Background

One of the business units of the customer’s company was previously a stand-alone company, so they used non-standard software to create reports. Employees of this business unit had to use MS Excel to bring their reports to a standard form.

Business Challenge

Automate the generation of standard reports adopted in all business units of the company.

Solution

To automate report generation, we developed SSDM (Security Systems Data Mart) — an integrated data warehouse. This warehouse contains data from their custom systems previously used by this business unit, as well as standard data from the systems of other business units of the company. This data contains information on payments, services and accounting. Automatic reports are generated in Cognos.

The developed system has a complex business logic that is constantly changing and evolving. In the course of the project, there was a migration from one contract management system to another, which has a different data model. Then the system was migrated to interact with clients to another service. These changes were considered in the operation of the data warehouse and the integration was completed successfully.

Result

Most of operations that employees used to do in MS Excel are now performed automatically in SSDM. We configured automatic reporting in Cognos. Also, the developed data warehouse is used by other business units of the company as a data source for reports.

Previously, it took most of the month to generate reports, but with the introduction of the new solution, this time has been reduced to 2-3 days.

Business Challenge

The Customer requirement was to minimize the downtime of business applications and to enhance SLA compliance. The problem was that there was no single platform to organize the application support process. Due to inconsistent actions of the customer service, the downtime of applications (individual transactions) could have increased along with the discontent of business users.

In addition, it was necessary to provide a single source of knowledge to improve the quality of support and transfer knowledge to new employees. Unified knowledge of problem resolution history and architecture features was to be distributed among all stakeholders and not get lost.

SOLUTIONS HIGHLIGHTS

IBA Group has created a centralized platform for supporting various business applications running under z/OS. APPULSE monitors critical z/OS subsystems, including IMS, CICS, DB2, MQ, TWSz, and identifies the problem early on. Whereupon it notifies the responsible support engineers of such problem and automatically generates a ticket. The AI module offers a solution to the problem and predicts its success. You can run the solution, if it seems to be appropriate, directly from APPULSE. In the event of a new type of problem, the support engineer may address it directly from the program, thereby ensuring training of AI. Next time, APPULSE will offer this option to resolve problems of this or a similar type.

Results

Client reduced application downtime and ensured business continuity. A history of resolved problems accumulates, and a knowledge base is formed that is accessible to all stakeholders. Training for beginners is faster, leading to better and faster onboarding.

Advanced APPULSE interface, AI module and more efficient support processes make this job more attractive, so it has become easier for HR to fill vacancies.

Business challenge

Lifecell uses IBM Maximo as a centralized management system for network operation and development. IBM Maximo integrates and automates more than 30 business processes across radio network, transport network, network control, and network planning departments and serves more than 1,000 active users, with 120-160 users working simultaneously.

Based on the legacy Maximo 5.2 technology, the customer’s management system was unable to meet the new scalability, performance, and security needs. The main challenges included the following.

• The management system had roughly 100 custom applications and complicated business logic. No migration procedure was in place
• The legacy applications were poorly or not documented and the developers who initially performed the design and implementation were not available
• Certain parts of the business logic were implemented in the form of PL/SQL procedures
• The IBM Maximo management system is integrated with a number of external systems, including SAP (material transactions), Oracle IDM (user information and organizational structure), NetAct Planner (site and radio link information), HP Temip (Trouble Ticket Management and alarm information), and Nokia, and Ericsson OSS systems (automated site halting)
• According to the estimates, the migration process could take up to one year. Within this period, it was necessary to perform development and enhancement for the legacy applications and all applications were to stay up and running during the whole migration process.

SOLUTIONS HIGHLIGHTS

The Maximo migration started with a preparation stage that included a visit to the customer’s premises by IBA Group experts. Following the analysis of the requirements and estimation of the scope of work, IBA Group participated in a tender organized by the customer and won it.

The migration project was launched in March, 2015. The project team included IBM Certified Maximo specialists, Oracle DBA, business analysts, a QA specialist, and a technical writer.

The project was implemented in four stages and for every stage a subset of applications was selected, forming an application group. Each application group was migrated, switching the production from Maximo 5 to Maximo 7 for that group within one night. Within the migration process, data synchronization procedures were established to ensure data consistency between Maximo 5 and Maximo 7.

For every migrated application, the following scope of work was done:

• Reverse engineering to prepare the technical task document that describes the application’s design, database objects, business logic, UI, and all data dependencies
• Data migration and synchronization plan to document the data sources to be migrated and the data sources to be synchronized between Maximo 5 and Maximo 7, including all required data and structure transformation
• Application UI transformation from custom Maximo 5 jsp pages to Maximo 7 application XML markup, ensuring identical source UI layout and structure
• Business logic, including workflows and java customizations for Maximo 7
• Transformation of the existing PL/SQL procedures into Maximo cron tasks
• Data migration and transformation according to the data migration plan
• Report transformation to match the data structure modifications.

The following IBA-developed automation tools became a part of the Maximo development environment.

• Automated Maximo configuration management designed to create and update Maximo objects, including MBO, domains, and person groups based on the repository data
• Automated Maximo 5 application analysis to identify and document all data sources used by an application
• Automated transformation of Maximo 5 visual application forms into Maximo 7 application’s XML, preserving source layout.

With the enhanced development environment, the project team managed to deliver the second, third, and fourth application blocks with an 80 percent reduction in efforts as compared to the first application block.

Results

The project was completed successfully in December, 2016 with positive feedback from the customer. The upgraded management system is stable and meets strict security requirements. With the newly available platform features, especially REST API and Web Services, the system is deeper integrated into the corporate information system, meeting the growing requirements of business units.

Konstantin Zhylin, Head of Department for Telecommunication Systems Operation at Lifecell

“We would like to express our gratitude to IBA Group for the IBM MAXIMO Upgrade they implemented at Lifecell. Our teams worked hard for almost two years and successfully completed the project. It is safe to say that it was an exceptionally challenging project that is second to none with regard to the approaches and methodologies applied. I’d like to thank every participant of the project for the work performed. In addition, I would like to underscore an operational excellence of the team, their flexibility in problem solving, sociability, and customer–centric approach. As a result, it became possible to build up the processes of project management and successfully complete the migration of 80 applications to the new version of Maximo, conduct the training of users, and launch the new system. We are happy to recommend IBA Group as a reliable and proficient partner who is able to solve the most sophisticated problems to the best advantage.”

Overview and challenges

The end–to–end mobile application that deals with customer and account origination was designed to improve employees’ efficiency and to enable them to perform everyday operations when they are out of the office.

SOLUTIONS HIGHLIGHTS

Functions:

• Out of the office operation (register new clients and work with the clients’ accounts)
• Expandable architecture (e.g. insurance policies can be added)
• All functionality within one device, including reading barcodes and creating clients’ photos.

Features:

• Integration with bank’s backend applications
• JSON over HTTPS, providing secure and fast data transmission even over GPRS
• Based on PhoneGap framework, it can run on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and other platforms.

Result

A customer can make mobile payments and be updated on tariffs and services.

A map is seamlessly integrated in the mobile client. The user can filter objects by distance and find the nearest ATMs or bank offices. Choosing an object, the user can view information about it, including street address, working hours, and the list of its services, as well as make a route from the current location to the selected object.

Project Overview

The goal of the project is to support a comprehensive assessment tool for DB2 product customers as well as enhance and develop the product itself. The product is designed to optimize efficiency of a DB2 database on z/OS.

Solution

The IBA activities include L2 Customer Support, L3 Change Team, and Test Team. Getting involved in the project more than six years ago, IBA Group developed strong partnership with client teams that are engaged in major product design and development. Presently, IBA is maintaining several major product releases.

Project Overview

IBA provides support for a number of customer applications including:

1. Extranet n-Tier B2B application designed to automate the development of distribution programs allowing our business partner to manage the growth in demand within a distribution channel. As a result, both internal and external users (customers) are able to utilize and process efficiently the data that are distributed between various sources.
   Internet n-Tier B2C application designed to provide warranty support to the users of our partner’s hardware.
2. Extranet B2B web application that supports warranty returns by OEMs, distributors and resellers (Return Material Authorization). The application is ultimately flexible and easily customizable to the needs of each specific user.
3. A number of intranet applications that perform a range of functions for more than 18,000 users worldwide. These are applications like company-wide employee directory, employee CADP (Contribution Assessment and Development Plan) tracking, hardware deployment tracking, and etc.

All extranet and internet applications are implemented using the MVC (Model Viewer Controller) model. The front-end of the systems is using JSP, Java Servlets, DHTML, and Struts technologies and is hosted on IBM WebSphere four server cluster. The business logic is implemented using the EJB. Data between different application tiers flow in XML format using IBM MQSeries (JMS) as transport. IBM DB2 UDB cluster is used as a data storage system. The system interacts with SAP R/3 as a back end. All intranet applications are built on Vignette Application Portal.

Project Overview

The project was designed to migrate the Material Procurement System (MPS) of our client to an up-to-date software platform. MPS is an IT system that supports all processes in the purchasing environment of our client.

Its features include:

1. Process all customer requirements
2. Provide purchasing agents with information about automotive markets, parts, suppliers, prices, and business terms
3. Relieve purchasing agents from routine jobs
4. Perform analysis and generate reports
5. Calculate revenues and savings
6. Generate cost structures
7. Compare negotiation targets with actual business results
8. Control negotiation progress between purchasing agents and suppliers.

The legacy system was implemented using the programming language Smalltalk from CINCOM. One of the challenges was the absence of documentation (functional specifications and documented test cases) for the legacy system. The task was to migrate MPS to Java 3-tier architecture and create up-to-date documentation (use-case model and documented test cases).

The new application needed to meet the following requirements:

1. Use Java EE technology
2. Provide the same functionality as the legacy application with additional functional features
3. Function with the legacy database and be able to use the same database concurrently with the legacy MPS
4. Provide multi–language support including hieroglyphic (Japanese).

KEY ISSUES

The goal of the project was to develop a mobile client to simplify processing and approving of documents at a large–scale organization. The client should be closely connected with a backend document workflow system based on IBM FileNet.

In addition, it should bring to end users new instruments for working with corporate documents, including operations in offline mode, a flexible business process model, and a comprehensive commentary mechanism.