Integration Maturity Model Capability #5: Infrastructure and Operations How improving integration supplies greater agility, cost savings, and revenue opportunity TAKE THE INTEGRATION MATURITY SELFASSESSMENT The TIBCO Integration Maturity Model was created using 20 years of integration experience and more than 4,000 integration platform deployments. Using the integration maturity online self-assessment model, you can compare your integration platform and organization with best practices, assess a breadth of capabilities, and decide which of these will deliver the most value for your organization: Connectivity Simple Integration Complex Integration Event Enablement Operations Organization and Governance Companies with mature integration capabilities have significant advantages over their competition, which include: Lower cost for development and maintenance of applications and other infrastructure Less time needed for implementation of new technology Preparedness for common initiatives like supply chain integration and implementing software as a service (SaaS) applications Our online interactive integration maturity model (IMM) is a self-assessment tool that evaluates maturity for six integration capabilities. This whitepaper summarizes the self-assessments of hundreds of companies from the fifth section of the survey, Infrastructure and Operations, and offers suggestions for those wanting to improve their integration capabilities and increase the advantages they receive from it.
WHITEPAPER 2 INTEGRATION YESTERDAY... A few years ago, the criteria for choosing an integration platform was more its ability to provide quality of service rather than support connectivity or fast development. In those days, each integration project had unique requirements, and the value of the project usually needed to be rapidly proven. In addition, integration usually meant making several solutions work together as opposed to just one. This situation resulted in a wide variety of technologies, but a narrow palette of options for addressing new integration challenges. Only small variations of already addressed use cases could be implemented. This infrastructure was sufficient for a time, but companies soon began standardizing on a limited number of technologies. Customers and employees began connecting directly to applications or through just one channel, and with just a few partners and highly standardized exchanges, the needs and criteria for integration platforms changed. INFRASTRUCTURE AND OPERATIONS The Infrastructure and Operations axis of the Integration Maturity Model measures how an organization controls its integration technologies from installation to monitoring. Depending on the technology used and the skills of the operations team, setting up the infrastructure can seriously impact time to results for integration projects. If not planned properly, scaling can impact customer experience, prevent reuse of the integration platform, and become very costly. Because integration platforms are used with other technologies (not in isolation), managing them with the same tools as other enterprise technologies or platforms can lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). All along the project lifecycle, the supporting architecture and the ability of the organization to operate the integration platform impacts the value that can be derived. The average score based on hundreds of companies for all infrastructure and operations capabilities is 2.3 out of a possible 5.0. INSTALLATION It starts with the installation of the platform. Because platforms are sometimes first used on smaller projects to prove they can deliver value, this step is sometimes skipped and managed manually. But the ability to automatically install a fully configured environment (or a subset of an environment) helps provision environments on demand, start projects immediately, and scale them exactly when needed. Most companies still use scripts, which do not include technology configuration, to install each component. (The average score for the ability to install a new integration platform or extend an existing one without manual intervention is 2.04 out of a possible 5.0.) This approach prevents quickly adding a preconfigured environment for a new project or for scalability. It also prevents installing applications as one component (that would include several technologies such as application server, database, and integration platform). Self Assessment Installation Enterprise Monitoring 4 3 2 Configuration and Administration 1 0 Security Deployment High Availability Scalability
WHITEPAPER 3... AND TODAY Fast-forward to now, where the scope and importance of integration has completely changed. Today, we augment business capabilities by leveraging standard SaaS applications while we continue developing custom applications. The information about your services that you expose to customers is now as important as the services themselves because a rich ecosystem of partners is readily available who can further leverage that information, provided they can be easily onboarded. Today, integrating SaaS, custom, and partner applications is a requirement, but it is not differentiating. These days, an organization differentiates by combining business capabilities in a unique way. For example, many companies are analyzing data in motion and at rest, developing insights based on fast analysis of this data, using this knowledge to write relevant business rules, then applying those rules to respond very quickly to data in motion. Typical goals for this type of innovation are stickier user experiences and improved business operations. AXIS Installation 2.04 Configuration and Administration 2.73* Deployment 2.73 Scalability 2.05* High Availability 2.47* Security 2.40 Enterprise Monitoring 2.10* AVERAGE SCORES *Based on a series of questions. The average scores from hundreds of respondents to the IMM Self-Assessment Tool. CONFIGURATION AND ADMINISTRATION Once installed, the integration platform has to be configured to comply with its environment. Configuration items include technical components (messaging or database server), as well as the platform s own configuration (logging level, number of jobs, etc.). Given the distributed nature of many integration platforms, configuration needs to be done at once. Most organizations use a web interface (custom or provided by the platform) to manage configuration, but this method leaves the choice of parameters to the user who may not choose correctly. (The average score for the ability to define and manage the configuration is 3.04.) Automating configuration updates using scripts that are based on a configuration template provides a much faster alternative and prevents user errors. This template-based approach also takes into account that one configuration will not apply across the organization. For business or regulatory reasons, processing may be separated in various environments using various configurations. Many organizations resolve this issue by creating separate physical environments at the risk of duplicating efforts and multiplying costs. (The average score for the ability to manage different environments or business domains, potentially on the same hardware, is 2.43.) DEPLOYMENT Integration processes are rarely deployed in isolation; they need to be synchronized with other deployments or at least their configuration changed, and most organizations still manage these deployments via a web interface. (The average score for the ability to automate deployments is 2.7.) While this is practical for small integration projects, it is not ideal for projects with many services, or for services that need to be updated on-the-fly such as those for mobile applications. Deployments, especially for new versions, require an accurate choreography that includes their configuration. Any exceptions need to be captured, and the process roll backed or adapted. Requiring users to act within this process increases the cost and complexity of deployment, especially for testing, which is often performed outside of business hours.
WHITEPAPER 4 NEW INTEGRATION PLATFORM CRITERIA Providing the right foundation for innovation not only requires making the right technological choice but also building the right integration capabilities in terms of technology, architecture, operations, and organization. When designed the right way, an integration platform can open doors to new capabilities that include: Abstracting: Consuming information from applications whether internal or external via a standard interface, which is unrelated to the technology or the application s data model. Abstraction enables easily acquiring and using data from many sources. Decoupling: Using information provided by other applications without direct dependency. Decoupling lets you onboard or retire systems without impacting other systems. Exposing: Using the data from any application inside or outside the firewall in a totally controlled and secure way. Orchestrating: Combining data from all systems in net new logic that provides differentiating and innovative services. Leveraging: Spreading the features and benefits of your integration platform across the entire enterprise. By building the right skills and tools, you can continue to gain value from your investment by addressing similar use cases with the same platform. Reusing: Using services and applications in more than one project, reducing time to results. Industrializing: Ensuring short turnaround times and relevant quality of service matched to requirements. SCALABILITY After integration processes are deployed, the scalability of the platform plays a very important role in the value that can be realized from integration initiatives. By adding more integration processes, and by sharing information that has already been integrated without expanding the platform, you increase the return on your investment. The platform is not the only element that must scale: integration processes must also. Mobile or web services can have significant fluctuations in traffic, and because they are customer facing they must scale to prevent degrading the user experience through latency or even worse, lack of response. To address these needs, most organizations use a load balancing mechanism, which adds nodes to sustain performance, but does not address seasonal peak traffic or processes that may not be needed for long periods of time. (The average score for the ability to balance load and add engines if necessary without impacting services is 2.27.) This coarse-grained scalability can prove very costly when part of the infrastructure is oversized just to handle rare peak loads. It consumes budget that could be used to deliver value to other integrations. Yet, the coarse-grained approach is the way most organizations monitor and manage scalability, by measuring the performance of applications and services to identify when they are about to breach a service level agreement. Scaling/descaling is not automated, a situation that creates delay and potentially more errors. (The average score for the ability to elastically and automatically add and suppress integration engines to sustain latency times or SLAs is 1.86.) HIGH AVAILABILITY Performance is not the only requirement for a great customer experience. The availability of the platform is also crucial. Because they are deployed on and connected to fallible resources, integration platforms are exposed to exceptions and faults. To support critical processes, they must have at least the same level of availability as the applications they support. This is probably why most organizations rely on software or hardware clusters to ensure high-availability of integration platforms. (The average score for the ability to manage failover is 2.68.) But while clusters are proven technology, they are extremely costly and dramatically increase TCO. The effect is that the cost of entry is so high that small integration projects cannot justify the expense and use other technologies or custom coding. But just as with scalability, you need to consider both high availability and the resilience of integration processes. When the platform has a fault, you can allow it keep on running, but it s another matter to make sure that process instances keep running, too. This is a complex decision because those instances might affect other applications or execute critical transactions. In case of a fault, most organizations have chosen to rollback instances, a very costly and time-consuming approach that often relies on defining and maintaining complex compensation logic. It also means that the initiating application must resubmit its data. If it was a mobile application, this might not be possible, but if it is, the customer experience would probably not be a good one. (The average score for the ability to manage the resilience of integration processes and restart them even though the engine they were running on had an issue is 2.27.)
WHITEPAPER 5 SECURITY Because integration processes contain critical information, they also need to be secure. Most organizations secure data when it enters their information system. (The average score for the ability to manage security and apply security standards to integration processes is 2.4.) While efficient, this practice proves costly because each integration service needs to be adapted to the appropriate level of security or to the originators of the request. This approach generates additional costs and prevents reusing some services. The issue goes beyond the integration platform because application services need to be secured with the same policies to ensure end-to-end coherence and security. ENTERPRISE MONITORING The key to flawless IT operations is constantly monitoring applications and their infrastructure to identify and hopefully anticipate issues. Organizations have skilled teams leveraging monitoring technologies 24x7. Given the fact that integration supports business processes, feeds data to applications, and provides awareness to teams throughout the organization, it is essential to know the state of its health at all times. This is what most organizations do, but only with the tool provided by their integration platform. (The average score for the ability to monitor the health of the integration platform components is 2.17.) If you don t have centralized monitoring for integration processes and applications, you won t have end-to-end visibility. Your reaction to any issue will be slower and much less informed. You could have integration experts watching the integration platform, and another team trying to understand why application processes are stalled. End-to-end visibility captured by enterprise monitoring systems can also be very beneficial to integration processes. With an end-to-end view that indicates an application is down, for example, integration processes can alter their behavior and avoid generating thousands of exceptions. Nevertheless, most organizations just feed this information to the integration platform monitoring tool, leaving the integration operations team to decide how to adapt processes, that is, if they can do more than just stop them. (The average score for the ability to use information from enterprise monitoring systems to manage alerts for integrated applications or resources and also to adapt integration processes is 2.04.) CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPROVING INFRASTRUCTURE AND OPERATIONS Automate Integration Platform Installation and Configuration. Even if it s currently used for small projects, automating installation and configuration of your integration platform will enforce standards and best practices. Doing so will reduce the time to provision an environment, ease the maintenance of those environments (since they ll all have the same configuration), and reduce errors. Support Domains at the Application Level. Using the same pool of hardware (physical, virtual, or cloud) and sharing it across environments will reduce TCO. It can help reduce the costs of non-productive yet mandatory environments (test, QA) or satisfy various needs within a multitenant architecture. Automate Deployment via Scripts. Scripts that can be controlled, tested, and synchronized with other updates can also be integrated natively for a continuous integration solution, one that fully industrializes integration projects from development, to testing, to deployment.
WHITEPAPER 6 Ensure Configuration, Deployment, and Fine-Grained Monitoring of Integration Processes. Doing so will ensure that you can scale a particular process without having to scale your whole infrastructure. This approach will help both sustain a great quality of service when it matters and keep costs in check. The benefit is also in the automation of the approach. When thresholds of specific performance metrics are crossed, beyond sending an alert, the platform can deploy additional instances to handle the load and then release them when the situation is back to normal. The fact everything happens automatically ensures immediate reaction, hence no impact on your business. Use an Integration Platform that Provides High Availability Natively. If your platform does not require costly software or hardware clusters for high availability, you reduce TCO and can easily use it for smaller projects, giving you a higher return on investment. Assure Integration Processes Can Be Made Resilient without Impacting Performance. By allowing the persistence of processes at key points in the logic (such as after a transaction has been committed in an ERP or a mainframe), an integration platform that doesn t need compensation logic (which is typically as complex as main logic) will reduce the duration and cost of integration projects. Make Sure Your Integration Platform Defines and Enforces Security Policies on Integration Processes without Impacting Logic or Performance. This capability separates concerns for integration processes from security, which will not only reduce costs and implementation time, but also ensure integration services that have different security levels applied can be easily reused without modification. Ensure Your Operations Teams Can Monitor the Integration Platform via an Enterprise Monitoring Solution. The solution should also be able to feed the integration platform with contextual information that can be leveraged to improve quality of service and adapt to and reduce the cost of exceptions. Harmonize the Set of Technologies Used to Install and Provision Environments. When you define and manage standard formats such as a preconfigured set of technologies (application stacks), you can easily deploy directly on a pool of physical, virtual, or cloud resources. Environments can then be provisioned and scaled very easily and rapidly across hybrid architectures without requiring operations teams to manage each and every underlying component. Applications and integration platforms running on these resources support scalability as a whole with the relevant resources provided at the right time to sustain service level agreements. Get more information about integration, integration maturity, and products that can help you get there at www.tibco.com/integration. Global Headquarters 3307 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94304 +1 650-846-1000 TEL +1 800-420-8450 +1 650-846-1005 FAX www.tibco.com TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX) is a global leader in infrastructure and business intelligence software. Whether it s optimizing inventory, cross-selling products, or averting crisis before it happens, TIBCO uniquely delivers the Two-Second Advantage the ability to capture the right information at the right time and act on it preemptively for a competitive advantage. With a broad mix of innovative products and services, customers around the world trust TIBCO as their strategic technology partner. Learn more about TIBCO at www.tibco.com. 2014, TIBCO Software Inc. All rights reserved. TIBCO, the TIBCO logo, and TIBCO Software are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks in this document are the property of their respective owners and mentioned for identification purposes only. 12/02/14