Aleksandar Memca

Managing Director, Perficient, Inc.

Model Driven SOA
AT&T Wireless Case Study
Agenda
Perficient Introduction
Perficients Award Winning TIBCO Strategic Business Unit
AT&T Facts
AT&Ts SOA Scope and Scale
AT&Ts SOA Challenge
AT&Ts Business Drivers
Tibco Implementation Approach
Tibco Reference Architecture
Solution Benefits Overview and ROI
Perficients Recommendation
Q&A
Perficient Introduction
Founded in 1997
Public, NASDAQ: PRFT
~$240 million in annualized revenues
15-20+% organic growth rate
Three acquisitions in 2007 with expressed intent to acquire additional
complementary businesses throughout 2008
1350+ consultants
Dedicated solution and vertical practices
Served 300+ clients in past 12 months
Alliance partnerships with major technology vendors
Multiple vendor/industry technology and growth awards
Perficients TIBCO Practice
TIBCO Partner since 1999/2000
Part of the Initial select Team TIBCO group
~$120 million in SOA and TIBCO services revenues (2007)
Over 90 current SOA / TIBCO clients
Over 350 SOA / TIBCO consultants
National and International Coverage
Perficient offers proven valuable and proven SOA/TIBCO Intellectual Property (IP).
TIBCO / SOA Health Check (Measured against the industries best practices)
TIBCO QSR SOA Blueprint, Methodology and Roadmap (Prioritizes TIBCO project by real
ROI)
TIBCO / SOA Generic Exception Handler and Audit Logger.
TIBCO / SOA Services Gateway
Perficient Influenced over 22M in TIBCO software deals in 2006-2007.
Perficient is a TCEP Training Partner.
Perficient has proven experience and references with all the TIBCO products (BW
thru Spotfire and everything in between)
No other TIBCO partner has as many happy referencable clients! (300 and counting)
AT&T Facts
AT&T has the largest wireless network in the United States,
with more than 64+ million subscribers who utilize the nations
digital voice and data network.
AT&T serves 95 percent of Fortune 100 companies
AT&T counts more than 80 percent of Fortune 500 as
customers
AT&T counts more than 1,200 federal, state and local
government agencies as customers
AT&T has ~310,000 employees worldwide
AT&Ts 2007 pro forma revenue was more than $118 billion
AT&T is one of the 30 companies that make the DJIA
DJIA Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Challenge
Scale and Scope of AT&Ts SOA
Integration and abstraction of 40+ back-office systems
Deliver more than 150 business-level services
350 system-integration level interfaces abstracted
Abstraction of 1,000+ APIs
Service offered to 70+ retail partners (e.g. Apple, WalMart,
Amazon, Best Buy)
Services leveraged by AT&Ts call centers and AT&Ts
customer facing web sites
Become agile environment which can have 4+ releases per
year
Support 2+ years of backwards compatibility for all services
AT&Ts SOA Challenge
AT&T sought to automate the new customer sign up process
with its retail partners
AT&Ts strategy of growth through acquisition lead to multiple
back-office applications supporting segments of their
customer base
AT&T wished to offer their customers the same product
offerings supported by a common set of front-office
applications satisfying the entire customer base.
The supporting SOA must also abstract the back-office
applications to support an ongoing back-office system
consolidation
Changes made internally must be invisible to AT&Ts partners
and supporting front-office systems
AT&Ts Business Drivers for SOA
Reduce Integration Expense
When front-office systems connect directly to the back-office systems, the
complexity is higher requiring additional staff to maintain and time to market
is higher
Through a SOA architecture, AT&T can lower IT headcount
Increase Asset Reuse
Redundant code exists across the front-office systems. This code can be
migrated to a common service available to all. This creates one code
base to maintain and reduces the complexity of the front-office systems.
Increase Business Agility
SOA services simplify application maintenance and new application
development, resulting in faster time to market and higher quality
applications.
SOA architecture is implemented with High Availability. Components of
SOA have historical high availability (99.997% uptime) and failover
between data centers
Reduce Business Risk and Exposure
High complexity and the lack of abstraction layers create more failure points
in the enterprise and increases the occurrence of customer affecting
outages
Reduce the likelihood of customer affecting outages
Increase the likelihood of a positive customer experience
The Architecture
SOA High Level Architecture
Courtesy: AT&T/Cingular Wireless, CSI Initiative
AT&Ts Approach to SOA Data Models
Define Data Modeling Principles
There must be one or more data models that will define all complex and
simple types used for all services
Data models will be demarcated by application
Each interface and each data model must have a unique namespace and
version
Interfaces should define a top level complex type and a single element
referencing the top level complex type
XSD Attributes will not be used for defining data models or interfaces
All elements should be defined with simple or complex types defined in
some data model unless the element refers to an obvious type, i.e. Boolean
Built in types should be fully constrained unless absolutely impossible. At a
minimum length facet, pattern facets, and/or enumerations have to be used.
Each simple and complex type including allowed values have to be
documented with an annotation
A hierarchical structure promotes reuse of base level abstractions
Simple Types
Simple types are used for
constraining basic XML Schema
types. Simple types cannot
themselves be broken into simpler
types.
Simple types are reused by complex
types and rarely directly by interfaces.
Complex Types
Complex Types aggregate simple
types and other complex types. Each
complex type is defined as a unique
complex type in its data model and its
namespace.
Complex types are building blocks of
all interfaces and provide the means
for data domain reuse.
AT&Ts Approach to SOA Object Models
Always reference the
Data Dictionary when
building message
schemas
AT&Ts Approach to SOA Data Dictionaries and Interfaces
Complex and Simple
Types are reused
AT&Ts Approach to SOA Interface / Object Reuse
AT&Ts Approach to SOA Define Common Services
AT&Ts Approach to SOA Exception Handling (Perficients GEH)
Common SOA Service
Used by all services and service provider
entities
Exception Capture
Dynamically captures exceptions
Exception Translation/Normalization
Normalizes exceptions into common format for
easier resolution and reporting
Exception Reporting
On Demand reports based on business needs
Transaction Compensation
Works as part of the transaction to resolve a
problem or substitute a component
Workflow Management
Escalation Policies
Provide SOX compliance
AT&Ts Approach to SOA Auditing (Perficients GAL)
On-Demand Service Auditing
Dynamically start collection service information
based on configuration console parameters
Control Individual Service Tracing Levels
Each service is treated individually and
controlled individually
Service/Business Level Reporting
Provide success to error ratios, volume peaks
Enable business to get real time reports from
the SOA environment by service, by partner,
by client, by anything that has been
configured.
Message Retrieval and Republish
Provide non-repudiation information or replay
messages that might need to be reprocessed
Provide SOX compliance
The Solution
Reference Architecture TIBCO Implementation
Product Management
Corporate Security
Service
Blades
Operations
SOA Team
New
Customer
Blade
SC
CFG
CSDM
CFG
FM
CFG
MOM
CFG
PC
CFG
SPM
CFG
BPM
CFG
Security
CFG
Gateway
CFG
Every Business Unit
is responsible for
contributing to the
service blade
configuration
Reference Architecture Service Blade
Courtesy: AT&T/Cingular Wireless, CSI Initiative
Reference Architecture Service Grid
Service Catalog
Channel Specific Decision Making
Fallout Management
Mesg Oriented Middleware
Product Catalog
SPM
BPM
Security
Gateway
Service Grid
New
Customer
Blade
SC
CFG
CSDM
CFG
FM
CFG
MOM
CFG
PC
CFG
SPM
CFG
BPM
CFG
Security
CFG
Gateway
CFG
Add
Account
Blade
SC
CFG
CSDM
CFG
MOM
CFG
PC
CFG
SPM
CFG
Security
CFG
Gateway
CFG
Upgrade
Equip.
Blade
SC
CFG
CSDM
CFG
FM
CFG
MOM
CFG
PC
CFG
SPM
CFG
BPM
CFG
Security
CFG
Gateway
CFG
Mig. AW
Customer
Blade
SC
CFG
CSDM
CFG
FM
CFG
MOM
CFG
PC
CFG
SPM
CFG
BPM
CFG
Security
CFG
Gateway
CFG
Inquire
Rate Plan
Blade
SC
CFG
CSDM
CFG
MOM
CFG
SPM
CFG
Security
CFG
Gateway
CFG
Change
Rate Plan
Blade
SC
CFG
FM
CFG
MOM
CFG
PC
CFG
SPM
CFG
Security
CFG
Gateway
CFG
Update
Acct.
Blade
SC
CFG
FM
CFG
MOM
CFG
SPM
CFG
Security
CFG
Gateway
CFG
Combine
Billing
Blade
SC
CFG
MOM
CFG
SPM
CFG
Security
CFG
Gateway
CFG
Courtesy: AT&T/Cingular Wireless, CSI Initiative
Execution and Management
Process Generation
Model
Reference Architecture Model Driven SOA
Model
Process Generation
XPDL
Execution and Management
Automated
Deployment
Define model in UML like modeling tool.
Extended Attributes define which AT&T
backend services to call on each step
Modeling Tool generates the
XPDL Model
Custom Code Generator generates
corresponding processes from
AT&Ts XPDL Model, including sub-
process calls and mappings as
defined in model
Generated Processes
are deployed using
scripted deployment
Services are managed using
existing support tools
The Benefits
AT&Ts Benefits from Model Driven SOA
Rapid development
Delivered 15+ services in March - June (Apple iPhone Launch)
Delivered additional 50+ services (July 2007)
Delivered additional 60+ services (Nov 2007)
Total of 130+ services modeled using MDA in 6 months
Single point for process definition
Platform Independence
Increased Productivity
Improved Quality
Standards based spec from the process design tool
Provides an industry-standard XPDL representation of process flows
Provides a vendor-neutral language for process implementation
Automated generation of integration processes from XPDL model
Model IS the running code rather than having a development task from a Rose Model
Reduced development cost over time
Automated deployment and execution of modeled processes
Enables multiple deployment platforms if needed
Leverages existing process monitoring and management facilities
AT&Ts Benefits from SOA
Time-to-market
Through use of SOA services, applications can deliver faster with abstracted services that
are proven and tested versus having to understand the intricacies of back office systems,
much less the additional engineering hours related to end to end testing.
Reduced complexity
Through using SOA, the additional logic required to manipulate through back office systems
is located in one place (within the SOA) versus repeated across each application needing to
interface with back office systems. In addition, it reduces the likelihood of having N number
of paths along a service delivery scenario. This has been a historical problem where there
are multiple ways to provision and deliver a service depending on which retail system is in
use. This has caused customer service as well as additional overhead in managing the
application portfolio.
Availability
Through concentrating service interfaces through one SOA, the high availability investment
can be more easily achieved. The SOA has geographic availability with active/active failover
across 3 data centers
Supportability
Through common error management and exception processing, resolution times for issues is
significantly reduced (MTTR). In addition, given that N number of interfaces are consolidated
to one interface, more investment efforts and resources have been devoted to early
identification of problems resulting in more proactive actions to prevent an incident and
reduce the incident timeframe (MTTD).
MTTR Mean time to recovery; MTTD Mean time to diagnose
AT&Ts ROI from SOA
Lessons Learned
Perficients Recommendations for Successful SOA
Identify SOA champions and drivers
Follow well defined methodology QSR
Define SOA goals in advance Scope
Build data and domain models Dictionary
Select fine and coarse grained services Interface
identification
Design and Build with reuse in mind Gateway, GEH, GAL
Reduce business to development handover - MDA
Shorten development time via automation Code generation
Use continuous development principles Automated
builds/tests
Leverage best in breed technology - TIBCO
Contact
Perficient visit us at the solution showcase
Aleksandar Memca (amemca@perficient.com)
Keith Brenton (keith.brenton@perficient.com)
AT&T Sponsors
Wiley Wilkins
Victor Nilson