Global Wholesale - Retail Bank
International Insurance Company
There are a number of distinct business cases for using MQIS services:
Large diverse organisations with existing WMQ and middleware installations supporting functionality that includes publish/subscribe, point to point messaging, broker based messaging and workflow. Goal is to improve overall connectivity effectiveness and reduce cost by consolidating existing solutions into one group wide connectivity service.
Existing user of internally developed messaging system looking to reduce maintenance issues and speed time to market by adopting commercial messaging solution.
Existing user of multiple messaging/communication solutions looking to reduce cost and support issues by implementing a group wide connectivity service.
Mainframe centric organisations implementing open system solutions to support specific business functions requires a cost effective means of supporting communication between new systems and the existing host based core systems.
Note that cost reduction alone is not the driver. There is always a strategic goal to improve the effectiveness of the organisations application communication capability.
Business Project Extracts
Following are project profiles where MQIS people have demonstrated their specialist skills:
Australian Utility - Water
Develop WebSphere MQ best practice for Sun Solaris and build a "proof of concept" measuring throughput and latency. Best practice covered all architectural issues, including technical design, performance, business continuity (backup, recovery and fail over), system instrumentation (HP Open View) and management, security, standard message headers. The client technical personnel were trained to manage WebSphere MQ and debug problems. Throughput and latency measurements were fast tracked through use of MQIS boilerplate code.
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Global Wholesale/Retail Bank
MQIS were engaged to assist a joint supplier team and bank personnel to develop a business case and conceptual design for a group wide connectivity solution. The catalyst for the connectivity solution was the decision by senior bank management to enact a recommendation from a strategic review of the banks IT systems. The review concluded that creation of a connectivity service was a strategic enabler to allow the bank to retain the business flexibility to seamlessly service customer needs and effectively manage its business portfolio. The banks key technology layers were seen as channel delivery, sales & service, transaction processing and enterprise management. Integration across the layers via a connectivity solution was seen as a fundamental enabler to allow the bank to execute its technology strategy. The crux of the business case was the economies of scale gained by merging the existing disconnected and incompatible solutions into a single group wide connectivity solution. The decrease in overlapping infrastructure combined with a reduction in licence and labour costs indicated positive return within the first year of operation. Investigations revealed three messaging infrastructures based on WMQ that were neither connected nor compatible. The existing WMQ infrastructures were reviewed and a group wide connectivity design, based primarily on knowledge capital with selected reuse of existing bank IP and technology was developed. A key component of the design is the use of central WMQ Integrator brokers strategically located within each of the banks main data centres. The brokers allow the connectivity solution to maximise the reuse potential available via the standardised adoption of message sets and the associated business transactions that processes the messages. Other key components of the design included a security solution that provided authentication, confidentiality and authorisation, a resilience solution based on WMQ clustering and IBM's high availability software and a service level component that provided business level metrics for application transactions transported via the connectivity solution. An expanded MQIS team was invited to participate in the construction and implementation phase of the banks connectivity solution. The scope of the implementation included four main data centres housing OS/390 servers and Tandems. The connectivity service itself was hosted on AIX servers, WMQ clustering for load balancing and assistance with resilience. Considerable care went into the selection of message sets and the creation of a development framework for the broker transformations as effective use of the brokers was seen as a key component of achieving the required cost effectiveness via message reuse and development efficiency. Additionally black box testing procedures were implemented to simplify the regression testing required for message interfaces that were often reused multiple times. In excess of 130 message transformations were developed within the first year of the connectivity solutions existence.
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National Stock Exchange, Trading Clearing House
The existing IT infrastructure consists of a large number of diverse systems linked by a messaging layer that was developed in-house. Although this implementation has served the client well in recent years, it was proving costly to maintain and difficult to extend for use by future applications, often resulting in an extended lead-time when bringing new applications to market. A decision was made to introduce a new, vendor written messaging product to provide a standard communication layer across the organisation. The engagement was to assist with the construction and implementation of the replacement messaging layer, based on the WMQ family of products to provide WMQ and WMQI domain expertise and assist with the design of the application interfaces used to communicate across the messaging layer to internal and external systems. Tasks:
Designed and developed message flows.
Document WMQI best practice including configuration management procedures.
Trained support staff on problem resolution and developed recommendations for management of WMQ, WMQI and error handling procedures.
Installed WMQ on Sun Solaris, Alpha VMS, and Windows/NT.
Prepared WMQ and WMQI architecture for a project requiring high volume and availability implementation.
Worked closely with systems management to ensure system instrumentation (QPasa!) and management, backup, fail over, recovery.
Reviewed WMQ design for a stock trading project as it moved into system test phase, providing for production quality systems management, backup recovery and fail over.
Revised trading system WMQ design to support security, backup and recovery requirements.
Defined application standards.
Produced clustering design guidelines and implemented clustering in production.
Reviewed requirement for WMQ security exit and OAM security implementation
The Biggest National Australian Health Services Insurer
The existing IT infrastructure was OS/390 based CICS applications running core business systems. Maintenance was proving to be increasingly complex with reliability becoming an issue. Cost and time to market for system enhancements to support business initiatives was seen as an impediment to business growth. The client initiated a strategy to replace selected mainframe functionality with open system solutions for exchanging pathology billing information with business partners and improving call centre support via a specialised CRM system. The engagement was to develop a messaging infrastructure and architecture that supported the integration requirements of the B2B and CRM applications. WMQ architectural solutions were implemented as part of the B2B project which allowed data exchange between the client and trading partners across the Internet. The WMQ configuration comprised multiple servers deployed in a hub and spoke topology. Data exchanges between the client and its trading partners employed advanced encryption technology to ensure data security. The B2B project is live with a continuing rollout to additional trading partners which MQIS provides support.
Best practice for B2B
Initially the client lacked a coherent set of standards for implementing a WMQ infrastructure. A set of standards was developed and documented and used to implement the architecture.
Security Implementation for B2B
The security implementation was crucial. Data exchanges between the client and external trading partners must be secure and reliable. The following security components were designed and implemented:
Authentication was provided using the base operating system (NT) security
Authorization to WMQ objects was provided using WMQ OAM
Confidentiality, Data Integrity and Non-Repudiation were provided using firewalls and data encryption via channel message and security exits.
Assured Delivery was provided using native WMQ facilities.
Integration of Legacy Applications
A critical component of the EAI architecture project was to design a seamless message-based interface between the CRM application and multiple legacy applications. This was achieved using the bridge enabling technology. In order for the integration to be successful, the following design aspects were considered:
Design of the bridge framework.
XML Message standards to ensure adapter independence.
Design of WMQ and WMQI message headers.
WMQ and WMQI queue topology.
Error handling.
EAI Architecture Project
The EAI architecture project included YOU AIM personnel and to designed a framework that allowed existing client applications to be integrated via a WMQI broker. The EAI architecture will enable the client's existing and future business applications to interact co-operatively over WMQI via a range of message flows. The EAI project enables a PeopleSoft CRM application to leverage legacy applications running on the mainframe.
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International Insurance Company
The client embarked on an Internet Portal development strategy to augment existing financial services product offerings. The functionality offered by the portal was based on payroll services. The engagement was to design, build and implement the messaging infrastructure to allow connectivity between the web front end, the customised payroll engine and the existing OS/390 CICS applications. The third party message broker was implemented to assist with application integration as well as the design and development of the CICS application integration architecture. Tasks:
Prepared architecture and implemented WMQ on Sun Solaris and WindowsNT platforms.
Configured third party products for systems instrumentation, backup, recovery and fail over.
Developed UNIX scripts for repeatable installation and systems management.
Prepared and executed complete test plans.
Trained client personnel in WMQ management and debugging.
Designed and implemented JMS adapter for legacy application using XML message formats.
Major Australian Bank and Insurer
The client decided to implement a centralised messaging system to reduce the number of technologies used for inter application communication within their diverse range of applications systems and hardware platforms. Provided specialist WMQ and Data Integrator expertise to assist with the implementation of a group wide messaging backbone supporting message and file transport. Tasks:
Implemented reusable technical architecture in C++ and Visual Basic to wrap WMQ and provide boilerplate code for fast development of legacy adapters.
The architecture was implemented on UNIX, MVS, Linux and Intel platforms.
Designed and developed PRARS application to monitor WMQ compliance to contractual service levels.
Provided operational support following implementation of the client's own web site and developed procedures for rapid problem identification. Implemented CICS adapter into production CICS regions and developed generic WMQ CICS dispatcher architecture.
