Get Homework/Assignment Done

Homeworkping.com

Homework Help

https://www.homeworkping.com/

Research Paper help

https://www.homeworkping.com/

Online Tutoring

https://www.homeworkping.com/

click here for freelancing tutoring sites

Chapter 7- Closing Case Study 1

International Truck Makes a Huge Bet On a Service Oriented Architecture

Introduction

In 2006 International Truck was one of the first major

corporations to implement service orientated architecture, referred to as

SOA’s. SOA focuses on the development, use, and reuse of small self-

contained blocks of code to meet future application software needs in a

dynamic environment.(Stephen Haag, 2010) This case study will focus on

how International Truck implements SOA’s within its dealer network, what

advantages and efficiencies they hope to gain by using SOA’s, how new

software models will integrated within existing ones, which infrastructure-

centric metrics will be used to justify the application of SOA’s, and what

would be the business continuity plan for major IT components in the event

of a disaster or extended disruption.

In addition to meeting future application software needs, SOA’s can

take advantage of resources in the most efficient and effective manner.

Furthermore, SOA’s reacts quickly and proactively to perceived changes in

the market. SOA’s are bound by very few structural constraints to respond

quickly and adapt to new advances in technology. Also it transforms it

processes, structure, and HR initiatives in a dynamic environment. This case

study will focus on SOA components such as customer and software

development. One of the primary goals of an SOA is to allow “your

organization to provide customers with multi-channel service delivery

options and customizable products and services.”(Stephen Haag, 2010).

Customers require the ability to plug-and-play into any communication

channel with your company. It is essential for International Truck to expand

into software development of extreme programming (XP).

Navistar is a global manufacturer of commercial trucks, military

vehicles, diesel engines, and school and commercial school busses. Navistar

has also entered joint manufacturing agreements with manufacturing firms

Magindra of India and Tatra of France. With global operations center located

in two countries and three states, IT centers are employing several hundred

IT employees and handling 16,500 jobs each day (Navistar , 2012).

Problem Statement

This case study seeks to answer the following questions:

1. With respect to its customers (dealers in this case), how is

international Truck using a service-oriented architecture to

meet their needs? How does using an SoA further help

International Truck erect an entry barrier (from Chapter 1)?

2. With respect to information needs, what advantages and

efficiencies is international Truck hoping to gain by using a

service-oriented architecture? Why are these advantages and

efficiencies not possible with its current legacy system?

3. Recalling our discussion of software development

methodologies in Chapter 6 that focus on component-based

development (i.e., RAD, XP, and agile), how is international

Truck able to integrate new software modules with existing

ones?

4. What key infrastructure-centric metrics could International

Truck use to justify its movement toward a service-oriented

architecture? For each that you identify, provide a short

description of why the metric is important.

5. How important is it for International Truck to have a good

business continuity plan is place? What key IT systems and

other IT resources do you believe would be at the top of the list

for quick recovery? Why?

Areas of Consideration

Strength Weaknesses Low follow-up costs Very flexible architecture Compliance with

standards Autonomous systems

High start up infrastructure costs

Threats Opportunities With high transfer

volumes, there is the risk of a performance of bottleneck, if it is not separated from normal traffic

Individual systems can be integrated or replaced easily

Alternative Courses of Action

1. Navistar found numerous problems in their legacy system architecture. Those problems included the inability to track truck production in real time or flag anything that went wrong. There were also excessive defects and returns, along with, bottleneck in shortfall and parts production. Another major issue is that isolated data and information sharing and commercial ERP software was no compatible. Art Data, Vice president of International’s IT department stated, “it’s

not so much embracing a framework is do you have a need”(Murphy,2006).

In seeking an internal solution to the problem, Navistar created the Common Vehicle Tracking System in order to save $3 million a year in profit. This system focused on tracking production according to a specific vehicle or vehicle type in near real time.

Navistar’s IT technicians created an SOA application called International Aware. One of the main goals of this new system is to combine vehicle electronics systems, GPS and cellular technology to send truck owners information on where vehicles are and what they’re doing. Another benefit is that “Geo-fencing managers can request an alert if a vehicle goes off course” (Murphy, 2006).

Navistar’s customers have specifically needs for their vehicles and may keep them in their fleet for decades. In addition, Navistar’s 400 dealers were allowed to choose their own internal management software systems to access parts, catalogs and sales tools. To provide their customers more flexibility, Navistar delivered an external solution of the Online Truck Configurator (OTC). This allows them to see which options are available with each vehicle. Instead of ordering vehicles based solely on options, dealers can now configure trucks in priority of their technical features, their trade application solutions, and transport tasks. By implementing the aforementioned software applications Navistar has erected an entry barrier by becoming a first mover in SOA application.

2. Service Oriented Architecture has opened many doors in terms of advantages and efficiencies. Some of the advantages of SOA software are in-field diagnostics and repairs by downloadable software applications, and language translators to communicate with their international partners. In-field SOA diagnostic software has provided many advantages to military and long-haul truck drivers. The ability to track, diagnose, and provide software updates to vehicles in remote locations such as Afghanistan has improved vehicle in-service availability and has substantially decreased the time waiting for replacement parts. Also, a language translator SOA application has made the transfer of Navistar military vehicles to Iraqi and Afghan soldiers more efficient.

One of the primary issues with International Trucks’ legacy system is that it “stored isolated data and information in applications such as computer-aided manufacturing, in-house developed order

management, and even commercial ERP software.” (Stephen Haag,2010).

3. International uses the extreme programming (XP) methodology, which is breaking projects into tiny phases and programmers cannot continue until the current phase is complete. One of the reasons for XP success is that it emphasizes customer satisfaction. XP empowers developers to responds to changing customer and business requirements, even in the late stages of the system’s development cycle, and emphasizes teamwork. The XP methodology supports quickly being able to solicit and incorporate user feedback. The XP methodology phases include planning, analysis, design, development, testing, implementation, and maintenance. To integrate XP into their legacy systems, Navistar developers built two Java EE-Based interfaces to a homegrown order management system, which was then integrated into the Baan ERP System. The next step was to extend the new SOA interfaces to their customers and trading partners. The primary benefit of XP methodology is to allow Navistar to swap out software applications with little or no disruption to current legacy systems.

By integrating the new software with older versions that employees are already familiar with, they can make the business boom. It is a lot easier than "plunging" directly into a new software system that can cause a lot of unwanted problems.

4. One of the metrics that could be used would be system availability. International Truck's previous IT systems didn't share information easily. The SoA allowed information to flow much easier to and from different departments and systems, resulting in less problems and errors in areas such as manufacturing.

Another key infrastructure-centric metrics that could be used by International Truck to justify a SOA scalability, accuracy, system availability, and through put. These would be justified by the problem in shortfalls in inventory, excessive defects and returns, more timely information on assembly-plant problems, and the lack of easily shared information by their current system,.

Scalability is defined by how well a system can adapt to increase

demands. This is important to any corporation that wishes to expand

its operations on a global scale.

Throughput is the amount of information that can pass through a

system in a given amount of time. As the size of an organization

increases, the system must be available to handle the increased

amount of information generated.

System availability is usually measured inversely as downtime, or the

average amount of time a system is down and unavailable to end

users and customers. A system must be available to all members of

the value chain at any given time. The industry standard is the

99.999%.

Response time is the average time to respond to a user event, such as

a request for report. “International Truck’s SOA resulted from needing

more timely information so it could identify assembly-plant problems

sooner” (Stephen Haag, 2010).

They are using scalability because their new system they put in place has now increased their demands. Customers have more access to the products at hand. It has also made it cheaper and has saved them over three million dollars.

5. “Business Continuity Planning is defined as a step-by-step guideline defining how the organization will recover from a disaster or extended disruption”(Stephen Haag, 2010). Having a good business continuity plan serves as a bases for getting an organization back up to speed after a disaster or a disruption in production. All systems including Supply Chain M, ERP, and CRM are all vital to the operation of the IT infrastructure. This included SOA and electronic data

interchanges (EDI). Navistar International is fortunate to have many hot sites in place. Although the organizational Information Technology Office is located in Downers Grove, IL, they have back up hot site in the Computer Technology center in Brookfield, WI.

A good business continuity plan in place serves as the basis for getting back up to speed after a downfall or halt of production. It is necessary and important to have it or else no one will know what to do. 

To create a more robust business continuity plan, Navistar International entered a service level agreement with IBM. This contract IBM will transform Navistar’s IT environment by providing data center relocation, server and storage management, physical data support, and utilization of IBM server and storage technology. IBM will also provide disaster recovery service, as well as a help desk and distributive observation support at Navistar’s locations throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

A quick recovery needs a high-speed software system that can integrate with others to get back up to speed with the entire company and get business booming again.

Conclusion and Recommendation

The competitive nature of today’s dynamic business environment requires organizations to find way to differentiate themselves from competitors. Service Orientated Architecture offers an avenue for organizations to make significant changes to the legacy system, without disrupting their IT infrastructure. As a result of International Trucks’ investment in SOA, operations are now enhanced and can run efficiently. Furthermore, SOA’s enables organizations to track near real time production, in-field diagnostics, repairs by downloadable software and applications, and language translators. Art Data, VP of Navistar’s IT, said that, “I don’t think we know all the doors we’re going to open with this,” (Murphy, 2006).

Chapter 7- Closing Case Study 2

Denver Health Operates with a Private Cloud and Thin Clients

Along with its main hospital, Denver Health operates the 911 emergency medical services response system for Denver, 12 clinics based in the Denver Public Schools, the Rocky Mountain Poison Drug Center, and eight family health centers, that’s a big organization with substantial technology needs.

Denver Health faced a problem of lost time incurred by physicians and nurses upon entering a patient’s room and having to log on to a computer. Even though Greg Veltri, Denver Health’s CIO, had procedures and processes in place to keep patient-room computers as new as possible and to refresh those computers often to rid them of spyware, adware, and other inhibitors of performance, log-on time was still about two minutes. If you multiply those two minutes throughout the day by the number of doctor visits to rooms, Denver Health calculated that it was losing almost $4 million annually in physician lost time.

So, Gregg turned to a solution called ThinIdentity. ThinIdentity utilizes a thin client – basically a high-quality monitor, mouse, and keyboard – in each patient room. All processing and information storage are maintained in Denver Health’s private cloud. These thin clients (Sun Rays) need to be upgraded only every eight years, instead of the typical two to three years for a PC. Further, each Sun Ray costs only $600, a fraction of the price for a full-blown PC.

Equally important is the sign-on procedure doctors and nurses use now. Upon arriving at work each day, a doctor or nurse signs onto a single station (Sun Ray terminal or a PC in an office), which takes about one minute, by inserting a smart card and then providing a log-on name and password. The doctor or nurse then removes the smart card, which logs off the session at that station, but leaves the session active in the cloud for the doctor or nurse. When entering a patient’s room during the day, the doctor or nurse needs only to insert the smart card and provide the log-on name and password to reactivate the session that is still active in the cloud. This process takes only 5 or 10 seconds.

ThinIdentity takes advantage of a concept called virtual location awareness (VLA). VLA maps each room to each patient according to Denver Health’s transaction processing system. When a nurse or doctor enter a specific room and reactivates his/her session in the cloud, VLA recognizes the room and immediately pulls up that patient’s information within that doctor’s or nurse’s session. This saves even more time. In total, the ThinIdentity-based system has saved Denver Health an estimated $5.7 million.

The savings are presented below.

- One-Time Savings

o $1.2 million reduction of desktop replacements

o $300,000 reduction of desktop resource needs

- Annual Savings

o $135,000 reduction of energy needs (Sun Rays use much less energy than traditional desktop computers)

o $56,000 reduction in help desk calls

o $250,000 reduction in full-time employees operating the help desk

o $3.7 million reduction in physician log-on time

Introduction

Cloud computing has been a tremendous source of cash savings for Denver Hospital. It has saved hours of log in time and also been cost effective. It is an important question whether the public cloud can help the hospital grow and serve as a protection for Denver Health’s private cloud. Since we are dealing with a health facility, it is critical to maintain the confidentiality of the patients involved.

When disaster strikes, and data seems “lost,” the cloud can help in a less costly way than having servers at a separate site. Data on the cloud is delivered through a web portal belonging to a cloud service provider. The only expense is that of the resources consumed. Denver health would be benefitting from the public cloud in two ways: from the computing capacity and also from the storage aspect, both on a private level. In case of a disaster, the data desired would be ready and available for processing and manipulating as needed. Overall, the future of cloud computing and storage is a strong and solid one. Denver Health should be aware of not entering a long-term agreement with a cloud provider. A benefit of cloud storage is that you can switch companies if a better deal becomes available. The information is not locked to one carrier, if a firm decides to switch. Additionally, in order to minimize a recovery phase, the hospital should be sure to use a cloud provider that has a fast recovery phase. Much research should be done before any major decision is made, but there are definitely solid reasons to use the public cloud as a backup for Denver Health’s private cloud.

Problem Statement

1. Privacy laws and regulations require medical facilities to take measurable steps to ensure the confidentiality of patient information. From the case study, can you tell what Denver Health has done to ensure the confidentiality of its patient information?

2. Think about your school. How could it use the ThinIdentity solution to support the technology needs of 1) faculty and 2) students such as yourself?

3. In thinking about cloud computing (focusing on the public cloud), what role could it play in business continuity planning for Denver Health? That is, how could the public cloud act as a backup for Denver Health's private cloud?

4. If Denver Health were to give each patient a smart card, log-on name, and password, which functions, features, and information could benefit patients? What security would have to be in place to ensure that patients have access to only their own information?

5. How could Denver Health extend the ThinIdentity solution beyond its brick-an-mortal walls? How would it work (i.e., need to change) to have doctors and nurses log on from home or use a mobile device such as a Blackberry or iPhone?

6. The reduction in physical log-in time is efficiency metric. What are some effectiveness metrics that could justify Denver Health's use of ThinIdentity?

Areas of Consideration

Alternative Courses of Action

1. Denver Health did create security measures to ensure that only the proper people can access the information. Doctors and nurses when they first arrive to work they sign on by inserting a smart card which contains that doctors or nurses credentials, once the smart card is inserted the end user still also has to supply their login and password. The help ensures that if a card is lost or stolen a random person or a different doctor or nurse is not able to use and look at other patient information.All processing and information storage are maintained in Denver Health's multi-tenancy private cloud and the use of smart card, log-on name and password.  

2. It can help institutions allocate consumption of resources (chargeback) by different services or departments to better prioritize IT spend. By taking advantage of the private cloud across servers, desktops, and applications, education institutions can:

-          reduce cost. Help reduce physical server sprawl and total cost of ownership of hardware

-          simplify desktop management. Provide optimal desktop solutions for different user needs, while reducing IT complexity

-          improve access to applications. Help increase academic institution agility through on-demand access to applications, and enable anywhere access for students and faculty

-          integrate technologies. Minimize application and OS compatibility issues. 

For student, ThinIdentity can help to facilitate the dynamic learning, teaching, and research activities in a university. It centralized the computing and storage resources, this gives a great convenience to schools and department across university to self-provision computing environment, enable lecturers and students to easily access to the necessary information immediately and efficiently.

Both students and faculty could use it for quick access to student records. As a student I could then see if what classes are open, if any are available to audit, etc. all from the thin client. It would also allow for the faculty to have greater manageability in terms of sharing or disseminating information such as news, announcements and events.

3. The public cloud could be used as a disaster recovery solution for Denver Health’s private cloud. Denver Health could work with a public cloud provider such as VADS Berhad to create a backup cloud. 

Denver health would be benefitting from the public cloud in two ways: from the computing capacity and also from the storage aspect, both on a private level. The public cloud could be an option for Denver Health’s business continuity planning. The public cloud could be used as a tool or backup solution for Denver Health’s private cloud. Denver Health could work with a company such as Amazon Web Service or AWS to create a backup cloud. In the case that all of Denver Health’s assets go down, they would then still be able to access their information that they worked with Amazon in putting into the public cloud. They can also work with Amazon and their public cloud with a collocation facility. This would allow for

Denver Health to still be able to access information on the chance that something catastrophic happens at their data center.

When disaster strikes the company, and data “lost,” the public cloud can help in a less costly way than having servers at a separate site. Data on the cloud is delivered through a web portal belonging to a cloud service provider. The only expense is that of the resources consumed. This is how public cloud act as a backup for Denver Health’s private cloud.

Overall, the future of cloud computing and storage is a strong and solid one. Denver Health should be aware of not entering a long-term agreement with a cloud provider. A benefit of cloud storage is that you can switch companies if a better deal becomes available. The information is not locked to one carrier, if a firm decides to switch. Additionally, in order to minimize a recovery phase, the hospital should be sure to use a cloud provider that has a fast recovery phase. Much research should be done before any major decision is made, but there are definitely solid reasons to use the public cloud as a backup for Denver Health’s private cloud.

4. Patients can access their medical records and the doctors can communicate timely with patients about their health status for appropriate treatment and diagnosis.

In order to secure that patients access only their information, Denver Health should consider the following:

• Individual authentication of users • Access controls • Tracking of access and changes to records • Protection of remote communications links and access • Limited data sets • Data use agreements• Procedures for access to sensitive information in emergency situations • Providing patients access to and ability to amend information • Communication of privacy practices • Organizational approaches to fostering privacy and security awareness

Patients would be able to look at their own personal patient history such as office visits, test results, prescriptions, anything that is related to that patient. Patients could also then utilize the tool to see if and when their doctor is going to be in the office and try to schedule a visit. Denver Health could also take it one step further and allow for patients and the doctors to interact. With a patients history right there if a patients is asking questions or looking at symptoms doctors would

be better able to diagnose for minor ailments not requiring an office visit from the patient. 

There would still have to be security measures in place. Each user would have to have their login and password. This would be similar to what is in place with online banking. Many customers bank, but with their login information they are only able to access their own accounts and not another customers.

5. Denver Health can access patient’s medical information remotely out of Denver Health’s premises through the use of the public cloud over the Internet and the use of web browser to access online web-based portal. 

Denver Health could expand ThinIdentity outside of its brick-and-mortar walls; Denver Health could expand their solution to users with Smart phones. If ThinIdentity is going to be utilized on a Smartphone Denver Health is going to have to create an application that allows for only registered users to access, or create a VPN connection on the device and then only be able to access ThinIdentity from behind the VPN.

6. Effectiveness metrics measure results of the technology or application of ThinIdentity. Measuring things such as the number of new patients registered, length of time a patient stay active, number of medicine stock outs and excess inventory, etc,

I think Denver Health could take a look at employee satisfaction as one of their metrics. It will be essential that the nurses, doctors and everyone else who is using ThinIdentity has a positive view of it. If ThinIdentity is well liked the users are going to be more inclined to use it the way that Denver Health wants them to. 

Denver Health will also want to look at how ThinIdentity impacts their long-term objectives. Has the implementation created better patient care, is Denver Health realizing more dollars per patient, or doctors seeing more patients.

Conclusion and Recommendations

According to Nicholas Carr, IT has started to become less prominent and mattered less to the competitive edge. History reveals that IT needs to become ordinary: “; needs to lose its strategic importance as a differentiator among the companies so as to fulfil its potential” (Carr 2004). From the vendors perspective, cloud computing has proved to be disruptive in nature

and a substitute for the own-hosted hardware infrastructure. This has posed a serious threat to the established firms who were market leaders in the traditional server business. These players are increasingly getting into cloud domain and have started to provide cloud services to the customers. 

Private cloud service makes a lot of sense to bigger companies because it is based on a model where they run their own servers and infrastructure. The idea of controlling your own infrastructure and only allow workers within the same firewall to access all the content from the private cloud makes it comfortable to use for larger companies. Connectivity is often done through a secure VPN connection and there are many encryptions that keep anyone else from accessing the network.

Public cloud service does offer a lot of security measures, but some companies just won’t be too open to sharing the public cloud infrastructure with other companies. Private cloud also ensures there is in-house management accountability of the cloud service, which is ideal in larger organizations.

However, from my point of view, this system can lead to security and confidentiality issues if the system is not well secured and if Denver Health doesn't have a reliable relation with its cloud supplier (Microsoft).