Aleksandar Memca

Managing Director, Perficient, Inc.

Model Driven SOAAT&T Wireless Case Study

Agenda

� Perficient Introduction

� Perficient’s Award Winning TIBCO Strategic Business Unit

� AT&T Facts

� AT&T’s SOA Scope and Scale

� AT&T’s SOA Challenge

� AT&T’s Business Drivers

� Tibco Implementation Approach

� Tibco Reference Architecture

� Solution Benefits Overview and ROI

� Perficient’s 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

Perficient’s 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 offer’s 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 nation’s 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&T’s 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&T’s 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&T’s call centers and AT&T’s customer facing web sites

� Become agile environment which can have 4+ releases per year

� Support 2+ years of backwards compatibility for all services

AT&T’s SOA Challenge

� AT&T sought to automate the new customer sign up process with its retail partners

� AT&T’s 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&T’s partners and supporting front-office systems

AT&T’s 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&T’s 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 bedocumented 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&T’s Approach to SOA – Object Models

Always reference the

Data Dictionary when

building message

schemas

AT&T’s Approach to SOA – Data Dictionaries and Interfaces

Complex and Simple

Types are reused

AT&T’s Approach to SOA – Interface / Object Reuse

AT&T’s Approach to SOA – Define Common Services

AT&T’s Approach to SOA – Exception Handling (Perficient’s 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&T’s Approach to SOA – Auditing (Perficient’s 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 TeamNew

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 GridNew

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 ManagementProcess GenerationModel

Reference Architecture – Model Driven SOA

Model

Process Generation

XPDL

Execution and Management

AutomatedDeployment

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&T’s 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&T’s 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&T’s 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&T’s ROI from SOA

Lessons Learned

Perficient’s 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