Customer Solution Case Study
/ 70 Percent Cost Reduction as Windows Server AppFabric Replaces Mainframe Solution
Overview
Country or Region:France
Industry:Professional Services - IT
Customer Profile
Based in Viroflay, France, Expertime is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that provides e-commerce, portal, business intelligence, and other IT solutions for large enterprises.
Business Situation
Expertime needed to create a service-oriented architecture (SOA) solution to help a large customer replace a legacy mainframe application set that was difficult to integrate into new solutions.
Solution
Working with the Windows Server AppFabric, Windows Communication Framework, and Windows Workflow Foundation, Expertime created an SOA solution to provide an agile and scalable replacement for the legacy system.
Benefits
5 percent sales boost
50 percent faster deployment
Faster response for customers
70 percent operational savings
Scalability / “Looking just at software maintenance—not considering the mainframe licensing and personnel costs—we anticipate a 70 percent reduction in operational costs from using AppFabric.”
Philippe Lacroix, Chief Technology Officer, Expertime
Expertime designs and develops enterprise application and infrastructure solutions for leading organizations including France Television, Carrefour, Nestlé Waters, and Bank of France. When JM Bruneau, a French supplier of office furniture, needed to replace the mainframe-based IT infrastructure that supports the company’s U.S.$450 million in annual sales, it turned to Expertime. Working with Microsoft Services, Expertime created a service-oriented architecture (SOA) solution using Windows Server AppFabric to host services and workflows created using Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation. When fully deployed, Expertime estimates that the AppFabric solution will help JM Bruneau reduce its operational expenses by 70 percent compared to continued support for its legacy mainframe solution, while providing its call center agents with a better view of customer needs.
Situation
Expertime, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, based in Paris, provides expertise across a number of areas of information technology including business intelligence (BI), e-commerce, collaboration and enterprise portals and the design and migration of systems architectures and applications. The company’s expertise in creating IT solutions has earned it an impressive list of clients, including France Television, Radio France, Carrefour, RedCats, Nestlé Waters, and Bank of France.
For the past two years Expertime has been working with JM Bruneau, a French mail-order supplier of office furniture, accessories, and equipment that has won a foundation of more than 900,000 customers and annual revenue of some U.S.$450 million by providing excellent customer service and 24-hour delivery. The company, which has operations in France, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, and Spain, sells more than 15,000 items, dispatching them from a highly automated warehouse with tight quality control systems in place to ensure accurate picking of stock and prompt delivery. The company prides itself in being the first French distance selling company to obtain the ISO-9001 and ISO-14001 quality certificates.
The company has more than 800 employees, including some 160 call center agents, who handle about two-thirds of the incoming orders. Most of the other third of the business arrives as orders placed over the Internet, with the remainder arriving by fax, e-mail, and postal delivery. With more than 775,000 square feet (72,000 square meters) of warehouse space—enough to cover nearly 18 acres—and some 1.5 million orders per year to manage, JM Bruneau was an early adopter of IT to help manage its business to ensure happy customers.
With its commitment to customer service, JM Bruneau engaged with Expertime to help the company deploy an agile and scalable IT infrastructure to replace the mainframe computer and mid-range systems that had served the company well for many years, but were difficult to integrate into new solutions. JM Bruneau identified immediate requirements for the new infrastructure: the ability to manage multiple distribution warehouses, and the ability to provide a more complete view of the customer to enable service representatives to better predict and meet customer needs by recognizing cross-selling and targeted promotion opportunities.
“The central database, hosted on the company’s mainframe computer, isn’t able to support multiple distribution warehouses,” says Philippe Lacroix, Chief Technology Officer at Expertime. “JM Bruneau has state-of-the-art warehouse operations south of Paris, but the company needs the ability to support multiple warehouses to better serve its customers in Spain, Germany, and other locations, and to support the growth of the company.”
The legacy system was based on a single set of business rules, and the company needed flexibility to accommodate its different channels of doing business, including orders arriving via fax and e-mail, in addition to the call center and Internet.
“With the legacy system, the different channels were maintained separately by the mainframe,” Lacroix says. “The company needed an IT infrastructure that would unify the channels while allowing customization of business rules to more precisely meet the needs of channels and subsidiary operations. Another big need was to give the customer service representatives a better view of the customer than they could get from the mainframe green screen displays they had been using.”
Without a unified view, the customer service representatives weren’t able to provide the seamless service they wanted to. Shifting from one data source to another could cause delays, and some information, such as logical cross-selling suggestions, couldn’t be integrated into the mainframe displays.
Solution
For the past two years Expertime has worked closely with JM Bruneau and with Microsoft Services, the consulting and enterprise support division of Microsoft, to create the company’s next-generation IT infrastructure, code-named SINBAD. A team of 15, including 9 developers, is working on the project, which Expertime plans to begin rolling out in two months with introduction of the new front-end sales application for call center agents and others involved in sales. The next phases will include rolling out after-sales applications and supplier applications.
Expertime determined that JM Bruneau would best be served by a service-oriented architecture (SOA) solution created using Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008, Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server (later upgraded to Visual Studio Team System 2010), and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, (later upgraded to version 4.0). The solution was created for deployment using the Microsoft Application Platform, including the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system, Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 orchestration software, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise database software.
An important part of the project was to identify the best technology for creating and hosting the middleware services that would form the heart of the SOA solution. Called the OCEAN Enterprise Service Bus, this middleware collection of services was created using the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), an application programming interface in the Microsoft .NET Framework for building connected SOA applications; and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), a Microsoft technology for defining, executing, and managing workflows.
Windows Server AppFabric is a set of application services focused on improving the performance and management of Web and composite applications. The middleware facilitates interoperability between the newly created set of applications, BizTalk orchestrations, and the database layer.
SINBAD, when completely deployed later this year, will replace the company’s legacy IT infrastructure. “Everything will be replaced by the SOA platform we’re creating in SINBAD,” Lacroix says. “We are integrating all of the business world services and applications inside this new architecture which is based on Microsoft technology. The mainframe and mid-range servers can be retired, which will provide operational savings, and JM Bruneau will have the SOA flexibility to accommodate whatever applications it may want to create in the future.”
One of the most visible signs of the change will be the multiple-screen workstations (with 2 or 3 screens, depending on user needs) being deployed for call center agents. The earlier solution provided call center agents with a green-screen of basic customer information. The legacy database lacked the flexibility to enrich the content. Using the OCEAN Enterprise Service Bus—powered by AppFabric and the WCF and WF services—the front office applications can tap into any of the data stores to provide a rich information environment for call center agents to use when serving customers. SINBAD also provides the flexibility to accommodate all channels of doing business, and customizable processes to meet specialized needs of individual business units, as well as the ability to support multiple distribution warehouses.
Architectural Notes
AppFabric, which serves as the heart of the OCEAN Enterprise Service Bus, facilitates application access to the data stores and other technical platforms. This complete data access enabled creation of the front office applications that give call center agents and other employees what is sometimes referred to as a 360-degree view of the customer, which facilitates providing better customer service. Call center agents can instantly see all pertinent customer data, including purchasing history, shipping information, and projected needs. The 360-degree view makes it easy to provide call center agents with the information needed to offer cross-selling and up-selling opportunities to the customer, increasing sales.
“AppFabric is at the very heart of SINBAD, because AppFabric is at the heart of the OCEAN Enterprise Service Bus,” Lacroix says. “The OCEAN Enterprise Service Bus is made up of the WCF services and WF workflows we created, and AppFabric is the application server for deploying these services and workflows. All of our front-end, back-end, and IT applications go through the service bus, which is to say they all go through AppFabric. All of our applications are built on top of AppFabric.”
The SINBAD team used a model-view-controller (MVC) approach to creating its SOA solution. MVC architecture provides a development pattern based upon a model which provides a data representation relevant to the needs of the application; a view, or interface, for interacting with the data model; and a controller for mediating between the view and the model objects. “We used Microsoft development tools to create an MVC/MVP pattern to separate the business logic of our WPF composite applications from the presentation layer,” Lacroix says.
The SOA solution Expertime has created includes a number of design elements, including:
- Services hosting. The SINBAD application set is based on more than 100 services. AppFabric Hosting Services enhances the hosting of WCF and WF services and workflows in the Windows Process Activation Service (WAS) by providing a number of capabilities, including simplified deployment and management of WCF and WF services hosted in WAS, simplified configuration of persistence for durable workflows, and customizable monitoring of hosted services.
- Application monitoring. AppFabric Hosting Services makes it easy to monitor applications by capturing tracing information emitted at runtime and storing it in the monitoring database. Once captured, this information is then available in the Dashboard feature in the Windows Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 Management Console, or directly from the monitoring database. “It was essential that we were able to monitor AppFabric because it is our application server,” Lacroix says. “It’s a great relief to have monitoring built into AppFabric.”
- Caching. AppFabric Caching Services fuses memory across multiple computers to provide distributed in-memory middle-tier caching that gives a single unified cache view to applications. Scalability can be achieved by simply adding more computers on demand. AppFabric Caching Services also allows for copies of data to be stored across a cluster, protecting data against failures. Expertime sees caching as an asset in enabling JM Bruneau call center agents to immediately provide customers with the information they need.
- Persistence. To simplify the configuration of workflow persistence and to support server farm configurations, AppFabric Hosting Services provides a SQL Server-based persistence store and a SQL persistence provider that can be leveraged by any durable workflow hosted within WAS.
- Data storage. The SINBAD data layer, supported using SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, contains a number of data stores, including persistence databases, statistics databases, line-of-business databases, and databases to store meta model information (which includes all of the rules and behaviors for SINBAD) and a services catalog. SQL Server 2008 Integration Services is used for performing extract, transform, and load on information from third-party sources including the mainframe central database, Adexio purchase order management information, Générix enterprise resource planning information, and National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies statistical data.
- External orchestration. While the middle tier SOA services hosted by AppFabric provide the internal orchestration, Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 is used to orchestrate with external services.
Benefits
Creating the SOA-based SINBAD solution to replace the mainframe-based applications should help JM Bruneau see a 5 percent sales boost from enhancing the visibility its sales staff has into customer needs. AppFabric will help provide faster responses for customers, and is expected to provide a 70 percent operational savings compared to the mainframe-based solution. JM Bruneau will also gain the scalability it needs to support future growth.
5 Percent Sales Boost from Visibility
The first phase delivery of the SINBAD project includes a new sales workstation based upon a multiple-screen solution to provide a 360-degree view of the customer. The new workstation displays will let call center agents immediately see cross-selling and up-selling opportunities based upon the customer’s previous purchases, and provide information on product-relevant special offers.
“JM Bruneau anticipates seeing a 5 percent increase in sales revenue due to the additional information provided to sales agents using the new front-end screens,” Lacroix says. “One screen is focused on the customer, the second screen is focused on the current order, the third screen focuses on relevant sales promotions to provide up-selling, cross-selling, and other promotional information including the top 10 items usually ordered by the customer. We are able to access and present data in ways that wouldn’t have been possible with the old system.”
A 5 percent boost in sales would generate some $22.5 million based on JM Bruneau’s annual revenue of $450 million.
“The sales agent will now have the information they need to say: ‘Usually you also order this item, are your levels ok?’ Or they can say: “We’ve got a special promotion on this item that you might be interested in,’” Lacroix says. “We’ve now got the middleware services that are needed to give sales agents a 360-degree view of the customer.”
50 percent Faster Deployment
Expertime credits the combination of WCF, WF, and AppFabric with reducing development time. “There was a learning curve initially, but once our developers were working comfortably with the Microsoft middleware technologies such as WCF and AppFabric, we saw a 20 percent reduction in development time simply because there was less code to write,” Lacroix says. “AppFabric solved our hosting problems, and provided a monitoring solution to help with ongoing operations.”
The time savings are even greater when looking at solution deployment. “AppFabric provides an excellent application server for the WCF and WF services and workflows,” Lacroix says. “The ability to deploy our OCEAN Enterprise Service Bus using AppFabric and WCF and WF services has reduced deployment time by 50 percent.”
Earlier in the planning process, Expertime had been considering its options for hosting its SOA services. “Without AppFabric we would have needed to find a third-party solution for hosting the services,” Lacroix says. “As soon as we heard about the ‘Dublin’ code-named project that became Windows Server AppFabric we knew this would provide an essential part of our SINBAD solution. The centralized role of AppFabric in SINBAD is significant because the SOA solution we are creating with the Microsoft Application Platform will completely replace the legacy solution.”
Faster Responses for Customers
AppFabric Caching Services enables faster customer response times by storing data and services in memory. “JM Bruneau is very focused on providing a superior customer experience,” Lacroix says. “We have created our SINBAD solution to provide half-second response times for call center agents seeking information for their customers. AppFabric caching dramatically speeds the information exchange between the presentation layer and the OCEAN Enterprise Service Bus because data and services can be held in memory.”
The result is a better experience for customers and call center agents. Agents don’t have to make apologies about slow screen loads or waiting on applications to load.
SINBAD makes use of the Autostart feature of AppFabric for ensuring that services are always ready for immediate use. “Service response times are 15 times faster using Autostart, compared to waiting for a service to awaken for first use,” Lacroix says. “SINBAD uses Autostart to warm up WCF services, as well as to automatically cache underlying information and services in conjunction with the AppFabric Caching Services.”