits of adopting JBoss has been
a development cycle time savings. “One of our
primary goals was to create a swift web development
environment,” said Tracey Richards, manager of Electronic
Commerce Services for Sherwin-Williams. “We’ve now
begun to reach that goal.”
“We attended training, defined our scope, and documented
our standards in preparation for development using
JBoss,” said Flowers. Sherwin-Williams has also been able
to reduce its overall technology portfolio. Since AJAX is
embedded in the JBoss middleware stack and developers
don’t have to deal with Java scripting, there is less code to
manage and maintain.
“We were already satisfied with
Red Hat and this contributed to
the decision to use JBoss for our
middleware needs.”
SOLUTION
After bringing JBoss in-house and putting it through a
rigorous due diligence process, Flowers was satisfied he’d
found a suitable solution. “Given our existing commitment
to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, our business goals and our
desire to be very forward-thinking in our approach to web
applications, JBoss was the logical choice,” he said. Today,
Sherwin-Williams is using JBoss Enterprise Middleware,
specifically JBoss Developer Studio and JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, in addition to running its web IT
infrastructure on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Especially helpful was the fact that members of the Red
Hat team did more than just fulfill the sales order; they
provided Sherwin-Williams with strategic planning advice.
“Red Hat sent experienced professionals over who had an
in-depth knowledge of the Jboss offerings,” said Flowers.
“We outlined what we were trying to accomplish, talked
about our future plans, and were introduced to JBoss’
integrated development environment. This gave us a great
head start. You can get plagued about what to use, what
185
redhat.com/jboss
Implementing a standards-based platform from one
technology provider was a critical driver of SherwinWilliams’ decision to go with JBoss. “Since we were
developing business-critical systems, we wanted a single
vendor to support the entire software stack, from top to
bottom,” said Richards.
“We feel confident developing web applications having the
applications stack and operating system from the same
vendor,” agreed Flowers. “Whether we get our account
manager on the phone, or a Linux or JBoss expert, we’re
certain that we will be well served.”
“JBoss has been a great fit for solving our primary
business and technical challenges,” said Flowers. “We’ve
accelerated the process of getting developers trained and
up to speed. We’ve managed to get our arms around a
vast set of web technologies by limiting our scope while
providing our business users with the applications they
need to be successful.”
INDUSTRY:
TRANSPORTATION,
ENERGY & UTILITY
TRANSPORTATION,
ENERGY & UTILITY
186
COMFORTDELGRO
INTRODUCES
SMS TAXI BOOKING SERVICE
WITH JBOSS
Geography
Singapore
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
ComfortDelGro is the world’s second largest public-listed passenger land
transport company with a fleet of 45,000 vehicles. The Group has a global
workforce, shareholder base and outlook. Headquartered in Singapore, it
has operations in China, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Vietnam,
and Malaysia.
ComfortDelGro was formed in 2003 through the merger of two land
transport giants – Comfort Group and DelGro Corporation. Both had started
out in the 1970s and had, by the time of the merger, grown to become
successful listed land transport companies.
Comfort and CityCab, the group’s two taxi companies, are the largest in
Singapore with a combined fleet of about 15,000 taxis.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Provide an alternative channel for taxi
booking to alleviate phone call booking
overload during peak periods.
SOLUTION
Short Message Service (SMS) booking
system developed on JBoss Seam.
Benefits
Allows customers to book a taxi
anytime, anywhere, using SMS in just
30 seconds, which means less waiting
time for customers and more booking
jobs for cab drivers.
Catering to more than 20 million taxi bookings annually, ComfortDelGro’s
Customer Contact Centre is running at full capacity, with the situation
becoming more pronounced during peak hours and on rainy days.
In 2007, the Company started to explore more ways to automate the
booking process so as to handle the increasing volume of calls and reduce
the time it takes for calls to be handled. Part of the booking process had
already been automated with the broadcasting of call bookings to taxis
using General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology via the in-vehicle
Mobile Data Terminals.
As mobile phones are widely used in Singapore, ComfortDelGro decided to
implement the Short Message Service (SMS) taxi booking service.
SOLUTION
A closed tender was called with three vendors pitching for the project. “Our
criteria were the vendor’s experience in the SMS platform, its track record,
and support level. The platform must be able to integrate seamlessly
with our existing Java-based solutions,” said Ms. Wong Oi Mei, Vice
President, Information Technology of ComfortDelGro’s Taxi Business.
After carefully considering the options available, the Company decided
to pick the JBoss Seam-based solution proposed by Maven Lab, a Red
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | COMFORTDELGO
redhat.com/jboss
187
Hat Business Partner under the Infocomm Development
Authority’s (IDA) Infocomm Local Industry Upgrading
Programme (iLIUP).
“Maven Lab’s proposal matched our requirements. The Red
Hat solution also offered lower cost of implementation,”
said Oi Mei.
Maven Lab took three months to develop the system,
which runs on Windows on HP Intel-based servers. JBoss
Seam was used as the application server. A pilot run
involving staff and selected customers started in January
2008 and following feedback gathered, the improved and
more user-friendly SMS taxi booking service—the first of its
kind in Singapore that enables commuters to book a taxi via
SMS any time from any location without having to register—
was launched.
Benefits
The service has proven to be a hit with many customers
switching to SMS taxi booking since waiting time is now
a mere 30 seconds. It has, in particular, been a boon to
another group of customers—the speech- and hearingimpaired passengers. They now can book a taxi by
themselves via SMS without having to rely on others for
assistance.
“All that our customers, including the speech- and hearingimpaired passengers, have to do is to send an SMS and wait
for an SMS response. This process bypasses the contact
centre agents and IVR, saving time on waiting for the call
to be answered and waiting on the line for confirmation.
Our customers will also not have to experience getting an
engaged tone during busy periods,” said Oi Mei. Around 2%
of all taxi bookings are now made via SMS. ComfortDelGro
aims to increase this figure to 5% of all bookings by the
end of 2009.
“ComfortGelGro is using the SMS taxi booking service as
another channel to help improve customer experience.
Using the Red Hat’s JBoss Seam-based solution has
ensured that the company has a stable, reliable and
costeffective system to support this service,” said Hiew
Wee Soon, Director of Maven Lab.
Oi Mei is pleased with the success of using open source
solutions. “We are impressed with JBoss for its reliability
and flexibility, and the support and service level from Red
Hat,” she said.
Building on this good experience, ComfortDelGro will be
using JBoss Seam and Hibernate for its customer and
driver portals, both of which are expected to be launched
later in 2009.
188
redhat.com/jboss
COMFORTDELGO | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Red Hat Enterprise
Linux powers 100%
availability and
impressive cost savings
for SPARQ Solutions
Geography
Australia: South East Queensland
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
SPARQ Solutions is the IT&T service provider for two leading Australian
energy companies, ENERGEX and Ergon Energy. ENERGEX supplies
electricity to a population of approximately 2.8 million people in South East
Queensland. ENERGEX relies on the SCADA Master Station, which is used
to manage its power distribution network, as its control system.
The SCADA Master Station is ENERGEX’s most critical system, and its
ongoing, smooth operation is essential. System failure could impact user
safety and the National Electricity Market; and system failure could also
damage valuable plant equipment.
To replace its end-of-life proprietary
system with a stable and reliable
platform that facilitates lower-cost
hardware and ongoing savings on
platform maintenance
SOLUTION
Australian energy company reduced
costs by more than $1 million by
migrating systems to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and web applications
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Since 1997, SPARQ had been using Compaq/HP Alphas running on a Tru64
operating system. However in 2006, the servers had reached end-of-life
and HP had ceased manufacturing of the hardware. At the same time,
sourcing replacement hardware for any failures was becoming extremely
difficult. The HP Tru64 operating system, the application software, and the
database had also become outdated and vendor support was difficult to
secure.
to JBoss Enterprise Middleware
MIGRATION PATH
FHP Alpha Tru64 UNIX servers to
JBoss® Enterprise Middleware and
Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® on HP
ProLiant servers
“SPARQ’s priority was to ensure that it could continue to improve the
reliability of the system that it had been delivering to ENERGEX for more
than a decade,” said Grant Woolston, control systems manager, SPARQ.
Software
“Because of our demands for maximum availability and reliability, we
needed to upgrade our outdated technology and install a new system that
could reduce the risk of downtime and provide truly rock-solid system
control.”
based outage management application,
SOLUTION
In mid-2008, SPARQ embarked on a complete upgrade of the SCADA
Master Station’s hardware. In the period leading up to this, the company
developed a new software application named WebSCM, which is a webbased outage management application that runs on JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5, JBoss
Enterprise Middleware, WebSCM webRed Hat Training
HARDWARE
50 Intel Xeon based HP ProLiant
DL380 servers
Benefits
Reduced hardware costs by
approximately $1 million, reduced
licensing costs by approximately
The developers of the Master Station first recommended that SPARQ
investigate the benefits of deploying the new application on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux using HP DL380 servers.
$300,000, and achieved 100-percent
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SPARQ
redhat.com/jboss
availability over 12 months
189
“ Migrating to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux saved SPARQ Solutions
$300,000 on licensing costs for its
outage management system, and
contributed to a savings of $1 million
that was related to the purchase of
commodity-based servers.”
“The use of open source software for a mission-critical
control system, such as the SCADA Master Station, was
not a decision that could be made quickly, particularly
because ENERGEX had limited experience using Linux for
any of its corporate applications,” said Woolston. “However,
a key decisive factor was the proven reliability of similar
deployments of Red Hat Enterprise Linux within other
organizations.”
Following the decision to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4.5, extensive testing took place at every stage of the
project, including a replication of the target network and
hardware at the vendor’s site in Montreal, Canada.
With proven results, the testing concluded in March 2008
and installation for the final solution, which was based
on 50 DL380 servers that included multiple test and
development environments, commenced immediately
in Brisbane.
Following the decision to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4.5, extensive testing took place at every stage of the
project, including a replication of the target network and
hardware at the vendor’s site in Montreal, Canada, to
ensure the new infrastructure would be water-tight.
With proven results, the testing concluded in March
2008 and installation for the final solution commenced
immediately in Brisbane, based on 50 DL380 servers which
included multiple test and development environments.
the control room,” said Woolston. “An integral part of
the project’s success was the reliability of the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux platform on which the software runs.”
The demonstrated reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
in a mission-critical environment and the successful use
of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform on WebSCM
have strengthened the status of open source software
across both SPARQ and ENERGEX. Both organizations
now understand the value of using open source software
when it is backed by Red Hat’s enterprise-grade service
and support.
Migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux enabled the
organization to benefit from $300,000 in licensing cost
savings for its outage management system. Additionally,
the organization saved $1 million because Red Hat
Enterprise Linux enabled the organization to select “bread
and butter” Intel-based servers rather than the more
costly proprietary Tru64 servers.
Throughout the migration process, SPARQ completed
training provided by Red Hat Training, which it found of
great benefit, high quality, and a good overall value.
“Everyone was very happy with the training they received,
which really contributed to the overall, positive experience
of moving from a proprietary model to open source,” said
Woolston.
“We now have an implementation that complies with
true open standards, rather than partially complying
implementations that are really proprietary. We have
benefited from the high reliability of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, and access to the source code has been helpful in
solving minor, day-to-day issues.”
Based on the successful introduction of open source
into the ENERGEX environment, SPARQ is now exploring
the opportunity to use open source database software
as an Oracle replacement for specific workloads and
applications.
BENEFITS
Since it was commissioned in June 2008, the new system
has been running with 100-percent uptime for over 12
months. Apart from scheduled maintenance windows,
control has been available for 100 percent of the time,
exceeding all performance expectations for both the new
and the previous systems.
“High system availability relied heavily on several
components, including comprehensive testing, a wellstructured project, and an operational technology support
model that effectively embeds the support group in
190
redhat.com/jboss
SPARQ | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Red Hat Provides
CEPSA with a Scalable,
Standardized,
High-Availability
SAP Platform
Geography
Spain
Business challenge
To achieve cost savings and
BACKGROUND
performance improvements by
Compañía Española de Petróleos, S.A. (Spanish Petroleum Company,
CEPSA) is an industrial group that employs more than 11,000 people. Its
core business is the refining of petroleum and marketing of its derivatives.
CEPSA is one of the major Spanish distributors of fuel and hydrocarbons.
The company includes a petrochemicals department, which is closely
aligned with the refining department. They both work to develop
complementary activities, such as exploration and production
of hydrocarbons, natural gas, and electricity.
updating the company’s mission-
CEPSA has almost 80 years of experience in the Spanish energy market
and has developed a reputation for its ability to adapt to the marketplace.
It has also expanded its operations into Algeria, Brazil, Canada, Colombia,
Egypt, Panama, Peru, and Portugal.
HARDWARE
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
MIGRATION PATH
The UNIX platform that supported CEPSA’s ERP SAP system ceased
to meet the scalability requirements necessary to address the group’s
growing needs, such as the integration of acquired companies and
continuity plans. For this reason, the company was looking to update its
platform in a cost-efficient way.
From a UNIX-distributed platform
The organization’s SAP platform supports CEPSA’s mission-critical
business applications, including accounting, finance, and the operation of
its international offices. It is divided into three vertical portals: IS-Oil for
petroleum and refining activities; IS-Utilities for gas marketing; and ISRetail, which provides services to more than 1,700 service stations covering
all of Spain. The IS-Oil portal for production was the only one of three
vertical portals that was experiencing high availability and contingency
systems.
critical SAP platform.
SOFTWARE
Enterprise Middleware, Red Hat
Training and Consulting
HP Servers with Intel Xeon Hexa-core
and Intel Xeon Quad-core
to standard HP servers running Red
Hat® Enterprise Linux® to support
SAP applications R/3 and ECC, Oracle
databases
BENEFITS
Improved SAP platform response
time from 20 to 40 percent; achieved
significant reduction in infrastructure
costs by 80 percent; built a
standardized, scalable platform with
high availability
The SAP platform at CEPSA also supports Oracle databases and various
internally developed shell script applications, such as the printing
administration system for more than 1,000 printers, backup services, and
disaster recovery, as well as other proprietary applications for volume
calculations, engineering development, and monitoring. To demonstrate the
complexity of the platform, it is worth highlighting that the 5TB of storage
connected to the production system database is one of the largest in Spain.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | CESPA
redhat.com/jboss
191
Updating and improving the performance of the platform
was the highest priority project for CEPSA, with important
implications for the development of its business. For this
reason, the company wanted to implement the project with
trusted vendors such as Red Hat and HP.
“Red Hat and HP completely
understood our objectives and helped
us to achieve substantial savings with
solutions offering optimal quality,
better flexibility, and high availability.”
–Alfonso Toca, SAP and Storage systems manager, CEPSA
SOLUTION
Red Hat, HP, and CEPSA worked together to design
and implement the new SAP platform. HP designed the
infrastructure consisting of HP Proliant servers and Intel
Xeon x86 processors with remote replication via “dark
fibre” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3. The infrastructure
is distributed to two datacenters located in Madrid and
the surrounding area. Three production areas have high
availability and contingency systems.
“HP works closely with Red Hat engineers to provide
better hardware and software infrastructure and better
management solutions to guarantee that our clients
manage to improve the flexibility and reduce the complexity
of their IT environments,” commented Ester de Nicolás,
ProLiant servers manager at HP Spain.
Red Hat was responsible for implementing the operating
system platform, a crucial part of the project since
it required migration of a highly complex software
infrastructure that includes, amongst others, monitoring,
printing administration, backup functions, disaster recovery,
and redundant hardware. Red Hat provided consulting
services during different phases of the implementation;
this included a high availability cluster for the SAP and
Oracle services, redundant network access and storage, SO
Platform, creating scripts for migration, backup and remote
replication, as well as training for CEPSA technicians. The
training sessions were instrumental in providing knowledge
transfer and operational documentation from official Red
Hat Training courses as well as workshops tailored to meet
CEPSA’s specific needs.
Red Hat Consulting guided the design of the project and
enabled CEPSA to implement the best technical solution at
the lowest investment and operational cost.
“Red Hat Consulting and Red Hat Training have guided all
192
redhat.com/jboss
phases of the project implementation from initial planning
and development to the training of our technician,”
said José Pablo Gómez de Andrés, project manager
at CEPSA. “Red Hat has been actively involved in this
project, understanding our objectives perfectly, ultimately
providing reliable and innovative solutions to meet each of
our specific needs.”
An example of this is the implementation of a highavailability solution for the Oracle database. The initial
idea for the project was to use Oracle RAC to create a
database cluster to distribute the CEPSA database in
high availability. The high cost of this proprietary solution
led the Red Hat Consulting team to propose a solution
based on Red Hat clustering, a tool included in Red Hat
Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform for no additional cost.
This implementation provided high availability, efficiency,
reliability, and Red Hat support in the most cost-efficient
way.
CEPSA has implemented Red Hat solutions in the past
and has been migrating various key platforms to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware over
the past few years. As an example, the company has been
migrating a large part of its J2EE applications to JBoss
Enterprise Middleware and the majority of the company’s
Intranet, websites, and end-user services also run on open
source middleware from Red Hat.
Eighty-five percent of CEPSA’s J2EE applications are
running on JBoss Enterprise Middleware, supporting
online and business applications such as human
resources, manufacturing, marketing, logistics, and
distribution. “JBoss Enterprise Middleware is extremely
simple to install and user-friendly; it is also very useful
for developing new solutions. Another advantage very
important to us is the ease with which it integrates with
other standard technologies such as JBoss Hibernate
Framework, jBPM, Drools (a JBoss Community project),
and jGroups,” said Alfonso Toca, SAP and storage systems
manager at CEPSA.
The combination of superior performance and support,
better flexibility, and quality solutions based on open
standards and the company’s ability to offer reliable,
secure business solutions at a fraction of the cost of
proprietary alternatives have all confirmed CEPSA’s
confidence in Red Hat’s open source solutions.
BENEFITS
With the implementation of the new SAP infrastructure,
CEPSA has significantly reduced its costs, improved the
scalability of the platform, and administered its resources
in a way to optimize performance. It has also enabled the
move toward a standardized platform, that offers greater
flexibility and a more economical use of resources. The
CESPA | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
new infrastructure has also allowed for the provision of high
availability and contingency of CEPSA’s three production
systems. In addition, CEPSA has improved the SAP
platform response time around 20-40 percent.
“We have decided to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
JBoss Enterprise Middleware, both standard, open, and
scalable solutions that provide us with all the advantages
we were looking for at a considerably lower cost,” said
Alfonso Toca, SAP and storage systems manager at CEPSA.
“Thanks to Red Hat, we have been able to migrate our
database without having to make large upfront investments
in software licenses, while still obtaining superior power and
performance. In addition, we were extremely satisfied with
the collaboration of Red Hat, SAP, and HP on the project,
and the excellent consulting, training, and technical support
provided by Red Hat. We are confident we have selected the
best solution.”
“Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on HP Intel Xeon
processors allows our IT team to gauge the resources
necessary to dynamically administer SAP without
increasing the number of machines. This has reduced the
complexity of the platform and lowered administration
costs,” said José Pablo Gómez, project manager at CEPSA.
“Red Hat and HP completely understood our objectives
and helped us to achieve substantial savings with solutions
offering optimal quality, better flexibility, and high
availability,” added Alfonso Toca.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | CESPA
redhat.com/jboss
193
194
The Emirates Group
Flies High by Building
Powerful, Open Travel
Platform with JBoss
Geography
EMEA
Business challenge
To create a service-oriented platform
BACKGROUND
that could host multiple travel-related
The Emirates Group is a major player in the global aviation, travel, tourism,
and leisure industries. Made up of more than 50 specialist businesses,
the company employs 57,000 team members representing more than 160
different nationalities. The Emirates Group is the most comprehensive
travel and tourism operation in the Middle East.
business systems and simplify the
At the heart of the Emirates Group are two business entities: Emirates
airline and dnata. These two core divisions’ substantial growth has led to
the creation of numerous ancillary businesses to service their operating
requirements. In addition, the Group has branched out into leisure and
retail market, adding hotels and tourism firms to its ever-expanding
portfolio.
SOFTWARE
application portfolio by eliminating
redundant components and interfaces
while obtaining significant cost savings
JBoss® Enterprise SOA Platform
(ESB), JBoss Enterprise BRMS, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, and
JBoss Operations Network, Red Hat®
Enterprise Linux®
Established in 1959, dnata provides services in ground-handling, cargo,
travel, IT solutions, and flight catering. It is the world’s fourth largest
combined air services provider with a global footprint extending to 38
countries.
Emirates airline has one of the youngest fleets in the sky and more than
400 awards for excellence worldwide.
HARDWARE
10 x 2-core 4GB, HP ProLiant BL460C
BENEFITS
Standardization and centralization of
all travel-related services onto one
In the 2010-2011 financial year, the Emirates Group announced record net
profits of US$1.5 billion.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
For many years, the Emirates Group used proprietary infrastructures
to support its mission critical systems and applications. The company
develops in-house applications, which need to be updated regularly in order
to add new functionality and improve customer service. In a proprietary
environment, these developments can be expensive, as well as extremely
time-consuming. This sometimes leads to roadblocks in technology
innovation. In addition, the license and maintenance fees started to restrict
the company’s cost management objectives.
platform, reduced IT cost, reduced
complexity freedom from costly vendor
lock-in; achieved a highly secure
environment with no system downtime
With these issues in mind, the Group was looking to migrate to a Service
Oriented Architecture (SOA) solution at an enterprise level, based on open
source software. The platform, which was to be named the Open Travel
Platform (OTP), was to host all travel-related services and mission-critical
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | EMIRATES
redhat.com/jboss
195
applications. The Group also needed technology that
would not face any downtime and would be highly secure.
These requirements were critical in supporting Emirates
Group’s growth plans and its strategic objectives to
rationalize, standardize, and reduce complexity across the
organization.
SOLUTION
After evaluating numerous technologies, The Emirates
Group selected JBoss Enterprise Middleware and
centralized all travel-related services onto one OTP. The
mission-critical OTP has been implemented as a Tier 1
service that hosts multiple lines of business—including
airport operations, passenger services, and leisure services.
The solution stack utilized to create the Group’s OTP is
completely driven by open source technologies. Emirates
selected JBoss Enterprise Middleware development tools,
deployment platforms, and management environments.
This includes the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform (ESB),
JBoss Enterprise BRMS, JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform, and JBoss Operations Network. The Red Hat
Global Support Services (GSS) team was involved from the
inception of the project to its successful deployment.
“The Red Hat consulting team provided on-site support
for tools evaluation, performance testing, architecture
review, production infrastructure review, and production
readiness,” said Neetan Chopra, vice president of strategy
and architecture of Emirates Group Information Technology.
“Red Hat worked diligently to ensure successful transfer
of knowledge to the Emirates’ IT team, making the
implementation a huge success.”
of dollars in cost savings and a two year payback across
multiple projects. This helped the Group be recognized in
the prestigious 2011 JBoss Innovation Awards, as a winner
in the Carved Out Costs category.
“Even though achieving substantial cost savings was a
significant accomplishment by the Group, partnering with
Red Hat and utilizing the JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform has also allowed the company to finally
centralize all travel-related services onto one platform.
This new platform enables value-added and contextspecific business services, which are reusable across
departments, making this initiative a huge success for the
entire company. “
Because of JBoss Enterprise Middleware, the new OTP
not only helps save the IT group cost of development
and maintenance, but also reduces turnaround time and
the external expenditure of negotiating with multiple
suppliers,” said Mr. Chopra. “Migrating from proprietary
to open source technology provided by Red Hat reduces
Emirates’ total cost of ownership (TCO), and the IT
infrastructure can continue to evolve without fear of
costly vendor lock-in. We look forward to continuing our
JBoss partnership and know that we can count on Red Hat
to help drive our company’s future technology initiatives.”
In addition, the Emirates Group worked very closely with
Red Hat to execute the company’s vision and strategy,
producing tangible, satisfactory results. “The Red
Hat solutions and services team provided exceptional
consulting and helped us successfully execute our project
within the time frame and at the quality level needed,” said
Mr. Chopra. “We also benefited greatly from the structured
training that ensured we were fully up-to-speed and
comfortable with our new OTP solution.”
BENEFITS
Within the first year of launching the OTP, the Group
implemented its first application that offers customers
sophisticated travel planning and booking services via the
Emirates Internet booking engine, at http://www.emirates.
com.
The company has already experienced several key benefits
since migrating to JBoss solutions, namely making the
customer experience a more engaging and streamlined
process. In addition, OTP is expected to produce millions
196
redhat.com/jboss
EMIRATES | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
FLYBE BUILDS RESILIENT
IT INFRASTRUCTURE WITH
RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX
AND JBOSS ENTERPRISE
MIDDLEWARE
Geography
UK
Business challenge
To reduce business risk with an
BACKGROUND
enterprise-strength solution, improve
Originally founded in 1979 (under the name Jersey European), Flybe is
Europe’s largest regional airline. A long-standing commitment to excellent
service has netted Flybe numerous industry accolades, including the
Business Travel Awards “Best Short-Haul Airline” award and Air Transport
World’s “Regional Airline of the Year” award.
integration across the IT infrastructure,
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Matthew Linsey, head of strategy and architecture at Flybe, charts
the history of Flybe’s long-time commitment to open source software.
“We originally made the decision to go the open source route, using
communitysupported products, about ten years ago,” said Linsey. “The
costs were low, and some great innovations were coming out of the open
source community. However, as our business and the frameworks we were
using grew in size and complexity, we began to run into integration issues.
Total cost of ownership managing all of the different elements started to
escalate as well.”
In 2009, Flybe decided to migrate from community projects to supported,
enterprise open source software before it undertook a refresh of its
website. “We looked at the entire infrastructure stack as the ‘pipeline’ for
delivering everything for our applications,” said Linsey. Flybe wanted to
minimize the risks involved in implementing massive infrastructure change
from the ground up. “At that point, we began to feel less comfortable that
community open source software could provide the necessary levels of
performance, resilience, and security.”
Having software that meets exacting certifications was enormously
important to ensure effective integration and avoid compatibility issues
with Flybe’s Oracle database and other layers of the infrastructure. Service
to internal users was another factor. “Using the community-supported
systems then in place, we didn’t feel that we were delivering to the exacting
SLAs we’d set ourselves,” said Linsey.
and increase business agility in an
aggressive market
SOFTWARE
HARDWARE
HP Intel x86 servers, HP storage, HP
and Cisco network devices
MIGRATION PATH
CentOS to Red Hat® Enterprise
Linux®, Apache Tomcat to JBoss®
Application Server to JBoss®
BENEFITS
Standardization and centralization of
all travel-related services onto one
platform, reduced IT cost, reduced
complexity, free from costly vendor
lock-in, achieved a highly secure
environment with no system downtime
SOLUTION
Finding the right technology partner was not a decision to be taken lightly.
“We certainly did our homework, spending a long time in the research
phase—in fact, longer than on the subsequent implementation,” said Linsey.
“We evaluated the market and talked to the ‘big guns’ to find a vendor that
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | FLYBE
redhat.com/jboss
197
could provide a rigorously tested, easily deployed stack of
the frameworks we needed.”
“JBoss Enterprise Middleware from Red Hat ticked all
the boxes, and in choosing it, we picked the best, most
complete, and most versatile solution,” said Linsey. “And
while cost was a criterion, it wasn’t the only one. JBoss
Enterprise Middleware matched what we were trying to
achieve, without huge investment up front and without the
risks of using community versions.”
Flybe also moved from CentOS, the community enterprise
operating system, to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which today
touches every part of Flybe’s predominantly HP hardware
infrastructure. The major migration project, involving
testing and rolling out server hardware, networks, storage,
and operating systems, got under way in spring 2010 and
took only three months to complete. Now Flybe benefits
from receiving regular security updates from Red Hat, as
well as access to early patches and support.
“In the current recession, no one can
predict the future, but moving to
Enterprise Middleware has provided
a secure, reliable, high-performing
platform that gives us the agility
to anticipate and react quickly to
changing conditions.”
– Matthew Linsey, head of strategy and architecture, Flybe
“We have a relatively small but strong technical team, and
we found the implementation quite straightforward, even
though we were working with aggressive timelines and
JBoss Enterprise Middleware was completely new to us,”
said Linsey. “It was good to know that Red Hat experts
were on hand should we have any queries. And on the
occasions we did have queries, we received very helpful,
responsive service. Having a single point of contact reduced
some of the complexity typically associated with major
projects.”
Flybe’s customers seamless, reliable access to services
and information, including managing their flights, checking
in, and pre-booking baggage and seats. The demands on
Flybe’s web-based operation have intensified in recent
years, with organic company growth, greater brand
awareness, increased website traffic, and higher sales
volumes.
In addition to enabling online bookings, Flybe now provides
services from third-party partners, such as insurance,
car hire, and parking. This is another reason why
infrastructure reliability is so critical. “We’ve achieved our
objective of almost entirely eliminating ourselves as a risk
factor and ensuring that our part in the mix is based on
stable, supported technology,” said Linsey.
“One of the important aspects of JBoss Enterprise
Middleware from Red Hat is that rather than just fixing
our immediate needs, we now have a strategic platform
for the next five years, one that will grow and mature
with our business,” said Linsey. “We’ll be able to scale out
into different areas and are looking to implement JBoss
Operations Network to help us with the management and
monitoring of our expanding Red Hat environment.”
Flybe is also currently evaluating a transition to SOA
(service-oriented architecture) to automate ticket
systems, among other possibilities. The intention, as
Linsey explains, is to move the website from being IT
delivery to business delivery. “Business users will be able
to map their own processes, manage their own rules, and
integrate more seamlessly with internal services such
as financial and reservation systems. It will be a more
business-aligned platform, one that is a wholly integrated
part of Flybe. Security and stability of the infrastructure,
once again, come to the fore as essential factors.”
Flybe’s strong online presence is essential to maintaining
its commercial success. “In the current recession, no one
can predict the future, but moving to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware has provided a
secure, reliable, high-performing platform that gives us
the agility to anticipate and react quickly to changing
conditions,” said Linsey.
BENEFITS
For Flybe, like many airline operators, web-based sales
have moved from being a useful adjunct to traditional
sales channels to becoming an indispensable ingredient in
sustained commercial success.
Flybe now uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise Middleware to develop and maintain the website
that is so crucial to its business. These solutions give
198
redhat.com/jboss
FLYBE | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Lufthansa Cargo selects
JBoss Enterprise
Application PlatforM
to build new status
processing system
for global airfreight
logistics
Geography
Frankfurt, Germany
Business challenge
To create a state-of-the-art middleware
infrastructure for a global shipment
status processing system based
on industry-standard hardware,
while ensuring maximum flexibility
by integrating it with existing
BACKGROUND
components, cost effectiveness, and
With a transportation volume of around 1.5 million tonnes of freight and
mail and 7.4 billion revenue tonne-kilometers sold in 2009, Lufthansa Cargo
ranks among the world’s leading cargo carriers. Lufthansa Cargo, which
currently employs about 4,500 people worldwide, focuses on the airportto-airport business. The cargo carrier serves some 330 destinations in
more than 100 countries in a dense network spanning the globe. Aside
from operating its own freighter aircraft, it utilises the belly space on
passenger aircraft operated by Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines as well
as the capacities available in an extensive road feeder service network.
The majority of the cargo is trans-shipped at Frankfurt Airport. Lufthansa
Cargo is a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG. In the 2009
financial year, Lufthansa Cargo achieved €1.9 billion in revenue.
scalability
The global IT infrastructure of Lufthansa Cargo is operated centrally
from Germany by its sister company Lufthansa Systems, the IT services
provider for Lufthansa Group. However, Lufthansa Cargo also has its own
IT department that sets the framework for the company’s IT strategy and
complex systems architecture.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
HARDWARE
Airfreight logistics, like any large-scale transportation of goods, is a
very time-sensitive business. Lufthansa Cargo’s customers around the
world want to know at any point in time where exactly their shipments
are located and when they will reach their assigned destinations. One of
Lufthansa Cargo’s key concerns is to ensure timely and cost-effective
transportation for their customers, ranging from the occasional small-scale
parcel transport to regular shipments of an entire aircraft full of bulky
goods.
HP Proliant Servers
Lufthansa Cargo also handles very sensitive and fragile cargo (e.g., animals
and perishable goods from distant locations). Regardless of the content of
each shipment, customers demand transparency for their cargo costs and
MIGRATION PATH
Proprietary HP-UX operating system
running on mainframe servers to
Platform and Red Hat® Enterprise
Linux® running on industry-standard
x86 servers
SOLUTION
Consulting, Oracle WebLogic (for
database access), Oracle 10 Database
BENEFITS
Gained flexibility and the ability to
accommodate new customer requests;
saved more than 50 percent by
migrating to the new base installation;
realised even further cost savings
when scaling the platform further to
meet market demand; avoided lockin to proprietary software licensing,
hardware, and programming languages
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | LUFTHANSA CARGO
redhat.com/jboss
199
independence of the infrastructure while also keeping the
order process for our customers the same.”
of the delivery process itself.
The IT system underpinning the delivery process is called
the Shipment Status Processing system (SSP). An internal
Lufthansa Cargo application, SSP controls the actual
process of transportation. It is tightly interwoven with
related applications, including those for cargo capacity
planning and routing, the central shipment database, and
the booking engine used by customers to buy Lufthansa
Cargo’s airfreight capacities in the form of “time-definite
services.” The key feature of these services is to enable
each customer to select the timeframe that specifies the
latest acceptance time for his/her shipment and when it will
be available at the final destination.
Throughout the transportation process, SSP controls the
logistics network and defines the immediate next step for
each shipment. For example, once the size, weight, and
destination of a shipment are determined and the specific
time-definite service has been booked, SSP virtually
sends the shipment to the correct container with a predetermined space in a specific aircraft with a destination
or trans-shipment stop-over. The shipment processing
meets both Lufthansa Cargo’s requirements with regards to
resource efficiency as well as the customer’s requirements
for timely delivery.
“When it comes to working out the details of a new
platform that is crucial to our operational success,
we’re very stringent with the choice of technology,” said
Mastrolorito. ”The total cost of ownership calculation for
SSP revealed that JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
would be the most cost-efficient foundation. In addition
to ensuring the lowest TCO , JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform was scalable enough to accommodate even the
highest peaks in customer demand.”
Only three months after evaluating JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, the application development
teams began migrating the new SSP system from
the development environment to the Red Hat based
test environment. And with the assistance of Red Hat
Consulting, the roll-out into production only took one
month. “Red Hat Consulting offers the most impressive
support I’ve experienced in my 13-year career in enterprise
IT,” said Mastrolorito. “Red Hat Consulting’s knowledge
and the speed with which the team resolved all issues was
instrumental in bringing SSP into production in such a
short period of time.”
BENEFITS
Until 2010, the SSP system was partly integrated with
legacy applications. “These systems ran on mainframe
computers and had become increasingly inflexible,” said
Antonio Mastrolorito, chief IT architect at Lufthansa
Cargo. “One of our key strategic objectives is to always
accommodate new customer requirements and create new
products that help Lufthansa Cargo maintain a competitive
edge in the airfreight market. As SSP is such a key
component of our logistics IT infrastructure, we needed to
migrate the applications to a state-of-the-art platform.”
With global airfreight being a fairly volatile business, the
new platform needed to be highly scalable, cost-efficient,
and independent from any particular hardware vendor. “We
wanted the new SSP platform to be as flexible and vendoragnostic as possible,” said Mastrolorito. “We wanted it to
be independent of any hardware platform, of any particular
operational environment, and even independent of any
programming languages.”
SOLUTION
Lufthansa Cargo’s IT architects worked with service
provider Lufthansa Systems when designing the
architecture of the new SSP system.
“The first step in the planning process was to define the
services that the new platform needed to handle,” said
Mastrolorito. “We faced the challenge of maximising the
200
redhat.com/jboss
Lufthansa Cargo’s IT and operations teams are both happy
with the service-oriented architecture of the new
SSP platform. “It was essential for us to have a lot of
flexibility in the way we integrate the new SSP with our
existing infrastructure,” said Mastrolorito. “The shipment
database, for instance, remains unchanged for now, as it
is such a key component of our entire global operations.
Moving SSP services to JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform let us achieve our targets without turning the
entire infrastructure upside down at once.”
With Red Hat’s open source
subscription model, we can scale up
and down easily without worrying about
price per CPU creating unexpected
extra costs. By migrating our Shipment
Status Processing installation to JBoss
Enterprise Middleware, we have saved
around fifty percent compared to
competitive software license models.”
– Antonio Mastrolorito, Chief IT Architect Lufthansa Cargo AG
The shipment database holds information on each and
every piece of cargo that Lufthansa Cargo transports
around the world. It is the central data hub that is
LUFTHANSA CARGO | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
accessed by a number of other applications aside from
SSP. “After being moved away from the legacy mainframe
system, the SSP functionality is running smoothly on just
four standard x86 CPUs. JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform coordinates all of the services and ties various
applications together meticulously,” said Mastrolorito.
Red Hat’s open source subscription model has
contributed significantly to an unprecedented level of cost
transparency. Unlike proprietary software vendors, whose
costs often increase exponentially when the systems are
scaled up to meet increasing customer demand, Red Hat
only charges for professional support and services.
“If we had selected a proprietary solution for the SSP
middleware, we would have to cope with higher software
license costs every time we add a machine to the
infrastructure,” said Mastrolorito. “With Red Hat’s open
source subscription model, we can scale up and down easily
without worrying about price per CPU creating unexpected
extra costs. By migrating our SSP installation to JBoss
Enterprise Middleware, we have saved more than 50
percent compared to competitive software license models.”
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | LUFTHANSA CARGO
redhat.com/jboss
201
202
ENERNOC ENERGIZES ITS
CUSTOMER BASE AND HONES
ITS BUSINESS EDGE WITH
JBOSS
Geography
North America
BACKGROUND
As a leading provider of technology-enabled energy management solutions,
EnerNOC is changing the way the world uses power. Through the use of
advanced technologies, EnerNOC helps utilities and grid operators maintain
the delicate balance between supply and demand.
Business challenge
Improving the efficiency of its demandresponse network that helps manage
energy supply and demand
SOFTWARE
EnerNOC’s demand-response solution is based upon an innovative business
model. It pays the more than 4,000 business and industrial organizations in
its network to reduce their electricity usage during times of high demand.
This decreases stress on the electric grid, preserving the reliability of
a region’s electricity resources and helping to prevent blackouts and
brownouts while also alleviating the need to rely on fossil-fuel-burning
power plants. By acting as the middleman between energy providers and
consumers, EnerNOC plays an important role in allocating what can be
a scarce resource, especially when weather conditions, problems with
the electrical grid, or other events create unusual demand or cause
unanticipated disruptions in the flow of power.
BENEFITS
Streamlined the complex workflows
involved in aligning the needs of
utilities/grid operators to avoid
blackouts during peak energyconsumption times and the desire of
energy users to generate revenues
EnerNOC is perfectly positioned for success due to three major trends:
first, demand for energy is rapidly outpacing supply; second, due to
regulatory and community concerns, it is difficult to build new regional
power plants located close to energy users; and third, emerging regulatory
trends on both national and local levels are changing utility business
models with incentives that promote efficient energy practices.
through better managing their energy
use.
EnerNOC is growing exponentially. At the end of 2007, EnerNOC had
approximately 1,100 megawatts under management across approximately
2,200 individual sites. It ended 2008 with more than 2,000 megawatts
under management across more than 4,000 sites.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
EnerNOC’s demand-response solution consists of three distinct steps: first,
a customer sends out a request for additional power so as to alleviate stress
on the grid or in response to high wholesale energy prices. EnerNOC takes
that request and initiates actions across its network—turning out lights,
turning on generators—to enable participants to follow through on their
commitments to conserve power when requested. This in turn allows EnerNOC
to fulfill its contracts with its customers to help reduce demand on the grid.
Prior to 2005, EnerNOC’s depended heavily on manual processes. Although
certain procedures were automated, a great deal of human intervention was
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ENERNOC
redhat.com/jboss
203
required to ensure that the workflow proceeded seamlessly.
EnerNOC saw an opportunity to both
slash operational costs, and provide greater customer service.
“It would be very difficult for us to
compete successfully without jBPM.
We could not deliver our solutions nearly
as efficiently and cost-effectively in this
extremely aggressive market without it.”
– Ed Kusnitz, lead platform engineer, EnerNOC
EnerNOC also saw an opportunity to position itself for future
success. “Our strategic vision is to build highly scalable,
best-of-breed technologies to support a comprehensive
suite of energy management solutions and services,” said
Terry Sick, vice president of product development and
engineering at EnerNOC. “To accomplish this, we needed
supporting technologies based upon open standards and
interoperability.”
SOLUTION
Choosing the operating system was easy: Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, due to its market dominance and technical leadership,
was the obvious choice. And after investigating all the
options for business process management (BPM) on the
market, EnerNOC decided that the JBoss jBPM solution was
the best choice.
JBoss jBPM is a JBoss Enterprise Framework that delivers
workflow, business process management (BPM), and process
orchestration in a scalable and flexible product footprint. “We
were still a startup at that point, and needed a very costeffective solution that still provided us with all the functionality
we required,” said Ed Kusnitz, lead platform engineer for
EnerNOC. EnerNOC also deployed JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform, which includes JBoss Application Server, Messaging,
Clustering, Seam, and Hibernate, and EJB3 along with MySQL
to complete the solution.
For help with the JBoss implementation, EnerNOC selected
Amentra, a leading provider of systems integration
services for SOA, business process management, systems
development and enterprise data solutions. Amentra was
acquired by Red Hat in March 2008.
BENEFITS
Because JBoss jBPM provides all the tools and process
execution engines needed to automate complex workflows
in Java and web applications, EnerNOC was able to reduce
business process errors, speed process execution, and
enhance overall business performance.
204
redhat.com/jboss
Today, upon receiving an email that one of its customers
requires power, the now-automated workflow process
is immediately triggered. This one step alone can be
extraordinarily complex. “A single action initiated by an utility
or grid operator can impact 300 sites on our network, and
each one needs its own workflow,” said Kusnitz.
For example, some organizations want to be notified in
advance before their power is curtailed; others are fine if
EnerNOC just takes appropriate action. “jBPM allows us to
manage the state of each site very easily, while giving us
transparency into the entire operation,” said Kusnitz. “If
we had to code all this ourselves, it would be very difficult
to accomplish what we need to, much less see what was
occurring at any particular point in time,” agreed Andre
Quina, software engineer at EnerNOC. “Under jBPM we can
bring up a graphical image of the state of the workflow, which
immediately shows us the state of the processes.”
jBPM has also allowed EnerNOC to achieve tremendous
flexibility, reliability, and scalability. “If we need to make
changes to the workflow — which happens all the time — we
can do that without having to go in and actually edit the
code,” said Quina. “That eliminates the risk of introducing
errors, and makes for much more reliable operations.” And
because EnerNOC is growing so rapidly, jBPM’s ability to
manage ever-greater numbers of organizations’ power
capabilities has been essential. “jBPM is enabling us to meet
escalating market demand for our solutions,” said Quina.
Looking ahead, EnerNOC is currently using jBPM to create the
business logic involved in curtailing and restoring sites. For
example, before turning off lights, an on-site generator might
need to be started, and the power load transferred to that
generator. “When we get this last phase automated, we’ll be
able to respond even more rapidly to a request from an ISO for
more power,” said Kusnitz. “In effect, our jBPM application will
be transformed into a virtual generator. We’ll be able to power
it on, and provide our customers with power within just a few
minutes notice.”
Amentra contributed enormously to the success of the
project. “Amentra’s expertise with both JBoss jBPM and the
messaging layer allowed EnerNOC engineers to focus on
core business logic, which is helping us prepare for
future expansion into new markets,” said Sick.
What would EnerNOC do without JBoss? “It would be very
difficult for us to compete successfully without jBPM,”
said Kusnitz. “We could not deliver our solutions nearly as
efficiently and cost-effectively in this extremely aggressive
market without it.”
Sick agrees, “Technical innovation has been key to
EnerNOC’s growth. Open source in general—and Red Hat in
particular—have been behind our success in this area.”
ENERNOC | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Red Hat and JBoss
Solutions Improve
Performance for SESCO
Enterprises
Geography
New Jersey and Pennsylvania
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
SESCO Enterprises is a leading electricity and natural gas trading
company founded in 2002 by a group of financial management, energy
operations, and technology professionals. The company provides riskreduction strategies that consistently result in large returns on investment
for investors, stakeholders, and shareholders. SESCO’s founders and
associates have more than 100 years of combined experience in trading
and risk management, covering the full range of energy markets, including
power, natural gas, oil, refined products, coal, and emissions.
Build an internal infrastructure to
provide maximum development
flexibility and high-system reliability
and performance for fast-paced trading
business
SOFTWARE
OPPORTUNITY
To provide its traders with the most up-to-date information, SESCO
Enterprises needed to build a development infrastructure that combined
high reliability with ease of use. “Traders depend on our production
databases to gather and analyze information on a number of trends and
then formulate their buying and selling decisions. The databases are critical
for them to gain the best market advantage,” said Gene Meier, Systems
Administrator for SESCO Enterprises. When Meier first joined SESCO in
2003, the year-old company had two developers on staff and relied on an
external company to manage its databases. To support the future growth
of the company, Meier knew he needed to put the right systems in place
internally. “We wanted to gain more control over our server environment,
increase processing speeds, and facilitate development of SESCO’s
database programs,” said Meier.
SOLUTION
In 2003, the database company that SESCO worked with was already
utilizing Red Hat solutions, making the company’s Red Hat implementation
easy. “When we decided to move our database servers in-house, Red Hat
was the natural choice. We needed a solution that ensured easy installation,
excellent support, and the highest availability possible. Our databases
have to stay up at all times, and we knew Red Hat solutions would give
us peace of mind,” said Meier. The decision to implement the JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform was equally simple. SESCO developers
were already writing Java-based applications and using MySQL databases.
“JBoss supports the Java versions we were already working with, making it
seamless for our developers to integrate the new solution,” said Meier.
MySQL databases, SESCO database
application
HARDWARE
IBM Power PCs with Intel Dual P5
Processors, IBM xSeries with Intel Dual
Xeon Processors
BENEFITS
Facilitated the creation of a highperformance infrastructure that
supports rapid database growth;
flexible application development
and high levels of Red Hat support
translate into huge cost-savings and a
competitive advantage
Today, twelve IBM servers with Intel dual processors run Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 3, 4, and 5 at SESCO. One of these servers also runs the JBoss
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SESCO
redhat.com/jboss
205
Enterprise Application Platform. For redundancy, SESCO
created identical backup servers running JBoss technology
in the company’s Pennsylvania and New Jersey offices. The
traders have the ability to access these backup servers
from their homes as needed. “Using Red Hat and JBoss
solutions, we’ve built a redundant, reliable infrastructure
that minimizes downtime, provides failover capabilities, and
keeps our traders up and running,” said Meier.
Using Red Hat and JBoss solutions facilitates program
development and customization for SESCO. The company’s
database application is designed to gather information
from multiple websites including weather, utility company,
and consortia sites. The JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform automates the process by funneling data into
the company’s databases and then serving the specific
information traders query in real time. “To assess power
usage, traders need to look at a wide range of current and
historical data, such as specific weather incidents and
patterns. JBoss enables our developers to customize the
presentation tier easily so traders can view the information
they need, in the way they need it. Plus, Red Hat support
for MySQL makes it possible for our application to
run seamlessly without extra work on the part of our
developers,” said Meier.
SESCO also leverages the JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform’s messaging feature to support transactiondriven messaging. “We need to manage and track every
information-gathering transaction completed by our
application. JBoss messaging technology enables us to
configure the transactions and update them regularly. As
the transactions take place, JBoss messaging automatically
informs us of their status,” said Meier.
BENEFITS
Implementing Red Hat solutions translated into huge
cost-savings for SESCO, and the company now enjoys the
high levels of support required for its business. “The Red
Hat support team has become acquainted and comfortable
with our environment, so their ability to resolve issues
specific to our system is excellent. And because Red Hat
doesn’t charge us per call, our total cost of ownership has
decreased,” said Meier. Eliminating licensing fees also
helped SESCO drive costs down. “Red Hat doesn’t charge
licensing fees either, so the TCO is much less than that
of an enterprise version of Windows. Using Red Hat has
resulted in big cost-savings for us,” said Meier.
206
redhat.com/jboss
“In our market, we can make or lose
money in seconds. Red Hat and JBoss
support enables us to respond more
quickly to changes in the market and
gain a competitive advantage.”
– Gene Meier, Systems Administrator, SESCO Enterprises
The flexibility and support provided by JBoss and Red
Hat solutions give SESCO a competitive edge in a timesensitive market. “In our market, we can make or lose
money in seconds. Red Hat and JBoss support enables us
to respond more quickly to changes in the market and gain
a competitive advantage,” said Meier. Now, developers
have complete flexibility to create applications that meet
the specific needs of SESCO traders. “Working with JBoss
open source code means we can customize our software
with the functionality we require, writing code as quickly
as we need it. We’re not under the control of Windows
coding,” said Meier.
The ease of use of Red Hat and JBoss solutions also
facilitated the creation of a high-performance, scalable
infrastructure for SESCO. “Before joining SESCO, I was
a Windows developer, but transitioning to Red Hat was
easy. Implementing Red Hat and JBoss simplified system
administration and application development for the
company from the very beginning,“ said Meier, adding,
“In three years, our database more than tripled in size.
Because Red Hat and JBoss solutions can support this
type of growth, we’ve been able to increase the reliability
and performance of our servers as our database continues
to expand.” To ensure continued high performance, SESCO
upgrades its Red Hat servers with the latest releases, and
most recently migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
Meier is looking forward to continuing to implement new
Red Hat capabilities, such as clustering and virtualization,
to increase the reliability of SESCO systems further.
“Working with JBoss and Red Hat ensures our team
doesn’t get calls at two o’clock in the morning,” said Meier.
SESCO | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
INT3S PARTNERS WITH
RED HAT TO TURN ON THE
POWER FOR TORONTO HYDRO
SOA PLATFORM
Geography
Toronto, Canada
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Toronto Hydro is the largest municipal electric distribution utility in Canada
and operates two wholly owned affiliates with a combined workforce of
over 1,400 people. It serves 697,000 residential and commercial customers
across the greater Toronto Area, representing 18.5% of electricity
consumers in the province of Ontario.
Toronto Hydro’s technology strategy required experienced resources
to supplement internal staff in delivering complex custom development
projects and they partnered with Int3s, a Red Hat Advanced Business
Partner, to help implement JBoss Enterprise SOA platform, including JBoss
ESB.
Int3s designs, develops, and implements IT solutions for energy and
utility, financial, and telecommunications organizations. By automating
key business processes, Int3s is able to cost-effectively improve the
overall business performance of its clients. A Red Hat Advanced Business
Partner, Int3s has two distinct practices: one dedicated to service-oriented
architecture (SOA) development and implementation, and one focused on
business intelligence (BI) solutions. In both of its lines of business, Int3s is
committed to using open source products for strategic client initiatives.
To build a service-oriented architecture
(SOA) as the foundation for futurelooking strategic initiatives designed
to support enablement of smart
metering and smart grid integration,
reduce operational costs, promote
energy conservation, and improve IT
productivity
SOLUTION
Deployed JBoss Enterprise SOA
and Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the
platform for innovative Smart Meter
program and has successfully
completed the initial phases of its
program to create a customer-focused
cost and energy-saving initiative
SOFTWARE
“Toronto Hydro’s technology strategy
required resources to supplement
internal staff in delivering complex
development projects. The JBoss
Enterprise SOA Platform is a
comprehensive toolset that comes
with everything we need to facilitate
the integration of disparate systems
and data. It was the perfect solution to
meet our needs – and we trust Red Hat
to meet our future ones..”
– Nicholas Yee, Chief Technology Officer, Int3s
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | TORONTO HYDRO
JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform
(including JBoss ESB), SAP ERP, Oracle
Financials, Red Hat Enterprise Linux
BENEFITS
Leveraging Int3s expertise in SOA
and Red Hat / JBoss open source
Enterprise Framework, Toronto Hydro
was able to successfully complete the
initial phases of its groundbreaking
Smart Meter program and plan other
customer-focused cost- and energysaving initiatives going forward
redhat.com/jboss
207
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In late 2006, the Vice President of IT & Chief Information
Officer of Toronto Hydro-Electric System, Eduardo E.
Bresani, called in Nicholas Yee, the Chief Technology
Officer of Int3s, to help him with an ambitious new five-year
strategic initiative. His goal was to implement a serviceoriented architecture (SOA) to replace his organization’s
traditional IT infrastructure.
“The new CIO was focused on modernizing the technology
infrastructure, and developing a plan to build nextgeneration systems that would enable the firm to be more
agile and efficient,” said Yee.
“One of the most attractive features of an SOA is that it
allows companies to build composite services in which
business processes can be extended over a number of
different applications. Using an SOA to integrate a number
of disparate systems was one of the primary goals of the
new CIO,” said Yee.
A key business driver for the change was the firm’s
availability of IT resources. Specifically, building point-topoint interfaces between all the various systems Toronto
Hydro had put into place over the years—legacy as well
as client-server and web-based systems—was proving too
costly and complex.
“All the custom coding was proving very expensive
to develop and maintain,” said Yee. The new SOA
implementation was part of Toronto Hydro’s groundbreaking “Smart Meter” initiative. The initiative had three
primary business goals: to help the firm be more customerfocused; to provide its residential and business customers
with tools to do a better job of conserving energy while
managing their own electricity costs; and to meet
regulatory mandates to use less energy, especially during
periods of peak usage.
In the case of Toronto Hydro’s Smart Meter program as
mandated by the province of Ontario, the intention was to
program variable pricing into the system based on the time
of day that electricity was consumed (Time-Of-Use billing).
The goal was to price electricity higher during peak times
to encourage people and businesses to conserve energy
during periods of high demand.
SOLUTION
Toronto Hydro and Int3s selected JBoss Enterprise
Middleware for the Smart Meter program due to the size
and stability of the technology and the toolsets that JBoss
provided, including JBoss Hibernate, Rules, and jBPM
Frameworks, to simplify the migration from Mule to the
JBoss platform.
208
redhat.com/jboss
One of Toronto Hydro’s most important applications uses
the JBoss SOA platform as a mashup framework to allow
customers to view their consumption data on the web.
“We didn’t want to be dependent on proprietary products
for our SOA framework. What JBoss gives me is a solution
that works with other products as long as they meet
open source standards,” said Eduardo Bresani, Chief
Information Officer, Toronto Hydro.
The second reason Toronto Hydro went with JBoss was
the flexibility of the subscription model. “JBoss doesn’t
charge for the product itself, but for the support – and we
valued the enterprise level support that JBoss provides,”
said Bresani.
Moving to an SOA was an essential first step in
implementing Toronto Hydro’s Smart Meter initiative,
as multiple diverse systems and data sets needed to be
integrated to collect, process, and disseminate all the
relevant customer and operational information. “Building
custom APIs between each of the many systems involved
simply wasn’t an option,” said Yee.
From the very beginning of the project, open source was
the answer. “With open source, we could avoid vendor
lockin, and standardize everything related to business
logic, business processes, and data models,” said Yee.
In a previous solution, Yee had led the team that
developed the Rosetta Enterprise Service Bus (ESB),
which was acquired by Red Hat’s Middleware Business
Unit in 2006 and incorporated into the JBoss Enterprise
SOA Platform. After running an evaluation program with
the Mule ESB, the JBoss SOA Platform was selected and
implemented as part of the Early Adopter Program in
early 2008.
Although Toronto Hydro is not the largest utility in
North America, it currently has the largest production
deployment of smart meters on the continent which
stands at over 600,000. The firm is also reaffirming its
leadership position by rolling out its Time-Of-Use billing
initiative that will bill customers higher rates at peak
times, and lower rates at off-peak times.
“From a strategic point of view, Toronto Hydro’s
commitment to open source made it an imperative to look
at the size and stability of the technology vendor we chose
for the long-term,” said Yee, “Based on our technical
evaluations, we realized it was a much better fit to align
ourselves with JBoss.”
In addition to other functional advantages, there were the
toolsets that JBoss provided, including JBoss Hibernate,
Rules, and jBPM Frameworks.
TORONTO HYDRO | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
“These were all powerful tools that made migration from
Mule over to the JBoss platform a very straightforward
process,” said Yee.
Since the initial smart meter implementation, Int3s has
expanded the use of the JBoss SOA Platform at Toronto
Hydro in multiple projects including the development of an
ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) framework for a new
Enterprise Data Warehouse and integration to Google’s
PowerMeter project. The SOA Platform has also simplified
large system implementations such as Oracle’s Customer
Information System and the International Financial
Reporting Standards (IFRS) using SAP.
“We’ve succeeded because of the
innovation of the Red Hat products,
and the expertise of Int3s integrating
systems. Together they allowed us to
leverage the power of JBoss and really
make the technology work for us.”
“Our relationship with Red Hat has been very good,
everything has always gone very smoothly. In meetings
with Red Hat at the headquarters in Raleigh, Bresani
discussed the innovative deployment with executives.
Bresani recalls the meetings, “We discussed how we
were using the products and how we could work together
closely to make their products more successful. The
meeting gave me confidence that we’d made the right
choice of technology and vendor.”
“We’ve succeeded because of the combination of the
leadership of Toronto Hydro, the innovation of the Red Hat
products, and the expertise of Int3s integrating systems.
Together they allowed us to leverage the power of JBoss
and really make the technology work for us,” said Bresani.
– Eduardo E. Bresani, CIO, Toronto Hydro-Electric System
BENEFITS
The support provided by Red Hat has been superb. “As an
Advanced Business Partner, we’ve had terrific access to
some of the best development professionals at JBoss,” said
Yee. “Not only were they very responsive when we called,
but they asked us to help prioritize what functionality
should be incorporated in future releases of the platform,
ensuring that JBoss will continue to meet our evolving
needs.”
From a global perspective, utilities have moved from
focusing on simply “keeping the lights on” to better
matching supply to demand. “Ultimately, it comes down to
developing new applications that can be integrated with
existing systems, and consolidating the huge amounts
of complex data that comes from the household as well
as the utility company,” said Yee. “Although we’re still
in the infancy of that effort at Toronto Hydro, the JBoss
Enterprise SOA Platform will enable us to do that.”
“JBoss technology comes with everything we need to build
a solid SOA for facilitating easy integration of disparate
systems and data. It was the perfect solution to meet our
current needs – and we trust Red Hat to meet our future
ones,” said Yee.
Toronto Hydro is also very pleased with the relationship its
firm has forged with Red Hat. Other Red Hat utilities clients
can now leverage the experience Int3s gained during its
work with Toronto Hydro. “It’s a win-win situation for us
both,” said Yee.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | TORONTO HYDRO
redhat.com/jboss
209
210
Union Pacific Increases
System Performance and
Lowers Costs with JBoss
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
mainframe environment.
Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE:UNP) is one of America’s leading
transportation companies. Its principal operating company, Union Pacific
Railroad, is North America’s premier railroad franchise, covering 23 states
across the western two-thirds of the United States. Union Pacific Railroad
(UP) is an operating subsidiary of Union Pacific Corporation. The railroad
links every major West Coast and Gulf Coast port and provides service to
the East through its four major gateways in Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis
and New Orleans. Additionally, Union Pacific operates key north/south
corridors and is the only railroad to serve all six major gateways to Mexico.
UP also interchanges traffic with the Canadian rail systems.
The railroad has one of the most diversified commodity mixes in the
industry, including chemicals, coal, food and food products, forest products,
grain and grain products, intermodal, metals and minerals, and automobiles
and parts. The largest of Union Pacific’s 25,000 customers include
steamship lines, vehicle manufacturers, agricultural companies, utilities,
intermodal companies and chemical manufacturers.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Union Pacific has long been a company that utilized technology effectively
to support, maintain and drive its core business performance. For decades,
the company relied on a mainframe-based IT environment, but due to
changing business demands, multiple acquisitions and the rise of opensource technology, Union Pacific started to migrate away from mainframe
technology.
SOLUTION
With rising costs, and an obsolete mainframe IT infrastructure, Union
Pacific needed to identify and implement a flexible, cost-effective and most
importantly stable and reliable operating platform that would provide the
tools and capability to scale for growth as the company built
its distributed IT environment.
The Union Pacific IT team began evaluating various open source operating
platform solutions for the distributed infrastructure. Ultimately, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux was selected. The new operating platform needed to be
longlasting, scalable and reliable, since Union Pacific only conducts
planned outages during disaster recovery testing, due to the critical
applications running on the system.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | NYSE:UNP
Geography
Toronto, Canada
With rising costs and an aging
mainframe IT infrastructure, Union
Pacific’s ability to scale for growth was
limited. Union Pacific needed a stable
and capable platform to migrate its
SOLUTION
Union Pacific needed to develop a
more flexible operating platform to
build its distributed IT environment
so they are migrating to a Red Hat®
Enterprise Linux®-based virtualized
infrastructure to replace the
mainframe. Union Pacific also needed
to develop a thinner web application
tier, and the company turned to
JBoss® Enterprise Middleware
from Red Hat to develop a highly
customized, web application platform
that runs in the virtualized Java
Hosting environment.
SOFTWARE
Web Platform, JBoss Enterprise Web
Server, JBoss Operations Network,
SAP Enterprise Resource Planning,
Oracle RAC, PeopleSoft Financials
BENEFITS
Union Pacific has improved its ability
to scale for business growth with more
capable system management and
development tools for its virtualized
environment, and has increased its
system performance at a significantly
lower cost structure.
redhat.com/jboss
211
Union Pacific required a system that could efficiently
handle compute-intensive applications, such as those that
build optimization models for its transportation operations
system. The team spent two years conducting a detailed
technical evaluation. At the conclusion of the evaluation,
Union Pacific selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux with builtin virtualization to replace its existing mainframe and to
become the foundation for its distributed infrastructure.
Today, Union Pacific’s distributed datacenter consists of
2,500 servers, with more than 900 systems running Red
Hat Enterprise Linux. Union Pacific is also utilizing the
built-in virtualization technology in Red Hat Enterprise
Linux to handle the mission-critical applications being
migrated from the the mainframe and onto the distributed
processing platform.
Due to the large number of distributed systems, a key
component of the decision to select Red Hat Enterprise
Linux was the systems management tool, Red Hat Network
Satellite. Red Hat’s on-premise systems management
solution provides software updates, configuration
management, provisioning and monitoring across both
physical and virtual Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. With
the help of Red Hat Consulting, Union Pacific installed
and configured Red Hat Network Satellite to manage and
provision the company’s 900 Red Hat Enterprise Linux
servers.
A key part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based
infrastructure is a transportation system called NetControl,
which will replace the mainframe-based Transportation
Control System that was responsible for tasks such as
order taking, monitoring and scheduling shipments and
train schedules and dealing with service interruptions.
Union Pacific also has switched to a new SAP Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) system, which is now running on
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, along with the company’s JMS
messaging platform, Oracle RAC, PeopleSoft Financials,
derailment prevention system, disaster recovery system,
JBoss Enterprise Web Platform and JBoss Enterprise Web
Server.
Union Pacific also needed to develop a thinner web
application tier, and the company turned to JBoss
(from Red Hat) to develop a highly customized, web
application platform to run in the virtualized Java Hosting
environment. Union Pacific previously used Oracle BEA
WebLogic, but due to the rising costs of the proprietary
solution and the need for a more flexible and light-weight
framework, the company migrated to JBoss Enterprise Web
Platform and JBoss Enterprise Web Server.
Applications that run on JBoss Enterperise Middleware
include interactive user applications to internal services
and processes systems to batch processing. Union
Pacific Railroad is currently in the implementation phase
212
redhat.com/jboss
of a multi-year overhaul of its enterprise Java hosting
environment. The railroad is transitioning from a highlyshared, heavyweight container platform using WebLogic to
a virtualized, light-weight JBoss Enterprise Web Server and
JBoss Enterprise Web Platform-based environment. This
solution includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 and the KVM
virtualization components, which are all managed via JBoss
Operations Network. In its JBoss Enterprise Middleware
architecture, Union Pacific Railroad utilizes cloud
computing concepts at the Java application hosting level to
deliver highly-flexible, scalable, manageable, and highlyavailable web applications for its run-time environment.
BENEFITS
With the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise Middleware-based IT infrastructure, Union
Pacific has increased its ability to scale for business
growth, increased system management capabilities,
and ultimately increased its technology performance
at a significantly lower cost structure, thus enabling
the company to effectively support its core business
performance.
Union Pacific’s IT system is as mission-critical as it gets.
The railroad is a 24x7 operation with a true 5x9’s uptime
and availability requirement. Union Pacific has zero
unplanned outages, and essentially only has planned
outages during its annual disaster recovery timeframe.
With Red Hat, reliability has not been an issue.
With Red Hat Network Satellite, Union Pacific has been
able to gain enhanced performance, centralized control
and higher scalability for their systems, while deployed on
a management server located inside the datacenter and
behind their firewall. Red Hat Network Satellite allows the
company to manage its large number of systems as easily
as managing one, existentially enabling Union Pacific to do
more with less.
Union Pacific has found great value in the open source
community, as they are beginning to contribute to open
source community projects such as JOPR. The company
will not necessarily realize short-term benefits, but focus
more on long-term benefits, such as insight into the
product roadmap, feedback on upcoming features and
greater involvement with the open source community.
In terms of its recent migration to JBoss, the company
values the breadth of the enterprise middleware products
available, the flexibility and ability to customize for its
environment and the Red Hat support model that enables
access to the source code, key engineers and open
discussions with the JBoss team to address questions and
concerns. With JBoss, Union Pacific is able to develop
web applications in a customized, flexible, and light-weight
framework, at a lower cost than heavyweight proprietary
solutions.
NYSE:UNP | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
INDUSTRY:
OTHER INDUSTRIES
& ISV SOLUTIONS
OTHER INDUSTRIES
& ISV SOLUTIONS
213
iGATE powers its missioncritical ManageMe
application on JBoss
Enterprise Application
Platform and Red Hat
Enterprise Linux
Geography
Pan India
Business challenge
To replace its outdated iQuest
management tool and design a more
reliable, stable, high-performance,
cost-effective project management
system, which could scale to meet the
BACKGROUND
organization’s needs and free it from
iGATE Corporation, a global IT company, provides niche IT services
in enterprise solutions, business intelligence and data warehousing,
application development and maintenance, infrastructure management and
consulting services in IT strategy, enterprise performance management,
business intelligence and analytics, and process outsourcing services. The
company specializes in business data processing and uses a structure
known as iTOPS (integrated Technology and Operations Systems) to meet
customer demands.
proprietary vendor lock-in
The company focuses more on productivity, quality, and knowledge
management. Customers have benefited from the synergy between
investment strategy, technology and business outsourcing provided by
iGATE. By 2012, the company wants to be a billion-dollar organization
associating itself with 100 of the global 1000 clients.
SOFTWARE
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Studio, JBoss jBPM
As a business that prides itself on customer service, iGATE needed to give
its developers the right tools to ensure that they could service customers
both quickly and efficiently. The company decided that it was necessary to
replace its outdated project management tool, iQuest, due to performance
issues. These issues were impacting multiple business functions, including
operations, the organization excellence group, finance, human
relations, and training.
“There were frequent server shutdowns leading to only 80 percent uptime
of the system,” said Sandeep Digambar, group project manager, iGATE. As a
result, a new mission-critical project management tool that would alleviate
these problems was planned for in-house development under the project
name ManageMe.
SOLUTION
iGATE’s internal IT team decided to adopt open source solutions for its
infrastructure due to the high availability, performance, and reliability
features of open source, as well as for the lower cost compared to
proprietary competitors. After evaluating various enterprise-class
MIGRATION PATH
Designed ManageMe application
running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
and JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform
Platform with integrated virtualization,
Oracle Database, JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, JBoss Developer
HARDWARE
Intel processor-based x86 servers from
Dell
MIGRATION PATH
IBM WebSphere to JBoss Enterprise
Benefits
Increased flexibility and choice by
freeing the organization from vendor
lock-in, decreased IT costs, simplified
management, reduced systems
maintenance, increased scalability
and performance, and obtained the
ability to achieve 100 percent system
availability
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | IGATE
redhat.com/jboss
214
solutions, iGATE adopted Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform because the
solutions not only met the organization’s criteria, but also
provided huge cost benefits. In addition, it allowed iGATE
to take advantage of the rapid innovation from the open
source community and avoid proprietary lock-in.
“We devised a plan to use supported open source solutions
to build the new management tool because Red Hat does
not have a complex licensing structure and the entire
product set, along with Red Hat’s reliable support, is
provided as one single package through the company’s
subscription model,” said Digambar. iGATE’s internal IT
team then evaluated various business process management
tools, including proprietary ones such as OpenLogic and
BPEL from Oracle, and open source solutions such as JBoss
jBPM. These tools were tested thoroughly on parameters
such as application redundancy, clustering, high availability,
performance, fault tolerant behavior, and capability of
session replication.
“We tested JBoss in the proof of concept (POC) for features
and performance. The results were encouraging. The cost
benefit offered by JBoss jBPM made our decision easy,”
said Deepu George, divisional head, iGATE.
“The success of this initiative has
helped us to innovate further and
choose the most appropriate set of
technologies for our business needs.
Open source solutions in general,
and Red Hat in particular, will now be
adopted as the foundation of our longterm IT strategy. We are confident
that Red Hat solutions will enable us
to serve our customers effectively
every day.”
–Chella Namasivayam M., vice president and chief
information officer, iGATE
“Implementation of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux was one of the key milestones
in our internal IT deployments, as it was the first time
iGATE was implementing Red Hat’s open source solution
internally,” said Digambar.
ManageMe is a Java-based application running on JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform with Oracle 10g as the
database server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the base
operating system. It took just six months to develop the
system. “The system has been tested with 250 GB and
215
redhat.com/jboss
600 concurrent users, and there was no noticeable drop
in performance,” said Digambar. Current database size is
approximately 30 GB, but the IT team hopes it plans to
increase the usage to 120 GB in a year.
The JBoss Developer Studio and JBoss jBPM helped
iGATE tremendously in reducing its development and
training costs. “JBoss jBPM is less complicated with a
visual designer to model the workflow, which means there
is much less overhead on our team in terms of its learning
and usage,” said Digambar.
iGATE is pleased with the ease of deployment and
reliability of the Red Hat-based solution in its production
environment. “The deployment went smoothly and the
performance of the system is top-notch with no downtime.
The system has performed exceedingly well in production
on parameters such as robustness, stability, reliability, and
performance,” said Amit Shekhar, project lead, iGATE.
iGATE’s internal IT team has also used the power of
virtualization provided as part of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux Advanced Platform. With Red Hat virtualization
technology, iGATE is able to use the same host hardware
for running various operating systems, which enables the
organization to reduce costs and optimize resources.
iGATE’s IT team is highly satisfied with the performance
of the whole system. “We now have an IT policy that
supports the usage of enterprise open source software
wherever possible,” said Digambar.
iGATE’s IT team is investigating the opportunity to migrate
more of its web-based applications to JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform. The first application that is currently
planned for migration is its Internal Audit Tracker
application, which the IT team is planning to migrate from
TomCat to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. “We
intend to move all applications developed and managed
by Information Systems from proprietary systems to
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform,” said Amit Goyal,
Divisional Head, Information Systems, iGATE. “We are
treating the ManageMe project as a pilot to showcase the
power of open source solutions to our end-user customers,
and proposing its use in their respective projects,”
Digambar added.
The cost of acquisition for the new application, ManageMe,
and the cost of maintenance for iQuest was also a major
concern. “We didn’t want to spend too much on the
procurement of the proprietary licenses for building
the new system,” said Digambar. “Additionally, the
current iQuest system was also utilizing dedicated
hardware servers, which translated into added cost for
the organization.” iGATE wanted to build a system that
could rely on a commodity hardware stack, which could be
IGATE | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
shared between multiple applications.
To achieve optimal performance from the system, it was
also essential for iGATE’s internal IT team to customize
the new system. “We wanted to build the system on an
open architecture with no vendor lock-in so that we could
customize the system to fit our needs,” said Digambar.
As a tracking application, ManageMe requires managing
workflows. “It is cumbersome, but the requirement is
common with most of the tracking applications,” said
Digambar. “Instead of writing our own workflow engine, we
decided to use a commercial business process management
(BPM) tool.” iGATE’s internal IT team set out to evaluate
the right BPM tool for the system requirements from
various proprietary and open source options.
Benefits
“With JBoss Enterprise Middleware, we were able to extract
tremendous value from our systems and applications,”
said Digambar. “JBoss platforms deployed on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux freed iGATE from vendor lockin and
enabled the organization to choose hardware platforms
that delivered flexibility and high performance.”
Usage of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform for
ManageMe has provided a stable system, and iGATE is
experiencing fewer errors, easier ongoing maintenance,
and reduced support costs. “The cost savings by our
adoption of Red Hat solutions are significant as compared
to proprietary available options, and this came without
compromising performance, scalability, or other features,”
said Amit Goyal.
Red Hat solutions helped iGATE not only to lower IT
costs, but also to simplify management, reduce systems
maintenance, and increase scalability and performance
from the combination of JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform and the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating
system.“Red Hat’s expanding presence in the market is
proof of its reliability, and we know that Red Hat solutions
are viable for a long lifecycle,” said Digambar.
The Red Hat platform and middleware solution has also
given a huge boost to the overall productivity of the iGATE
workforce. “With the implementation of this tool, we are
expecting to free the efforts of our employees by 400–
500,000 hours annually,” said Digambar.
“The application server instances needed to run the
system have been reduced significantly from six IBM
WebSphere 6.0 instances to only two JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform instances,” said Digambar.
Additionally the hardware requirement has also come
down significantly. “Our hardware requirements have
come down by 50 percent as compared to the old iQuest
application,” said Digambar.
In addition, iGate benefits from Red Hat’s reliable
subscription model. “Updates can be obtained very easily
with our Red Hat subscription and through the Red Hat
Network management solution. With Red Hat, we created
a more flexible, reliable environment that is easy to
maintain.
This leaves us free to concentrate on new projects.
We’re very happy with the flexibility and reliability we’ve
achieved with Red Hat,” said Chella Namasivayam M., chief
information officer, iGATE.
Today, given the successful proof of concept that iGATE
completed with Red Hat, in addition to the organization’s
ability to resolve its development and production problems
through open source solutions, senior management
has begun to understand and support open source as a
development concept for iGATE’s strategic needs. “We
are showcasing the success of the project to our end
customers and urging them to migrate from a proprietary
software stack to a Red Hat open source software stack,”
said Digambar.
In summary, Red Hat provided iGATE with enterprise-class
solutions at an affordable price and without any
compromise on performance to ensure 100-percent
availability. “The success of this initiative has helped
us to innovate further and choose the most appropriate
set of technologies for our business needs. Open source
solutions in general, and Red Hat in particular, will now
be adopted as the foundation of our long-term IT strategy.
We are confident that Red Hat solutions will enable
us to serve our customers effectively every day,”
said Namasivayam.
The software licensing costs have also been reduced
significantly due to the open source nature of the Red
Hat solutions. Apart from the lower cost of acquisition,
the other reason for lowered software costs is due to the
reduced number of application server instances needed for
ManageMe, as compared to iQuest.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | IGATE
redhat.com/jboss
216
217
CORESYSTEMS UsES
RED HAT SOLUTIONS TO
OFFER SECURE ACCESS TO
ERP DATA IN THE CLOUD
Geography
Switzerland
Business challenge
To offer data from different ERP
systems available offline via mobile
device using cloud computing
BACKGROUND
Founded in 2002 in Windisch, Switzerland, coresystems AG is today’s
leading global provider of standardized SAP solutions for small and
medium enterprises. Coresystems has more than 5,000 customers and
45,000 users. The company is a certified SAP GOLD Partner (SSP) and a
Microsoft ISV Silver Partner. Its customers include small and medium-sized
businesses as well as large corporations from a wide range of industries.
SOFTWARE
The coresystems innovative coresuite solutions provide seamless endto-end support for business processes by accessing local information
available in the ERP environment and creating value-added applications
in the cloud that can be used by mobile devices such as iPhones.
Coresystems currently employs more than 60 people and has offices
in London, New York, and Shanghai, and maintains support centers
in Ireland and Copenhagen. Coresuite solutions are also distributed
internationally by more than 350 qualified SAP partners.
Ten x86 and x64 servers overall,
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Enterprise Application Platform on the
Amazon EC2 Cloud
HARDWARE
located on Amazon EC2
Benefits
Increased the functionality and
security of the software without any
up-front investment through the use of
Red Hat products in the cloud
Coresystems’ new coresuite mobile solution is designed to provide access to
data from different ERP systems via mobile devices using cloud computing.
The solution exports data created by the customer and makes it available to
employees on-the-go using a web service, regardless of the type of equipment.
The web service provided by coresuite mobile communicates easily with
numerous mobile devices, including iPads, iPhones, Blackberry phones, and
Windows smartphones. The service also serves Silverlight clients, providing
native applications with improved usability and performance.
While coresystems is a successful software development company, it is
not in the business of running datacenters. The company quickly realized
that it could not properly operate the infrastructure required for its
coresuite mobile product. “We did briefly think about hosting the servers
required for the web interface ourselves. But a quick look at the cost made
it immediately clear that this would not make good business sense. The
administrative budget alone is more than several times the cost of the
Amazon server instances including all necessary licenses,” said Thierry
Rietsch, coresuite.com lead architect, coresystems.
Therefore, the company decided to have its servers hosted by a cloud provider,
and selected Amazon EC2. One of the main reasons for selecting Amazon
was because the company operates datacenters across the planet, enabling
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | CORESYSTEMS
redhat.com/jboss
218
coresystems to offer global availability to its customers. “For
some of our customers, it is essential that their data doesn’t
leave a certain region. Thanks to Amazon’s global presence,
we can easily meet this requirement,” said Rietsch.
SOLUTION
In addition to its flexibility and low cost benefits, Amazon
EC2 offered a further benefit—as a Red Hat Premier
Certified Cloud Provider, Amazon offers Red Hat software
on its EC2 cloud. With this, Amazon provides pre-configured
images with Red Hat Enterprise Linux that can be
customized by coresystems for use with coresuite mobile.
For coresystems, it was clear from the beginning that the
cloud service should be based on Linux. “We selected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux because of the company’s
comprehensive product portfolio. And because our
developers wanted a one-stop solution for everything from
the server operating system to the application server,
we selected JBoss Enterprise Application Platform in
addition to Red Hat Enterprise Linux,”said Rietsch. This
decision was made even easier by the fact that the Red Hat
solutions portfolio is considerably more cost-efficient than
the software stacks offered by competitors.
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform also provides
a number of technical advantages. “JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform makes development really easy for
us,” said Rietsch. “Thanks to JBoss Hibernate Framework,
we can continue to work in the familiar Java environment
rather than dealing with the PostgreSQL database
language. JBoss Hibernate Framework takes care of
translating between the software components.”
BENEFITS
Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers a wealth of securityenhancing features to developers and ultimately to the
users of the cloud service. “From the outset, security was
a key component of the coresuite mobile approach,” said
Rietsch. “For example, we use the hard disk encryption
option, which Red Hat helped us to implement, that is
included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.” Full Disk Encryption
(FDE) ensures that even if a hard disk is stolen from one of
Amazon’s datacenters, no coresystems customer data falls
into the wrong hands.
Coresystems has also introduced strict rules for its own team
to safeguard customer information. For example, developers
always work on the cloud platform in teams of two in order
to double-check each other’s work. Additionally, internal
log files track all changes in detail, allowing the company to
check what was modified when and by whom.
Of course, the actual data transfers are also protected.
SSL (secure socket layer) is used for data exchange
between the ERP connector and the cloud service, as
well as between the cloud and the clients installed on the
mobile devices.
“Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform in the
cloud allow us to create a platform that
can easily handle thousands of users at
a very low cost and with little effort.”
– Thierry Rietsch, coresuite.com, Lead Architect at coresystems
Databases are critical to the cloud platform. Instead of
creating a large database for storing customer information,
the system creates a separate database for each customer.
“Separate databases provide serious speed benefits,
allowing us to maximize a comparatively simple and
therefore cost-efficient infrastructure,” said Rietsch. The
entire cloud platform behind coresuite mobile is currently
based on only ten servers rented from Amazon.
Cloud specialists from Red Hat provided support during
the development phase, passing their experience with
cloud applications and designing cloud systems onto
coresystems, which now is a Red Hat Advanced ISV Partner.
“Collaboration with Red Hat was excellent, and we feel very
confident with its support,” said Rietsch.
With Red Hat’s support, it took a mere nine months to turn
an idea into a product that could be used in production,
despite this project being coresuite’s first cloud project.
219
redhat.com/jboss
The ten Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers can easily handle
the workload generated by the 300 coresuite mobile
customers. Four months after the start of the project,
the combination of Amazon hosting, JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
continues to deliver strong results. “We were able to create
a platform that can easily handle thousands of users at a
very low cost and with little effort,” said Rietsch.
After the positive experience of the first few months,
coresystems is already thinking about expansion. “We
want to add more servers to create a highly available
system,” said Rietsch. “The new machines will run Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6 in the future. And the server software
will help us expand our infrastructure by providing
maximum performance with integrated load-balancing
functionality.” Coresystems’ long-term goal is to enable
200,000 users to access ERP data on-the-go by 2014.
CORESYSTEMS | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
LEADING WEB CONTENT MANAGEMENT
PROVIDER EZ SYSTEMS BRINGS
AWARD-WINNING PLATFORM TO THE
CLOUD WITH IXONOS ELASTIC CLOUD
RUNNING ON RED HAT
Geography
Norway and Germany
Business challenge
The leading web content management
(WCM) and customer experience
management (CXM) provider eZ
Building on a success story — sharing common ground
In recent years, the emergence of cloud solutions has rewritten the rules of
the IT sector and growth of customer demand shows no sign of abating.
World-leading web content management (WCM) and customer
experience management (CXM) provider eZ Systems has developed a
powerful, award-winning on-premise solution, eZ Publish. Conceived in
1999, eZ Publish is an open source content management system with
over 300,000 installations in over 160 countries that relies on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6 as its operating platform. Preliminary work on the eZ
Publish cloud began in 2010 when the organization saw the internal and
external demand for a hybrid cloud.
Systems expanded its offering to
customers with a flexible, reliable, and
comprehensive hybrid cloud solution
for its award-winning open source web
management platform, eZ Publish.
Through extensive industry research,
eZ Systems chose the Ixonos Elastic
CloudTM, the first Red Hat certified
cloud in Northern Europe, for the
project
Red Hat and eZ Systems both believe in an open, standards-based
ecosystem focused on building creative relationships, sharing
experience, and innovating with their customers.
SOFTWARE
Red Hat’s open, hybrid cloud strategy provides market-leading flexibility
that allows customers the freedom to choose the best operating
environment for their applications-on-premise or public cloud. Using
Red Hat’s open, hybrid approach and Ixonos’ Elastic Cloud, eZ Systems
reduces time spent managing infrastructure and enables development
of new features and capabilities. It also ensures consistency between
both operating environments so that eZ Systems can provide full
functionality to its customers, whether on-premise or in-cloud.
Virtualization 3.0, Red Hat Enterprise
Ixonos Elastic Cloud (a Platform-as-aService (PaaS)), Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 6, JBoss Enterprise Data
Services Platform, JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, JBoss Enterprise
Web Server
With the eZ Publish Cloud offering, customers are offered assistance
during implementation and regular upgrades to ensure a stable product
while continuing innovation. Through the integrated eZ Market, users
can acquire a variety of certified apps, extensions, and connectors.
A hybrid cloud offering with the same power as an
on-premise solution
While many vendors offer slimmed-down versions of their enterprise
offerings in a cloud environment, a necessity for eZ Systems was to ensure
that the same functionality available in an on-premise solution would also
be offered in the cloud, and that the solution could be seamlessly adapted
and customized. By using Red Hat’s software stack and Ixonos Elastic
Cloud, eZ Publish Cloud gives the customer freedom to work between onpremise and cloud, and to adapt quickly if requirements change.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | EZ SYSTEMS
redhat.com/jboss
220
“For eZ, the Red Hat open hybrid cloud approach allows
creative freedom for our partners and customers to
use our software in whichever respect they choose. You
can envision our platform as a means to sustainability
develop existing and also create new digital business
models. Then you appreciate that we are enabling our
customers to create content, to deliver content across
multiple channels, and to systematically optimize
content, all out of one platform. All of these facets
require flexibility for infrastructure and for cloud
enablement,” said Gabriele Viebach, CEO, eZ Systems.
Teppo Kuisma, vice president, Online Solutions at
Ixonos.
“We have found a fantastic partner in Ixonos. One party
can take the platform out of the cloud, configure it for
customers, and customers can then put it back into the
same environment, combined with the highest industry
standards and the freedom to scale wherever you want
and how you want, and how your business requires it.
With the strategic alliance with Red Hat and Ixonos,
we’ve found the best solution that one can find on the
market,” said Viebach.
A scalable, flexible, and secure
solution for cloud migration
The decision was made to create eZ Publish Cloud
in partnership with the Finnish Red Hat Certified
Cloud Provider, Ixonos. The Ixonos Elastic Cloud, a
groundbreaking Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) launched
in 2011, was the first Red Hat certified cloud in Northern
Europe. Ixonos Elastic Cloud covers a wide range of
platform needs for web and mobile service, and manages
development through to operations. Ixonos Elastic Cloud
uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux as its core operating
system, with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization managing
the virtualized environments, and the JBoss Enterprise
Middleware platform to ensure that web applications
are developed and run effectively. Both Ixonos and
many of its key customers already had a long and
successful history with Red Hat technology solutions, so
eZ Systems found it natural to rely on the full Red Hat
stack based upon its proven reliability, scalability, costefficiency, and performance.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization enables Ixonos to
deliver to eZ Systems the ability to deliver its CMS and
solutions quickly to new customers through Ixonos selfservice UI and open API’s.
The powerful security features in Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, including sandboxing and policy controls, Cgroups
task management, and confinement, ensures Ixonos
Elastic Cloud users can expect the same market-leading
level of security regardless of the solution.
Freedom to focus on delivering business
value for the customer
“With the help of Red Hat technology and Ixonos Elastic
Cloud, we’re enabling eZ Systems to transform their
business to the cloud. What we have created is a unique
cloud solution that helps transfer the business online
and deliver Software-as a-Service (SaaS). As a Red Hat
Certified Public Cloud Provider, ISVs and their customers
can use Red Hat technologies out of our offering.
Instead of concentrating on creating cloud management
software, eZ Systems can focus on delivering new
business value and features for their customers,” said
221
redhat.com/jboss
EZ SYSTEMS | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
LEADING EUROPEAN IT
PROVIDER BUILDS ROBUST
MOBILE CLOUD WITH RED HAT
TECHNOLOGY STACK
Geography
Finland
Business challenge
In 2011, Ixonos was looking for a
technology partner to build a robust
cloud environment for web and mobile
Platform-as-a-Service provides innovative solution
for demanding web and mobile services
Ixonos customers need to be flexible and scalable when developing and
running web and mobile services in the cloud. Recognizing the demand to
help customers with efficiency and innovation, the company built Ixonos
Elastic Cloud, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Ixonos Elastic Cloud covers
a wide range of platform needs for demanding web and mobile services. It
also manages development to operations—including a dynamic computing
infrastructure, modern application engine, and integration capabilities.
To lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of these applications developed
in the cloud, the service was set to offer all-inclusive service-level
agreements (SLAs) up to 99.9 percent of coverage time without any
up-front investments or long-term financial commitments for customers.
To achieve these goals, Ixonos required a robust and scalable platform to
deploy and run its customers’ applications effectively. In addition, Ixonos
was looking for a long-term partner to provide high-performing and
cost-efficient technology to help deliver these innovative services to its
customer base.
Ixonos builds mobile cloud with Red Hat technology
In order to develop and run web applications effectively, Ixonos required
a Java-based middleware platform that could meet the tough criteria
outlined for its cloud services. The cloud services team within Ixonos, as
well as several of its top customers, had a successful history deploying
several solutions within the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio.
Because delivering the Ixonos Elastic Cloud service to its customers
required a robust and high-availability platform, Ixonos turned to
Red Hat to solve its critical business needs. Ixonos selected JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, a proven and trusted middleware
platform running on top of a reliable infrastructure stack.
application development. Using Red
Hat Enterprise Virtualization, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, and
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the company
built the Ixonos Elastic Cloud, which
allows its customers to create their
own virtual machines and enables
cloud application development.
SOFTWARE
Enterprise Virtualization 3, JBoss
Enterprise Data Services Platform,
JBoss Enterprise Web Server
HARDWARE
Dell PowerEdge 710 HD ; NetApp
storage solution with fibre channel
“Because we had a history utilizing Red Hat solutions, our search
naturally gravitated toward JBoss Enterprise Application Platform,
as we needed a proven and supported technology that had been
thoroughly tested in an enterprise environment,” said Jari Kekkonen,
business development director at Ixonos. “There was really no viable
alternative to Red Hat.”
As Ixonos further planned its technology roadmap, it soon realized a
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | IXONOS
redhat.com/jboss
222
virtualized infrastructure was required for dynamically
distributed computing resources running effectively
across various customer applications. Because of
its trust in Red Hat technology, Ixonos selected Red
Hat Enterprise Virtualization to deploy its virtualized
environment due to the platform’s high performance,
scalability, enterprise management, and cost efficiency.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization maintains an attractive
business model and open development model without
vendor lock-in, and this factor expedited Ixonos’ choice.
a Red Hat Certified Cloud Provider, ensuring a trusted
environment for enterprise cloud deployments.
Finally, deciding on a core operating system platform
for cloud services was an easy decision for Ixonos. “We
have deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux throughout
enterprises around the world, and it’s certified to run
with both Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, which offers us the
ability to get a full stack for our cloud from one vendor,
making our technology and support combination highperforming and easy-to-manage.”
Ixonos looks to Red Hat, especially for its virtualization
technology, to pave the way to faster and more reliable
mobile solutions. They value the high availability,
workload mobility, and ease-of-use of Red Hat Enterprise
Virtualization Manager, the single pane of glass
virtualization management system. “Red Hat Enterprise
Virtualization has enabled our company to utilize APIs
in order to provide a self-service portal allowing cloud
customers to create their own virtual machines and
ready-to-use application platform instances to run
applications in the cloud,” said Kekkonen. “Through this
self-service portal, we plan to extend the full automation
and control capabilities of Ixonos Elastic Cloud. This is an
example of how we are able to make a difference in the
technology footprint of our customers. We couldn’t have
achieved our overall organizational goals without our
partnership with Red Hat.”
Ixonos cloud provides scalability,
robustness, and security for deployed
online services globally
In 2011, the company launched its Ixonos Elastic
Cloud, based on a virtual environment using the Red
Hat Enterprise Virtualization solution. The reliability,
performance, and flexibility benefits of the Red Hatbased cloud were quickly recognized throughout the
company and externally as the Ixonos Elastic Cloud
became a popular destination for Ixonos customers
developing web and mobile applications in the cloud.
The physical infrastructure to support the virtual
environment includes over 30 Red Hat Enterprise
Virtualization Hypervisor hosts. Each host server is
a two-socket multi-core Dell PowerEdge 710 server,
configured with 128 GB of RAM and connected via
the fibre channel protocol (SAN) to the NetApp data
storage solution that provides easily scalable storage
capabilities. The deployment supports over 400 virtual
servers running the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating
system supporting a variety of workloads.
“The certified and supported solutions stack provided
by Red Hat—from virtualization technology to the
operating system and application engine—is the
foundation of our Ixonos Elastic Cloud service. It
provides the scalability, robustness, and security that
is required by demanding, globally deployed online
services and applications,” said Kekkonen.
Already, Ixonos has several applications running on the
cloud service, including an application integration hub for
a well-known Finnish media company. This hub provides a
centralized platform for the company’s vast collection of
data and uses JBoss Enterprise Data Services Platform,
which is also available through its Ixonos Elastic Cloud.
In addition, the hub offers a set of tools that give
organizations’ applications and business processes the
ability to easily integrate and use data from several
sources.
In the first year of its existence, Ixonos Elastic Cloud
was the first public cloud service in Europe to become
223
redhat.com/jboss
IXONOS | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Mazda Austria Standardizes
its Online Used Car
Exchange on JBoss Enterprise
Geography
Austria
Business challenge
To provide a cost-effective, flexible
operating model for Mazda Austria’s
online used car management system
BACKGROUND
Since its market launch, Mazda Austria GmbH, which was founded in
1969, has sold approximately 600,000 cars in Austria. Today, 130 sales
operations and 15 service partners provide support for Mazda’s Austrian
customers. From Klagenfurt, the import company manages 16 markets with
470 Mazda service points in southern and eastern Europe.
and to enable daily adjustments and
new requests to be implemented in the
system without a time delay
SOFTWARE
Each year, more than 1,300 vehicle technicians from Austria and the
central and south eastern Europe (CSEE) countries are trained as service
and repair professionals at the Mazda Austria training center in Klagenfurt.
Since the beginning of 2011, replacement parts from Japan have also
been delivered to the 470 dealers and workshops in the 16 CSEE markets
directly via the Mazda site in Klagenfurt.
While in the past, used cars were often sold by independent dealers, the
market has since largely shifted to the Internet. Surveys of Europe’s car
buyers have illustrated that they do not like to be restricted to buying
cars available on a dealership’s lot. According to the Fokus study on car
dealership of the future, the majority of potential buyers are prepared to do
research on the Internet and then drive 100 kilometers or more to find their
desired vehicle.
HARDWARE
Two clustered x86 servers running the
MIGRATION PATH
Replacement of an application hosted
by a service provider for the used car
market with a solution developed inhouse using Java and JBoss Enterprise
BENEFITS
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Mazda Austria in Klagenfurt trialed a number of different operating
models for its online used car portfolio. The first version was developed
in-house and was later replaced by an external solution based on
Microsoft .NET technologies, which was also hosted externally. Potential
customers could find information on the latest models, demo vehicles,
and get special offers on the company’s legacy used car website. By
selecting vehicle-specific data such as the desired price, mileage, body,
model, and equipment, potential buyers could see which of the Mazda
dealers in Austria’s nine states had their desired cars.
Reduced operating costs, enhanced
productivity, increased system
adaptability and manageability
However, as attractive as the external solution seemed at first,
the hosted used car management system turned out to have its
weaknesses. In the course of day-to-day business, the external
operating model proved to be inflexible. Adjustments and new requests
could not be implemented in real-time. Furthermore, there were no
standard interfaces to other important applications such as the central
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | MAZDA
redhat.com/jboss
224
dealer database at Mazda Motors Europe or the fleet
management system, which would have allowed the sale
of fleet vehicles from fleet stocks.
In addition to these organizational weaknesses, Mazda
Austria’s strategic goals had changed over time. Rather
than merely allowing the online used car business to
essentially run “on the side,” the company wanted to
provide a greater strategic significance and make it
an integral part of the centrally managed distribution
system. The goal was to ensure higher sales figures, and
in order to achieve this, the company wanted to bundle
supply and demand centrally, making them transparent
for the entire country. Mazda believes that companies
that offer a wide range of products online have a
higher click rate, and products that receive more clicks
generally get more feedback, which in turn increases
their attractiveness and generates additional turnover.
Mazda Austria also wanted to reduce the monthly costs
accrued over the course of the used car management
system’s reintegration. “The external operating model
led to an unwanted dependence on the service provider,”
said Hans-Peter Petek, IT group leader at Mazda Austria
in Klagenfurt. “The greatest advantage of developing
and maintaining the system in-house is that we can
implement changes quickly, inexpensively, and without a
lot of red tape.”
SOLUTION
In 2009, the company made the decision to replace the
external solution with one developed in-house. The most
important prerequisite was a suitable platform to host
the application. In order to meet these requirements,
Mazda’s European headquarters considered JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform and IBM WebSphere
Application Server.
“We selected JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
based on an analysis of the total-cost-of-ownership
(TCO) calculated in the medium-term,” said Petek.
“But cost was just one factor. The overall concept of
the open source model was much more important. We
are convinced that, as an open source solution, JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform can offer new functions
and standards more quickly than a proprietary software
solution like WebSphere.” JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform is based on open standards and integrates
JBoss Application Server, JBoss Hibernate Framework,
Enterprise Java Beans, JBoss Seam Framework, and
other common opensource Java technologies from
JBoss.org in a comprehensive enterprise-ready solution
for Java applications.”
Red Hat worked in close cooperation with Mazda
Austria’s sales department to ensure that all of the
225
redhat.com/jboss
department’s requests were implemented. From
a functional perspective, the project team, which
consisted of only four developers and two interns, used
the functions of the previous used car management
system as a foundation.
For the actual development of the application, Mazda
recruited external help. On the recommendation of Red
Hat Austria, Mazda selected Objectbay as its project
partner. As a Red Hat Premier Partner with middleware
specialization, Objectbay’s core competencies include
agile software development with enterprise Java
technologies, particularly JBoss Enterprise Middleware,
as well as consulting and training for the product’s
entire lifecycle from development to operation.
Mazda selected JBoss Enterprise Application Platform,
Apache 2 Web Server, and load balancing system mod_
jk. There are currently two JBoss Application Server
nodes in operation, and depending on the company’s
workload, a third node may be added to the cluster.
BENEFITS
Currently, authorized dealers can post vehicles
to the used car exchange directly from the dealer
management system via the new interfaces. The sales
department also has the option to offer fleet vehicles
from the department’s fleet management system
to the consumer via the used car exchange. Thanks
to the interface with Eurotax, a service provider for
international auto retail, the vehicle model data in the
system is always up-to-date. The vehicles are presented
in an image gallery, and videos can also be made
available, if desired.
Mazda Austria’s new used car exchange has been
available online since spring 2010. During this first
phase, it has been accessible only to the Austrian
market. The company is already considering a roll-out
for other southeastern European countries that also fall
under Mazda Austria’s authority. According to Petek,
this should not be a problem in terms of software.
“Due to the inherent scalability of JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, we are confident that we can
roll the system out across other countries in their
respective language, as the solution is multilingual and
can be expanded as needed,” said Petek.
“In an era where licensing around multi-core CPUs,
virtualization, and service orientation are driving up the
costs of proprietary infrastructures and middleware,
open source solutions are becoming increasingly
important, as they allow users to exploit the significant
potential for savings,” said Dr. Andreas Wintersteiger,
CEO of Objectbay.
MAZDA | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Rumbo improves performance
of web platform with
Geography
Spain, Portugal, Brazil
Business challenge
To renew the application’s server
platform in order to achieve greater
functionality for the company’s web
BACKGROUND
With more than two million customers, Rumbo is Spain’s leading online
travel agency. The company, owned in equal shares by Telefónica and
Orizonia Corporación, has a turnover of more than 485 million euros (2010)
and sells tickets for all airlines (including low-cost), provides access to
more than 85,000 hotels worldwide, and offers its customers train tickets,
package holidays, cruises, car hire, and travel insurance, among other
items.
infrastructure
SOLUTION
Replace proprietary solution with
JBoss® Enterprise Middleware, for both
the Rumbo back office and front office
platform
In early 2008, Rumbo acquired Viajar.com and Terra Business Travel, and
they launched “Rumbo Negocios,” a new company aimed at guaranteeing
SMEs and professionals savings of up to 30% on their business trips. In
September 2010, Rumbo began operations in Brazil in order to be among
the major travel agencies in the country.
SOFTWARE
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
BENEFITS
As the popularity of online travel increases, the number of Rumbo
website users and the average duration of website visits has grown
exponentially. Rumbo’s legacy system struggled to support the
sustained increases in web traffic, and as the company expanded its
services and availability to new countries, the company realized that an
upgrade of its existing system would be critical to both short-term and
long-term business growth.
Training and Consulting
Increased functionality, high
availability, enhanced performance
and scalability, greater control over
platform management
Rumbo’s legacy system, a proprietary application server platform, was
unable to service the company’s increasing requirements for scalability
and was unable to grow alongside the company. The company examined
the potential of unifying its key middleware infrastructure into a single
solution, as these had been operating via two different proprietary
solutions. Both the back office platform, which serves the company’s
internal applications, and the front office platform, which support
Rumbo’s website, are critical infrastructures in the company, supporting
the core objective of the entire business: online travel booking. Because
the Rumbo business model is predicated exclusively on its website,
accounting for generating 100% of its sales, the renewal of this platform
was not only an operational goal but a highly strategic decision as well.
During the selection progress for the new platform, Rumbo’s technical
team took several factors into account. The company needed a reliable
infrastructure capable of delivering high performance for escalating levels
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | RUMBO
redhat.com/jboss
226
of web traffic. In addition, it desired greater functionality
and optimum applications control without increased
platform costs. Besides meeting all these requirements,
the open source business infrastructure of JBoss
Enterprise Middleware was of particular value to the
Rumbo technical teams, as it enabled the IT department
to take advantage of the system’s open source capabilities
while offering similar levels of certifications, standards,
and support of enterprise-class software.
“We are fully satisfied with the
migration to JBoss Enterprise
Middleware. The Red Hat technology
has given us the assurance of a reliable
solution with optimal performance and
enhanced functionality but without a
sharp increase in platform costs. It is
the perfect solution to the current crisis
and budgetary cuts situation. Red Hat
has adapted uniquely to our needs,
providing greater control and maximum
capability in all systems.”
– Ramón Mateos, CIO & CTO, Rumbo Spain and Portugal
Application Platform, which enables management of the
company’s web and Intranet applications, both front end
and back office. Also, thanks to the JBoss Operations
Network, the Rumbo technicians have an advanced
management platform for administering and controlling
the entire applications infrastructure.
During the process of planning, implementing, and
migrating the platform, Red Hat worked in close
collaboration with the Rumbo team to ensure the
project’s success. Red Hat also provided the Rumbo
technicians with several training sessions to familiarize
themselves with, and expand their knowledge of, the
JBoss solutions.
“Red Hat Consulting supported us throughout in
designing the application server architecture and
resolving any queries and incidents during the
installation. The knowledge and ability shown by the
Red Hat Consulting team was a great help in this
process and contributed significantly to successfully
addressing a migration of this caliber. Their support was
a great added value and resulted in significant savings
in time and cost to implement the platform,” added
Mateos.
BENEFITS
By migrating its application server to JBoss Enterprise
Middleware, Rumbo has achieved significant
improvements in the functionality of its web platform
and all its corporate applications, without increasing its
costs.
SOLUTION
The process of migrating from Rumbo’s legacy web
platform took place in two stages. In the beginning,
Rumbo migrated its back office infrastructure, which
included the company’s Intranet and all its internal
applications and processes, to JBoss Enterprise
Middleware. During this process, the Rumbo technical
team was able to familiarize itself with the JBoss
portfolio and experience its stability, functionality, and
performance firsthand. As a result, after six months,
Rumbo decided to expand the project by migrating the
application servers, which served its entire web platform,
to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.
Thanks to JBoss Operations Network, Rumbo has
achieved greater control over its platform management,
monitoring the operation of its applications and
identifying potential incidents. In addition, there has
been an improvement in the administration of its
systems, ensuring the availability of a critical platform.
“Following the commissioning of the new platform, we
have seen major improvements in the performance of
our infrastructure, which is vital to our business
success. Also, the optimum scalability of the present
platform allows us to respond rapidly to momentary
increases in our website traffic,” concluded Mateos.
“The web platform is the most important infrastructure
to our company because it is the primary source for
generating sales and interacting with customers. Any
failure of this platform would immediately result in a
loss of income to the company, so we needed a solid and
reliable platform,” said Ramón Mateos, CIO & CTO of
Rumbo.
The current Rumbo middleware platform is composed
of application servers based on the JBoss Enterprise
227
redhat.com/jboss
RUMBO | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
VILOGIA OVERHAULS IT
INFRASTRUCTURE AND INTEGRATES
DATA IN REAL TIME WITH JBOSS
Geography
France
Business challenge
With plans to unify its heterogeneous IT
landscape, Vilogia wanted to partner
with a new middleware solution provider
Open source technology lays foundation
for IT strategy
Since 2009, Vilogia has been growing rapidly through mergers with other
real estate companies, resulting in a very heterogeneous IT infrastructure.
The software and IT tools used by the company, either proprietary or
internally developed, ran on multiple sources. This led to the need for a
multifaceted, yet consolidated infrastructure. In fact, the IT landscape was
based on several operating systems supporting applications that needed to
communicate with each other seamlessly.
Vilogia’s system also communicates with external information systems,
such as call centers receiving technical and administrative requests from
tenants. The complex web of language tools and applications slowed down
communication significantly. In January 2010, Vilogia decided to launch a
project that would overhaul the entire IT landscape.
First, this new initiative was started with Vilogia’s customer records
department. The department’s records consolidate six sources of
information consisting of tenant claims. Given the number and variety of
servers used, Vilogia was experiencing an information processing delay
due to communication problems between various business tools. A lag
in information processing resulted in delayed responses to tenants—
sometimes up to 24 hours after the claim was submitted. A one-day
turnaround time made it nearly impossible to resolve critical tenant issues,
such as damaged water pipes, broken windows, and gas leaks.
would enable real-time data integration,
increase performance, and provide
greater responsiveness to customer
service initiatives. Several solutions
from the JBoss Enterprise Middleware
portfolio proved the ideal solution for
the real estate group
MIGRATION PATH
JBoss Application Server and the
community version of JBoss Enterprise
SOA Platform 4.3 to JBoss Enterprise
SOA Platform and JBoss Operations
Network
SOFTWARE
JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform,
Consulting
HARDWARE
Heterogeneous servers, depending on
“As part of the overhaul of our system, we needed a middleware layer that
would allow us to integrate its various parts,” said Laurent Savage, project
division manager at Vilogia. “Until then, communication within the system
resembled a dotted line, with programs always copying the information
from one application to another, clogging our system, and reducing the
responsiveness to our customers. We had to solve this problem in order to
increase customer satisfaction and improve performance.”
the type of applications
Because Vilogia successfully deployed open source software in the past,
including JBoss Application Server, the community version of JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform, the company was looking to benefit from
the flexibility and scalability of additional open source technologies. At
this point, Vilogia decided it was the right time to revamp its IT system in a
cost-efficient manner.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | VILOGIA
redhat.com/jboss
228
The transition from community version
to platform is seamless
It wasn’t long before Vilogia’s IT team decided to migrate
to the enterprise-ready, supported, and certified version
of JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform. The company’s IT
team also selected JBoss Operations Network to be
its primary, integrated management platform. JBoss
Operations Network enables Vilogia to simplify the
development, testing, deployment, and monitoring of
its new environments, while maintaining an inventory
of resources from operating systems to applications. To
benefit from Red Hat’s expertise and experience, Vilogia
also employed Red Hat Consulting to accelerate project
completion and optimize knowledge transfer.
With the success of this project, JBoss Enterprise
Middleware will be at the center of Vilogia’s new global
CRM project that will manage all communications
between its CRM software and IT business tools. The
implementation of upcoming project will take into
account all Vilogia’s customers, including tenants, firsttime home buyers, co-owners, and contractors.
“The diversity of our businesses and our complex
infrastructure demands a middleware solution that
enables projects to run smoothly,” said Savage.
“Speeding up data integration and processing of
customer queries in real time were essential to improve
our responsiveness and customer satisfaction. Red Hat
Consulting was very flexible and professional and led
our team in charge of the project to tailor the solution
to our specific needs. We also enjoyed the support of a
Red Hat consultant as the single point-of-contact, who
was always on hand to work on critical aspects of the
project.”
Red Hat’s subscription-baseD business
model results in cost savings
Vilogia has improved the speed of information
processing, leading to real-time data integration and
ensuring consistent customer information. It has also
realized significant cost savings as a result of the Red
Hat subscription-based business model. In addition,
the choice of open source allowed Vilogia to overcome
proprietary vendor lock-in while implementing cuttingedge technology.
“We are delighted to have opted for open source
software and Red Hat’s solutions and expertise in
particular,” said Savage. “JBoss Enterprise Middleware
allowed us to open up and simplify the communication
between applications and reduce system coupling. While
it used to take us nearly 24 hours before we started
handling customer claims, we are now able to process
them in real time. Being customer-friendly and offering
superior support have been among Vilogia’s core values
for over 70 years, so it was vital to complete this project
successfully. Our goal was to raise the level of customer
satisfaction by becoming more efficient, and we can say
that this objective has been fully achieved. The project
has helped us adopt a new way of building, managing,
and modernizing our IT infrastructure.”
229
redhat.com/jboss
VILOGIA | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
Booz Allen Delivers a
Flexible and Scalable SOA
Solution to Client by
Leveraging Red Hat Products
Geography
McLean, Virginia
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Booz Allen Hamilton has been at the forefront of strategy and technology
consulting for more than 90 years. Every day, government agencies,
institutions, and infrastructure organizations rely on the firm’s expertise
and objectivity, and on the combined capabilities and dedication of our
exceptional people to find solutions and seize opportunities. Providing a
broad range of services in strategy, operations, organization and change,
information technology, systems engineering, and program management,
Booz Allen is committed to delivering results that endure. With 20,000
people, Booz Allen generates approximately $4.0 billion in annual revenue.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In 2004, Booz Allen was approached by a government agency to
perform a proof of concept for a proprietary-based document-processing
system. Although the proof of concept was successful, attempts to
scale the solution up to a production-grade system encountered serious
roadblocks. “We went into it carrying a lot of ‘baggage’ due to shortcuts
we’d made in the prototype system because of the lack of time and the
resources we’d had during the proof of concept,” said Christopher Dale,
an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton. Over the next year and a half,
as more users were added, the team “spent a great deal of effort trying
to deal with that baggage,” Christopher said. “But the system simply
couldn’t scale the way we needed it to.”
When the agency secured funding to take the system to a new level of
capability, the Booz Allen team knew it had to completely rethink its
options. From the start, Christopher believed that open source was the
answer, and virtualization clearly needed to be part of the solution.
Additionally, “we knew we needed a clustered file system, as the old
way of moving data back and forth was a real bottleneck,” said Isaac
Christoffersen, an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton. There also had to
be a lot more flexibility for dealing with changing customer requests for
additional functionality as well as scalability.
SOLUTION
After thinking through its options, Booz Allen decided to design a serviceoriented architecture (SOA)-based cloud platform using an enterprise
service bus (ESB) for a variety of reasons. First, a highly clustered and
highly virtualized architecture was needed to build the kind of agile grid
of computing and storage resources necessary to scale to the extent the
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | BOOZ ALLEN
Build a service oriented architecture
(SOA) solution for a government client
that could be leveraged and reused for
other client engagements
MIGRATION PATH
Transitioned a custom coded,
proprietary-based solution to a a hybrid
COTS/GOTS/open-source application
that leveraged a significant portion of
the Red Hat product portfolio
SOFTWARE
JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform
including JBoss jBPM and JBoss Rules,
Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform
with Xen virtualization, Red Hat Cluster
Suite, and Red Hat GFS.
OPERATING SYSTEM
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced
Platform
HARDWARE
Eight Dell 2950 servers with 32
gigabytes of memory
BENEFITS
Booz Allen built a modular SOA
environment that efficiently supported
the development and integration of new
applications into the system, reducing
the dependence on custom coding when
doing proof-of-concept or production
deployments of client systems across
a broad range of government and
commercial applications
redhat.com/jboss
230
client agency needed. Additionally, Booz Hamilton wanted
to build a platform it could leverage in the future for other
client engagements.
The physical layer of the architecture was made up
of the computers, storage-area networks (SANs),
Ethernet networks and Fibre Channel switches. Booz
Allen used commodity hardware to build this layer
out. The foundation layer of the architecture created a
physical “resource pool” for the system to utilize at the
virtualization layer, where server, network, and storage
resources could be more efficiently leveraged. Booz Allen
also used Xen virtualization and the Red Hat Global File
System (GFS) on top of Red Hat Cluster Suite to create an
environment for transaction processing. Red Hat’s Conga
Cluster Management capability, a component of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform, was used to control
cluster and storage management.
At the application layer, JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform provided the ability to create a clustered
application server environment. Its built-in redundancy
allowed Booz Allen to implement a message-driven
Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) infrastructure using
the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform that included JBoss
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), JBoss jBPM, and JBoss
Rules. JBoss Operations Network was used to perform
application and service management.
“We selected Red Hat and JBoss
Enterprise Middleware in order to meet
our client’s budgetary constraints,
support requirements and operational
needs. The combination of efficiency
provided by Xen, scalability provided by
Red Hat Cluster Suite, GFS, and the
clustering feature of JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, along with the
agility provided by the JBoss family of
products has led our client to consider
these products as their top-tier choice.”
– Christopher Dale, associate, Booz Allen Hamilton
BENEFITS
The Red Hat-based implementation provided the agency
with a multitude of benefits. For starters, it was able to
consolidate 55 underused servers into just eight servers.
This reduced number of systems not only handled the
231
redhat.com/jboss
existing processing load, but left capacity available for
even more growth in the future.
The system also helped Booz Allen design a system with
tremendous flexibility and scalability. Using Red Hat
solutions, Booz Allen was able to help the government
agency adapt to changes in its mission and system
demand in a more agile manner. Over a one-year period,
data processing has increased from 1,000 documents
per hour and 18,000 documents per day to more than
10,000 documents per hour and 100,000 documents
per day. The number of users increased 600 percent in
the first year that the system was implemented.
Believing that Booz Allen could leverage what the team
had designed for other client engagements, the team
briefed a group of Booz Allen partners on the idea...
and they agreed. These partners agreed to fund a new
initiative that is taking the SOA groundwork that the
team created for the federal government, and using
it to build a more general platform for application
prototyping, development, and production for other
government clients.
The current configuration of this platform offers
database as a service, storage as a service, network
as a service, and hardware as a service. The concepts
in this SOA are those that industry leaders such as
IBM and Amazon have been promising to deliver at
some point in the future, Christopher said. “But we’re
able to deliver it now.” Among other things, SOA has
greatly improved our ability to integrate commercial
and government off-the-shelf (COTS/GOTS) products.
Historically, around 50 percent of Booz Allen’s
development efforts were related to writing custom
software to enable the integration of COTS and GOTS.
By selecting solutions that leverage commercial and
open standards, Booz Allen’s SOA approach reduces the
need for this custom software and helps their clients
achieve better reuse within their enterprise. Going
forward, this new platform promises to be absolutely
mission-critical to the way Booz Allen will provide its
technology consulting services.
“We selected Red Hat and JBoss Enterprise Middleware
in order to meet our client’s budgetary constraints,
support requirements and operational needs,” said
Christopher. “The combination of efficiency provided
by Xen, scalability provided by Red Hat Cluster Suite,
GFS, and the clustering feature of JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform, along with the agility provided
by the JBoss family of products has led our client to
consider these products as their top-tier choice.”
BOOZ ALLEN | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
CITYTECH and JBoss help
Advent Conferencing
Deploy JBoss Enterprise
Geography
Chicago, Illinois
Business challenge
Needed to differentiate itself from
the competition in a commodity
marketplace
BACKGROUND
As a full-service telephone and web conferencing service provider, Advent
Conferencing offers the latest in secure collaboration technology for
businesses of all sizes. It prides itself on being on the technological edge,
and delivers the best sound quality and broadest range of features in the
industry at competitive rates. Based in Chicago, Advent has a customer
base that reaches throughout the United States, and has managed to
differentiate itself in a crowded commodity marketplace through a savvy
combination of the latest technologies and stellar customer service.
CITYTECH is a Chicago-based consultancy specializing in the design,
development, and execution of highly available and scalable enterprise
applications. A Red Hat partner, it specializes in JBoss, Java Enterprise
Edition (J2EE), and other top software development platforms. CITYTECH’s
mission is to help its customers achieve their business goals through
technology. Founded in 2003, and growing at a rate of 25 percent annually,
CITYTECH’s success is due to its ability to execute projects using an agile
but methodical implementation methodology deployed by small, highly
experienced teams of professionals. It forges long-term partnerships with
clients and makes customer satisfaction its No. 1 priority.
SOFTWARE
JBoss Messaging, JBoss Seam, JBoss
jBPM, JBoss Cache
BENEFITS
Increased sales by offering a more
flexible and customized service;
Boosted customer satisfaction by
improving provisioning and billing
procedures; streamlined internal
processes and cut operational
costs through integrating customer
relationship management, business
process management, and accounting
systems
“With an award-winning organization like Red
Hat behind us, and worldclass technology like
JBoss to leverage for our solutions, we are
primed for success.”
– Matt Van Bergan Chief Technology Officer, CITYTECH
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The teleconferencing business is increasingly a commodity business.
Most market participants offer roughly the same services at roughly
the same price points. Mike Swimelar, president of Advent Conferencing,
understood that the only way to differentiate his company from the pack
of competitors was through technological innovation. By 2006, he was
already offering the very the latest in secure collaboration technologies
with the best sound quality and richest feature set. Its audio conferencing
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | ADVENT
redhat.com/jboss
232
network, bridges, and processes were the most reliable in
the industry. But he was looking for even more of an edge.
“I realized there was more we could do,” said Swimelar.
“CITYTECH listens to my needs, and is
very creative about coming back with
ideas, they speak in terms that make
me confident they understand my
business, and are completely focused
on making Advent successful.”
– Mike Swimelar, president, Advent Conferencing
Specifically, Swimelar wanted to provide advanced
account management services to his customers that
would enable them to do such things as generate
usage reports on the fly; track expenses by conference
leader, project, or account; and specify when, how, and
in what format they would be billed. He also wanted
to streamline Advent’s own internal operations. At the
time, senior management, sales, marketing, operations,
and accounting functions were served by “stovepipe”
information systems that fragmented business and
operational data in a way that made it difficult to see the
big picture.
Billing – the lifeblood of any business – was especially
problematic. “We were getting data dumps from the
bridge software that we had to manually massage,” said
Swimelar. “It could take days, sometimes longer, to get
customer billing out.” In addition to slowing down cash
flow, there was no flexibility in tailoring the bills according
to customers’ specifications. And customers were also
demanding more advanced management features that
would allow them to track which employees were using
the conferencing system, when, and for how long, and
give them easy access to other usage and billing metrics.
“Our customers wanted more control and visibility into
the service, but our existing systems weren’t capable of
providing that,” said Swimelar.
SOLUTION
Swimelar had worked with CITYTECH’s chief technology
officer, Matt Van Bergan, while at another company. He
went to Van Bergan for help developing an integrated
web-based application that would simultaneously meet
Advent’s internal and customer-facing requirements.
CITYTECH used the JBoss Enterprise Application
Platform as the basis of a development and deployment
platform for building an application the two firms dubbed
“Advent Pulse.”
to provide asynchronous communication with the
conferencing bridge hardware. JBoss Seam was the basis
for the web application, primarily due to its integrated
AJAX functionality. JBoss jBPM was used to model and
manage the human-driven business processes. Finally,
JCache enhanced performance when communicating to
the dedicated conference bridge hardware.
BENEFITS
Today, Advent Pulse provides customer relationship
management (CRM), live interface with the conference
bridges for billing data extraction, business intelligence,
and sales commission management in one seamless
application.
The benefits were immediate, and substantial. “We
spend a lot less time struggling just getting data into
a format for billing customers, and a lot more time on
marketing and sales,” said Swimelar. Additionally, he
said, Advent can provision new customers and fill orders
much more swiftly and cost effectively, and provide
customers with near-real-time access to usage metrics.
The net result? “Customer satisfaction is much higher,
billing errors have been eliminated, and Swimelar is
convinced that he’s making more sales as a direct
result of the new system in place. “Because we’re able
to deliver exactly what our customers need, and do it
flexibly, quickly, and for a competitive rate, it has really
made a difference in our revenues,” he said.
About CITYTECH, Swimelar said, “CITYTECH listens
to my needs, and is very creative about coming back
with ideas. Rather than being so acronym-oriented that
I don’t know what they are talking about, they speak
in terms that make me confident they understand my
business, and are completely focused on making me
successful.”
In turn, CITYTECH points back to Red Hat as the
ideal technology partner. “With an award-winning
organization like Red Hat behind us, and world-class
technology like JBoss to leverage for our solutions, we
are primed for success,” said Van Bergan. Plus, he said,
the stellar enterprise support, and the direction laid out
by its product roadmap have made JBoss the perfect
choice of middleware for many of its clients.
To accomplish this, CITYTECH used JBoss Messaging
233
redhat.com/jboss
ADVENT | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
www.redhat.com HARNESSING
SUSTAINABILITY WITH OPEN SOURCE BI:
FAT SPANIEL HELPS MAKE THE PLANET
GREENER THROUGH COLLABORATION
WITH JASPERSOFT AND RED HAT
Geography
San Jose, California
Business challenge
BACKGROUND
Founded in 2003, Fat Spaniel Technologies is the leading independent provider
of critical software-as-a-service (SaaS) monitoring and reporting tools for the
renewable energy industry. Today, the company’s solutions are used by
more than 2,500 renewable power plants in 23 countries around the world,
including: solar power producers, financiers, system integrators, OEMs, and a
growing number of wind power companies. Fat Spaniel solutions help optimize
energy output, reduce operations and maintenance costs, contain risk, and
increase return on investment for renewable energy power plant projects.
Fat Spaniel solutions enable users to get the most out of their clean
energy systems by providing web-based reports on how much power they
are generating, what the temperature and irradiance conditions are, and
what quantities of greenhouse gases they are not producing as a result of
employing green technologies.
Fat Spaniel, a self-proclaimed open source advocate, uses JBoss® Enterprise
Middleware as the J2EE execution container for all of its core web services.
In addition, Fat Spaniel partners with Jaspersoft to leverage the world’s
largest open source business intelligence (BI) community. Because
maintaining efficiency is a top priority for Fat Spaniel, partnering with
Jaspersoft, a leader in open source business intelligence, was a natural fit.
Jaspersoft is the maker of the world’s leading open source business
intelligence suite, with more than ten million total downloads worldwide and
more than 12,000 commercial customers in 100 countries. The company’s
Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite–built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
and using JBoss Enterprise Application Platform–provides a web-based,
open, and modular approach to the evolving business intelligence needs of
the enterprise. Jaspersoft’s reporting capabilities encompassed both predesigned “canned” reports plus an ad hoc reporting capability that users can
customize to meet their specific BI needs. Jaspersoft’s software is continually
updated by 130,000 registered members working on more than 350 projects,
which represent the world’s largest business intelligence community.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Fat Spaniel needed to add business
intelligent functionality to its line of
solutions that manage, optimize, and
maintain renewable energy systems,
but building it internally would have
been time-intensive and prohibitively
expensive
Solutions
Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite
running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
and JBoss Enterprise Middleware
provides Fat Spaniel with the ability to
quickly add business intelligence
functionality to its expanding
renewable energy monitoring and
reporting solutions
SOFTWARE
Enterprise Middleware, Jaspersoft
Business Intelligence Suite
hardWARE
Intel x86-based Dell blade servers
BENEFITS
Improved Fat Spaniel’s ability to
quickly introduce new functionality
to market, increased ability to scale
rapidly and keep up with the aggressive
global growth of distributed energy
generation, enabled the measurement
and reporting of the return-oninvestment (ROI) of renewable energy
Despite the tremendous investment in renewable energy production,
challenges still exist for the management and optimization of these
systems. Because solar and wind electric plants are highly distributed,
they require solutions that can be cost-effectively managed remotely.
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | FAT SPANIEL
redhat.com/jboss
234
Fat Spaniel Technologies stands out in this field, helping
energy producers leverage the Internet to tackle the
unique needs of renewable energy sites.
“The quality of support that comes with
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is excellent
and has been key to our growth over
the last two years. With the enterprise
support, you get an insurance policy
that you will be supported at the level
you need for your most mission-critical
applications.”
– Brett Francis, vice president of engineering and software
architecture at Fat Spaniel
Fat Spaniel offers its solutions under the software-as-aservice (SaaS) model, which means it delivers software
functionality over the Internet that is accessible to
customers via a standard web browser. Despite this
innovative delivery model, Fat Spaniel is still first and
foremost a software developer. As such, it has all the inhouse expertise it needs to develop new functionality for
its products.
In early 2008, Fat Spaniel wanted to introduce a
sophisticated business intelligence (BI) tool as part of
its portfolio of monitoring and management solutions,
as the need for distributed energy generation creates an
information, integration, and controls challenge. Different
audiences need access to information, even when the
source of that information is from heterogeneous devices
across a highly distributed set of locations. The new BI
tool would enhance Fat Spaniel’s Insight Platform, but Fat
Spaniel had a critical decision to make.
“To us, it came down to a build-versus-buy decision,” said
Brett Francis, vice president of engineering and software
architecture at Fat Spaniel, about the decision to investigate
third-party BI solutions. “We calculated the numbers and
realized it really didn’t pay off for us to build our own.”
Francis’ team began its due diligence with a first, nonnegotiable requirement: the solution had to be open source.
Completely committed to open source since its inception,
Fat Spaniel long ago standardized its IT infrastructure on
Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on industry-standard
Intel processor-based Dell hardware. And their web
services are built on JBoss Enterprise Middleware.
“Fat Spaniel is die-hard open source,” said Francis. “We didn’t
really consider anything else as a viable option in creating
our seamless business intelligence tool that would further
235
redhat.com/jboss
enhance the information we deliver to our customers.”
SOLUTION
In addition to the open source requirement, the new
BI solution needed to be capable of harnessing critical
data intelligence and needed to be web-centric and fully
optimized with leading-edge capabilities and a modern
user interface—the kind of technology you’d expect from
a company committed to innovation.
After performing an exhaustive survey of the open
source BI solutions on the market, Francis chose
Jaspersoft’s Business Intelligence Suite as an integral
component of its reporting and monitoring services for
its customers, a part of its SaaS offering.
“The fact that it was open source—in particular, open
source based upon Red Hat Enterprise Linux—helped us
make that decision,” said Francis. But it was also key that
Jaspersoft provide a best-in-class solution that continues
to evolve and keep up with the rapid rate of innovation in
the BI marketplace.
Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite provides
a web-based, open, and modular approach to the
evolving business intelligence needs of the enterprise.
Jaspersoft’s software is rapidly updated by a community
of more than 130,000 registered members working on
more than 350 projects, which represents the world’s
largest business intelligence community.
“In addition, it was a good match for us—Jaspersoft
offers a highly optimized web solution, and we’re also a
web-based company,” said Francis. “There were obvious
synergies there that would make the implementation
process streamlined.”
For its part, Jaspersoft’s SaaS offering is also based
upon Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise
Middleware. Although its solution will run on any operating
system that supports Java, it is certified to run on Red
Hat Enterprise Linux, and indeed, Red Hat Enterprise
Linux is “our top request from enterprise customers,“ said
Matthew Dahlman, business development engineer for
Jaspersoft, who said that “reliability and stability are the
main reasons our customers choose to go with Red Hat
Enterprise Linux.” Added Andrew Lampitt, senior director
of technology alliances at Jaspersoft, “We’re big fans of
Red Hat and its products.”
Jaspersoft also sees most of its enterprise customers
choosing JBoss as their application server. “They tend
to use Microsoft Windows and Apache Tomcat as their
evaluation environments, then switch to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware because of the
solutions’ clustering and scalability capabilities.
FAT SPANIEL | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS
With Jaspersoft, Fat Spaniel is using BI to compete
on analytics, as the in-depth reporting and analytic
capabilities are baked into Fat Spaniel’s flagship product,
Fat Spaniel Insight Platform, the foundation for all Fat
Spaniel solutions and the world’s first open energy
intelligence platform for building, sharing, and running
energy applications. It enables software developers
to extend in-house monitoring systems, explore new
energy management capabilities, and leverage an open
architecture that supports multiple vendors, hardware
types, and integration with the energy IT infrastructure.
Insight Platform harnesses the innovation and creativity
of an entire ecosystem of partners to advance Fat Spaniel
technologies and solutions.
The Fat Spaniel energy management system provides a
comprehensive, accurate web view of solar energy system
performance. The information is used by system installers
to schedule service visits and optimize the installation for
peak performance, and by owners to track and display solar
energy generation and usage. Fat Spaniel’s revenue-grade
reporting capabilities can provide the data required to take
advantage of performance-based incentives and emerging
carbon and renewable energy credit (REC) markets.
“The Insight Platform, which leverages Jaspersoft and
Red Hat, provides the critical data infrastructure to our
customers in the solar and renewable energy technology
industries,” said Francis. “We are providing the intelligence
to power the next generation of the power grid.”
The solution and services running on JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform has connected Fat Spaniel’s Insight
Platform with JasperServer v3, which enables custom
source data collection, a reporting function for product
interaction, and multi-lingual/standard and custom
distributed energy reports. The BI solution is used against
thousands of plant sites, hundreds of customers, and more
than 200 MWs of renewable energy generation and millions
of new packets of energy intelligence information daily.
With the BI solution integrated, Fat Spaniel customers are
able to get the average monthly PV Power generated at
a site, show a distributed generation plant portfolio on a
map, compare expected energy generation performance
to actual, and get the expected PV energy and the actual
PV energy for a plant site or many plants distributed
across a portfolio.
BENEFITS
About using Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the
foundational operating system for its IT architecture,
Francis said, “What attracted us in the beginning was
our ability to bootstrap ourselves up from the basic
open source version up to enterprise-class. Additionally,
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | FAT SPANIEL
the quality of support that comes with the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware
subscription is excellent and has been critical to our
growth over the last two years. And with that enterprise
subscription, you get an insurance policy that you
will be supported at the level you need for your most
mission-critical applications.”
And Red Hat’s long-standing partnership with Dell–
forged more than 10 years ago–also smoothed the
way toward building a robust and highly scalable
and available infrastructure sufficient to meet Fat
Spaniel’s needs as it continues to expand. “You’ve
got compatibility out-of-the-box between Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and Dell hardware—and, more
importantly, the knowledge that the compatibility will
be there into the future,” said Francis.
Francis is also appreciative about the fact that Red
Hat keeps him in the loop about upcoming product
enhancements and innovation. “Red Hat contacts us every
six months or so and briefs us on where its products are
going,” said Francis. “That helps us understand what we
have to do to keep enhancing our own products.” The
same goes for the Jaspersoft relationship, he said. “If
Jaspersoft is working on a particular feature, we like to
know so we don’t build it ourselves.”
The ease of use of Jaspersoft’s Business Intelligence
Suite and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss
Enterprise Middleware is another big benefit, said
Francis. “The biggest compliment we can say about
these products is that Red Hat and Jaspersoft’s
products fit in with our instincts and behaviors,” he
said. “We were able to hit the ground running without
worrying about a huge learning curve.”
The fact that technology is changing so fast makes
these kinds of close collaborative relationships even
more critical. “As a company, we pride ourselves on our
velocity and speed of innovation, and we need partners
that can keep pace with us,” said Francis.
“With Red Hat and Jaspersoft, we have been able to
harness the sustainability intelligence data that our
solutions measure and report on, said Francis. “By
focusing on the creation of the Fat Spaniel Insight
Platform™ and leaving BI frameworks to the BI experts,
Jaspersoft, we have been able to scale rapidly and keep
up with the aggressive global growth of distributed
energy generation; and as an extension of our plant
lifecycle abilities, we’ve got the ROI of renewable energy
that we can now measure, that is increasingly attractive
for our customers.”
redhat.com/jboss
236
237
Siemens Builds Innovative
and World-Class Mail Sorting
System on JBoss Enterprise
Geography
Germany
Business challenge
Create a new, highly scalable,
and reliable software platform for
BACKGROUND
Infrastructure Logistics (IL), based in Konstanz, Germany is the global
market leader in postal automation solutions catering to the needs of
mail and parcel logistics providers around the world.
IL builds high-performance sorting machines and image management
systems capable of handling several hundreds of thousands of mail pieces
per hour. These postal automation systems include specialised scanners
that provide high-resolution images for automatic address recognition for
subsequent sorting of the physical mail pieces.
automated address recognition, coding,
and image management capable of
handling hundreds of thousands of mail
pieces per hour
SOLUTION
Infrastructure Logistics’ Open Reading
Coding Architecture (ORCA) relies
on JBoss Enterprise Application
IL combines hardware and software solutions based on customer
requirements, always looking for the most robust, scalable, and reliable
combination of technologies available. Wherever possible, IL uses proven
enterprise-class software as a base.
Platform as its middleware foundation,
IL’s customers are major state-owned and privately owned postal and
parcel logistics organizations worldwide that constantly strive to make
the journey of a mail piece from sender to recipient faster, more reliable
and secure, and cost-efficient.
a single image management system
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In 2004, IL started the development of a new generation of postal
automation solutions, combining the latest technologies for high-speed
image scanning, address recognition, and the end-to-end processing
of networked delivery logistics. Its custom software platform, Open
Reading Coding Architecture (ORCA), is located at the heart of this new
generation of postal automation solutions.
orchestrating the recognition and
coding of addresses and workflow of
up to 700,000 mail pieces per hour by
with an availability rate of up to 99.8
percent
SOFTWARE
HARDWARE
Standard x86 hardware
BENEFITS
Improved scalability, availability, and
“Incoming mail at a postal distribution centre is first run through high-speed
scanners that generate grey scale images of each and every mail piece,” says
Peter Schindler, product manager for ORCA. “ORCA runs these images by
the address reading module, using the latest in character recognition
technologies. Once we have the recipient address in its raw form, it is
matched with the official address database of the postal organization,
which then returns the appropriate sorting code for the particular letter.
The sorting machine then either prints a destination barcode or an ID
barcode on the envelope, depending on the customer’s system.”
performance, combined with cost
savings
In theory, this process looks fairly straightforward. In practice, however,
it’s an extremely complex and demanding physical and digital process
JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS | SIEMENS
redhat.com/jboss
238
involving sorting machines that run at operating speeds
of up to four meters per second and handle up to 60,000
letters per hour. Moreover, IL’s customers look for high
system availability and often combine 10 to 20 sorting
machines in one location and connect several sorting centre
locations, creating even more complex logistics networks for
fast and reliable mail delivery. With these factors in mind, IL
defined the software requirements for ORCA in 2004.
“Wherever you live, it is likely that several
letters that you have received have been
read, coded, and processed for delivery by
one of our systems using JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform as the middleware
foundation.”
– Peter Schindler, Product Manager Infrastructure Logistics,
Postal Solutions
“Strategically, we concentrate on the application level;
operating systems, databases and middleware come
from established software vendors. We adapt them to
meet our own and our customers’ requirements”, says
Schindler. “Very early in the planning process, it was
obvious that ORCA’s middleware architecture would play
a crucial role in achieving the performance and high
availability levels we wanted to reach.”
As ORCA was designed as the core product platform
for the next decade and beyond, IL also wanted the
middleware layer to support high-availability features,
clustering, and scalability. Furthermore the system had
to provide room for customization according to various
postal organizations’ specifications.
SOLUTION
IL evaluated middleware and development frameworks from
Red Hat and other suppliers. All candidates were examined
for technical features such as clustering and scalability, as
well as overall performance and license costs. “We went for
Java EE as the middleware development framework and
Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Application Platform because
they were technical contenders with the additional benefit
of cost savings through Red Hat’s subscription model.”
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform offered IL an
innovative and scalable platform for Java applications,
enabling IL to integrate its JBoss Application Server
to create an enterprise solution for Java applications.
Today, more than 15 postal operators have deployed
ORCA–based postal automation systems.
“Our customers often give their end consumers a next-day
delivery guarantee. If you consider the short period of time
available for capturing, recognizing, sorting, and forwarding
239
redhat.com/jboss
millions of letters across the country, usually during the night,
you can imagine the processing power that ORCA provides,”
says Schindler. “The clustering abilities of JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform provide up to 99.8-percent availability
for our customers. Given the volume of mail handled every day
throughout Central European countries for example, that’s an
excellent result.”
Besides the fully automated scanning and address recognition,
ORCA also helps handle letters with addresses that can’t be
completely read. When the system is unable to determine
the complete and correct address, the mail piece image is
directed to so-called “video coding”. That means that an
enlarged address field is displayed to a trained employee who
then deciphers the address and manually enters the required
data. On average, about 10–20 percent of the mail pieces go
into video coding. That adds another level of complexity to the
sorting process.
IL adapts its sorting systems to meet customer requirements.
The ORCA solution runs on x86–based computers and Microsoft
Windows and uses an (optionally clustered) Oracle database filled
with the customer-specific address catalogue and sorting codes.
BENEFITS
Thanks to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, IL has been
able to create a flexible, customizable, and scalable platform
for its ORCA solution. JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
clustering capabilities provide high availability and fully
automatic failover capacities that enable postal organizations
around the globe to handle an often seasonally fluctuating volume
of mail and fulfil their service quality goals.
“Clustering is a key capability that differentiates ORCA
from our previous processing solution. Besides providing
up to 99.8 percent availability, it also helps our customers
scale their businesses. They can now easily start with smaller
systems and then expand to nationwide logistics networks
capable of synchronizing deliveries of outgoing and incoming
mail,” says Schindler.
IL provides training and support to its customers and works
to limit time-consuming troubleshooting. High reliability of
the underlying system layers, and especially the middleware
architecture, is instrumental in delivering on that level of
service.
“We help our customers to concentrate on smooth
operations of their sorting systems. They do not have to care
about middleware or databases. The good thing about JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform is that we don’t have much
trouble with it,” says Schindler. “Red Hat Support helped
us to build ORCA based on Java EE and JBoss Enterprise
Application Platform. Today the application platform is solid,
and we only rarely tap the expert knowledge of Red Hat.
That’s mostly to solve very specific customization issues.”
SIEMENS | JBOSS BOOK OF SUCCESSFUL SOLUTIONS

JBOSS MiDDlEwARE SOluTiOn SHOwcASE

Transcription

Similar documents

White Hat Thinking: Complete an A – z of Charlotte`s Web. Complete

SD76 Registration Brochure 2014 - Medicine Hat School District No

Hang Your Hat in Dallas

Outreach Alternate Programs - Medicine Hat School District No. 76

fi. a - Tangle Angel

Curious George

Medicine Hat 08_27 PAGE 1 - Gotta Minute?! | Medicine Hat`s

Chinook Pheasants Forever ForeForever

the world`s finest panama hat

PANAMA HAT identifies straw hats made in Ecuador. The main