The Small Business Competitive Advantage Strategically Positioned to Deliver Best Value and Innovation to the Enterprise

Transcription

1 An ICS White Paper ICS Nett, Inc Park Tower Drive Suite 801 Vienna, VA ics-nett.com The Small Business Competitive Advantage Strategically Positioned to Deliver Best Value and Innovation to the Enterprise Kwasi Speede, MBA Executive Vice President, ICS Thomas A. Cellucci, PhD, MBA Executive Vice President, ICS 01/20/2012

2 Contents Introduction 1 Case Study: US Census Bureau 2 Situation on the Ground 2 The ICS Solution 2 Summary 6 Introduction For the past 6 years ICS has been managing and growing a small business into an enterprise focused on a singular strategic mission; to deliver best value and innovation uniformly to all of its customers. To achieve this mission, ICS has provided thought leadership to Federal and commercial customers, both nationally and internationally. At ICS, thought leadership begins with a rigorous understanding of our clients most pressing business problems and ends with delivered services that both solve those problems and enable an evolutionary path to independence, modernization and efficiency. There is no easy path to Improving business and introducing change. Ultimately, it requires sacrifice, clarity of purpose, leadership and commitment both from the organization undergoing change and the businesses that deliver strategic IT business services in their role as change agents. The ICS team is focused on delivering best value and innovation as a change agent of client information technology through the strategic use of state of the art technologies that provide capabilities to match the mission and business context of our customer organizations. The IT market focus of ICS includes IT Transformation, Cloud Services, Enterprise Mobility and Product Development. As a well diversified small business, ICS is also delivering mission critical solutions for the Transportation industry, Telecommunications sector, Intelligence agencies and Armed Services seeking Supply Chain Logistics capabilities. ICS has a proven track record of providing cost effective information technology solutions and services to a number of customers, including the Department of Commerce U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Defense Military Health System, the Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration and Theranostics Health. The following ICS Federal IT Engagements are Case studies in the strategic application of Information Technology to deliver best value and innovation where the missions are critical and the business problem context is both dynamic and complex. The ability of ICS to perform at high levels and rapidly engage transformative strategies derives from its size as a small agile business and the process of innovation cultivated within the corporate culture. 1 February 7 th, 2012

3 Case Study: US Census Bureau Delivered Services - IT Transformation Problem Statement The Decennial Census is the Census Bureau's highest priority, and is mandated by Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The development and execution of the Decennial Census is the nation's largest peacetime workforce mobilization. By December 31 of the decennial year, the Secretary is required by law (13 U.S.C. 141) to report population counts to the President. Congress uses the population count for reapportionment of the U.S. House of Representatives. Census data is also used by the states for redistricting and is the basis for an annual distribution of $300 billion through federal funding formulas. In April 2008, delays and ballooning incumbent contract costs forced the agency to abandon its plan to use the handhelds for the Decennial Census and to revert to paper-based operations. The Census Bureau awarded the contract to ICS, a GSA Schedule Holder to continue an in-house software development capability to develop, test, deploy and support the Operations Control System (OCS) needed to conduct the 2010 Paper- Based Operations (PBO). The paper-based operation (PBO) software program cycle historically had taken 7 years to complete and consists of multiple software components, including several hundred Reports and 12 External upstream and downstream enterprise system Interfaces. ICS was given 2 years to complete all development and support nationwide operations using the production code with the requirement to field the first production release within 1 year. The software was planned for use by estimated 30,000 users across 496 nationwide local census offices to manage the activities of up to a million US Census field workers. Situation on the Ground The US Census Bureau previously built the PBO using legacy technologies including client server software solutions and C code for external interface data processing. As a result of the decision to de-scope the incumbent contractor and revert to a more than 20 year old methodology for Population enumeration, there was no available code documentation from the legacy system, nor were there formal statements of requirements for a paper-based operational control system. The System Development Life Cycle approach used for existing programs was the Waterfall approach. The method used to manage requirements included a document repository and Word Documents only. There was a legacy systems architecture available and no existing systems infrastructure on which to run the proposed development, test and production solutions. The incumbent fostered a combative culture with the client whereby changes in requirements resulted in additional costs for analysis, design and implementation. The client organization was not trained in Agility, and worked in organizational silos on a regional basis and locally on a departmental basis. Communications were time consuming and service levels between organizations were low. There was no 24/7 operational culture within the systems engineering organization and no internal processes or operating procedures for sustaining high availability systems or daily deployments to production environments. Concepts in configuration management, performance test enclaves and software promotion from development through test into production were legacy and anachronistic. The ICS Solution Program Strategy: The ICS operating budgetary strategy was to perform under budget and to manage the program delivery using fewer resources than originally awarded, reserving funding to support additional unplanned operations at the conclusion of the originally defined scope. ICS added a production operation to the Decennial Census using this approach and still remained under budget for the performance period. ICS implemented a strategy to transform the legacy IT architecture to a Service Oriented Architecture with the goal of reducing the Decennial Census life cycle and achieving significant savings in operational costs. We provided a strategy to ensure 2

4 the PBO program was implemented in a manner that helped build the foundation for the future Census Bureau Enterprise Architecture. ICS work ensured that the architecture implemented linked the mission, strategic plan, business processes, security, and governance decision-making. To accommodate the situation on the ground, ICS adapted and convened daily department wide standup management meetings, weekly program reviews for Application Development, Systems Engineering, Functional Testing, Performance Testing Training, Requirements Management, Service Desk, and External Interfaces and monthly program management review boards. Innovative Solutions Delivered: ICS developed the IT Transformation Strategy as an actionable plan to reconcile Census Field Operational Enumeration capabilities with CIO and Associate Director strategic initiatives based upon four key components: (1) security compliance; (2) information sharing; (3) compliance with regional data center consolidation; and (4) transformation from the legacy OCS to the SOA enterprise architecture. ICS delivered an innovative re-thinking of Field Operational Control business processes. The strategy developed by ICS recast these core business processes into a workflow that standardized field directorate best practices across the enterprise. ICS designed, engineered and supported all infrastructure requirements of this contract. With an application database of 8 TB of data expandable to 50 TB, ICS applications processed upwards of 7000 reports per hour and a printing load of 68,917 listing pages per hour. ICS was responsible for implementing the following as an all inclusive recipe for endto-end program success with Innovation and Best Value to the client. Hybrid Agile Development Continuous Integration Object Relational Mapping Application Development Framework Unit Testing Framework Feature Driven Development Test Driven Development Agile Project Management Automated Requirements Traceability Multi-tiered architecture Message Oriented Middleware Performance Testing Enclave Program Management Review Board Architecture Review Board Risk Review Board Project and Portfolio Management Enterprise Content Management Results and Savings The re-engineering of the Enumeration Case life-cycle enabled ICS to build a workflow-based SOA solution to manage field operations, while establishing a core framework for reuse of enterprise processing capabilities, to lower the overall cost of implementing the Decennial Census by 20 percent. Re-engineering of field operations capability into a next generation web platform enabled enumeration processing efficiencies never before imagined resulting in a 70% reduction in workforce staff across the 496 Local Census Offices. These operational efficiencies enabled the Census to save $1.87 billion in field operational costs. ICS delivered the program slightly ahead of schedule and returned 15% of the program budget back to the Government. Service Oriented Architecture Workflow Business Process Re-engineering 3

5 Case Study: Military Health System, DoD Delivered Services Cloud Infrastructure Services Problem Statement The client Program Office is responsible for the development and maintenance of 26 automated information systems used throughout the Military Health System in three major areas: clinical support, medical logistics and resources. The client goals include capitalizing on best practices resulting in reduced time to market, economies of scale and improved product quality. The client products help detect and contain the spread of disease across the world, manage the delivery of drugs and medical supplies around the world and track billions of dollars annually in healthcare services to 9.6 million beneficiaries. The client systems not only support medical clinicians through direct patient-provider relationship, but also population health, medical surveillance, clinical decision support, and force health protection for all deployed service members. 4 regional Data Centers currently host backend database, Web, and application servers for a variety of applications in a central Data Center construct, providing primary and disaster recovery Data Center facility operations and support services for MHS central system components. Currently multiple vendors operate and manage independent, stand-alone development and test environments within multiple contractor owned and/or DISA Data Center facilities. These disparate environments support software and include the various elements required for continued application development, testing deployment and sustainment. It is the Government s objective to physically co-locate, operate, and maintain common development environments (CDE) within the data center that are managed and supported by modernized and standardized processes. Situation on the Ground The client program office and its local teams did not have experience implementing Cloud solutions. The client program office Performance Work Statement was written with a strong conceptual framework for co-location services and lacked a depth of understanding about Virtualization and Cloud Services. The client acquisitions and procurement procedures did not match the mission or the rigorous timelines of the program customers. The client culture was hierarchical in structure and process. Application owners were resistant to change and the processes by which their development and test practices would become further scrutinized by other contractors within new data center. Standard Operating Procedures did not exist for the level of security and compliance needed to ensure regulations were adhered to within the context of the services that were proscribed by the Cloud Services Integrator. The client program office sought to predetermine the components of the cloud solution and establish these as requirements. Delays in procurement dollars manifested due to the Government operating under a continuing resolution. The ICS Solution Program Strategy: ICS delivered detailed program startup activities in the form of a Startup Plan, and proscribed the high level roadmap for the ICS technical solution. ICS delivered Data Center consolidation service capabilities that include monitoring, management, operations, maintenance, and support services for the Development and Test Center. This work is performed on systems hosted within a remote data center facility. ICS provides the following management services and support. Day-to-day operations of all systems Day-to-day operations for all applications Operations for networks, and environments Systems management Systems, application, and database administration Environment configuration Environment monitoring and management Support services for all applications within MHS 4

6 ICS delivered comprehensive design, installation and integration services for multiple management systems comprised of management infrastructure hardware and software, as well as the automatic provisioning and management of customer environments to satisfy all development and testing infrastructure, OS level and application stack level requirements. Innovative Solutions Delivered: The ICS Solution combines the use of leading edge software management tools and technologies, and industry best practice management concepts to provide unparalleled automation for managing and servicing the applications contained within the scope of the Development and Test Center. Our services enable the consolidation, migration, and support of all development and test systems, employed in the Military Health System. This includes delivering a comprehensive group of services to enable application developers across MHS to transition their existing development and testing environments to a private cloud. We have designed and delivered service catalogs that include a variety of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings to support a wide range of application development and testing requirements. Using the MHS Strategic Plan as a foundation, ICS has matched our solution approach to a broad range of customer requirements to deliver flexible, on demand cloud computing services. The ICS solution dynamically provisions resources to create development and Test sandboxes. The ICS solution snapshots the entire state of an development or test environment and stores it as a configuration version. All key infrastructure tasks are automated and available as self service data center functions using an Orchestration engine, CMDB, and scheduler capability. ICS provides 24/7 continuous monitoring and 24/7 reporting capabilities for compliance with the latest STIG and IA requirements. Our Cloud services solution runs a fully virtualized infrastructure for management of resources and application provisioning and is capable of supporting multiple versions of Operating Systems including HP UX, Linux and Windows. Resources are managed across virtual machines. ICS also provisions bare metal boxes and leverages resource pooling to ensure efficiencies and agility with servicing stakeholder needs. The ICS solution includes SAN storage for the Virtual image libraries. Results and Savings The ICS solutions team developed an advanced template solution that enables the abstraction of the individual application environment, providing accelerated service delivery and higher degrees of accuracy in managing individual configuration items from the application context. ICS is demonstrating how to Increase utilization rates up to 80%, and with the Data Center virtualization effort is attaining up to 70% higher VM density per host than is possible when compared to commodity offerings. Consequently we are on target to achieve up to 30% lower costs perapplication over the life of our program. A major challenge encountered in this engagement is the complete modernization of existing development and test environments through a systematic migration of those environments from existing platforms to a cloud infrastructure. The cloud capabilities provide full dynamic, self-service provisioning of new environments as development and test teams require those assets to complete their work. Within the program, ICS is ensuring that continuous process improvement is being adapted and has established a myriad of ITIL based processes and related SOPs. ICS is currently engaged in maintaining these processes and SOPs within a BPM Suite that enables effective collaboration among stakeholders. We have also undertaken and implemented Six Sigma based process improvements for the program to effectively manage process improvements with necessary visibility, to increase compliance and best practice awareness within the organization. 5

7 Summary As a small business ICS has proven its uniquely capability for leveraging the highest levels of innovation and delivering significant best value to its clients. Our value proposition includes a unique combination of Financial Management strength (DCAA Audited, GSA Green Report Card), a corporate culture of relentless performance in the face of challenge, and a process of learning client culture and responding with adaptability in the face of on the ground realities. ICS utilizes a depth of understanding for building client partnerships based on shared commitment, collaboration and synergy. Our strategic partnerships include VMWare, Dell, CollabNet, BMC, IBM, VeriSign, CSC, Deloitte, DLT Solutions and SAIC. At ICS we possess a highly differentiated business profile that results in our team being strategically positioned to deliver on its singular focus to solve mission critical business problems. About ICS ICS, a certified 8(a), Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) and DBE firm, is headquartered in Vienna, VA. With more than 150 professionals nationwide, ICS is a leading provider of innovative technologies and solutions for the Intelligence, IT, Telecommunications, Transportation and Defense Logistics communities. ICS is a certified Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI Maturity Level II) practitioner, utilizing standard best practices such as the PMBOK and Agile Development Methodology to strengthen the maturity of our services and our overall performance. We combine carefully selected best practices and a refined agile methodology, with a missiondriven management approach, in order to build a unified team that delivers real-time operational capabilities, within the context of long-term strategic objectives. 6