Address Your Blind Spots Around Mission-Critical Data
B2B Gateway Manages File Transfers
1. B2B GATEWAY: MANAGED
FILE TRANSFERS AT UT (VIA
STONEBRANCH™ )
ITS SERVICE OFFERING FOR THE UT ADMINISTRATIVE IT COMMUNITY
2. WHAT IS FILE TRANSFER JOB SCHEDULING?
Think of automating an Airport Baggage Claim System….
Complex, repetitive, or ordered tasks that can gain efficiencies with
automation
• Online banking
• Executing online bill payments or delivering credit card transactions for
processing
• Financial Data Management
• Automatic financial transaction transfer into sales or accounting software
3. UT TECH ARCH BACKGROUND
• Mainframe retiring & all applications need to find or develop a
technology replacement (200+ applications)
• “Task Manager” application retired
• Replaced by Enterprise Orchestration Service (Stonebranch™)
4. PROBLEMS TO SOLVE
File Transfer functionality often coupled with Job Processing
• Consumers are relying on old technology; “Transfer” Service for
unmanaged, (fault tolerant) file transfer workflows
• Consumers need managed, (fault intolerant), internal & external
file transfers
• Opportunity to modernize with B2B Gateway
6. ASSUMPTIONS
• Consumers will reduce use of old technology once new
technology is available
• Consumers want B2B Gateway for External (3rd party cloud) file
transfers (i.e. Workday, Box, etc.)
8. REALITY
• Consumers have not reduced use of old technology, uses new
service pieces
• Consumers will need External (Cloud) B2B file transfer for 3rd
parties later
• Consumers want Internal (on premise) managed file transfer
10. B2B GATEWAY TO REPLACE TRANSFER
SERVICE
Replace Transfer with B2B Gateway
• B2B Gateway
• Managed (fault tolerant) file transfers
• Phase 1: Internal jobs , replace Transfer
• Phase 2: External jobs, integration with 3rd parties
Benefits
• Supports current (internal) and future (external) file transfer needs
• Streamlines IT Services; Remove legacy/outdated systems with duplicate
functionality
• Saves “Transfer” Service operating costs
• Provides improved functionality
12. TRANSFER
• SFTP Server
• No Agent Intelligence
• Unmanaged (fault intolerant)
File Transfers
• Internal (on premise)
• CLI
13. B2B GATEWAY
• Reliable and compliant movement of
files
• Protocol Requirements
• Agent intelligence
• Managed (fault tolerant) File
Transfers
• Internal (on premise)
• External
• GUI
14. B2B GATEWAY - WORKFLOW
Sample File transfer Workflow
15. MARKET
UT Administrative IT Community
• 400+ total potential users / 40+ CSU’s
Federated environment that is non-standard in the industry
• Enterprise scaling with individual business unit adoption
Competition – New Technology
• Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) – 7 Applications
Existing Technology
• Transfer – 15 CSU’s
16. PERSONAS
William - Sr. Software Developer, Consumer
Goals:
- He’s tasked with modernizing their processes while needing to
“keep the lights on” and operate processes the existing way (which
he prefers).
- He has been in the department for so long he knows all the
processes inside out, but with existing IT tools. He will need to help
his new manager and energetic team capture their business
processes and move them off the mainframe.
This task is a challenge for William, he’s looking for software to
make this task easier.
Characteristics:
•54 years old, Baby boomer
•Has been at UT 30 + years
•Familiar with mainframe, likes and uses Natural and Adabase UT languages
•Influencer to IT administrative and developer community
•William began working at the University after attending college at UT and began in the software developer
program. He has remained and is looking forward to his near retirement to spend time with his grandchildren.
•Generally a late adopter
•Familiar with development silo’s, not with DevOps
•He prefers CLI to a GUI
17. PERSONAS
Karen - Sr. Software Developer / Analyst Consumer
Goals:
- Karen is working on Critical path ASMP Workday integration
projects to automate ETL processes for the Institutional Data Store.
- She is working on finding new solutions to automate their
mainframe ETL processes outside of the mainframe, and integrating
with other ASMP provided services.
- She is a reliable, hard worker but isn’t available during standard
office hours - and isn’t happy when her job fails and is called at 3am
to restart a job. She wants a reliable job scheduler/file transfer tool.
Characteristics:
• 34 years old
• Has been at the university 5+ years
• Karen worked in fast-paced Tech Industry after college in various coding roles
• Karen joined the university for the work-life balance and flexibility to start a family
• High affinity for problem solving
• Early adopter of new solutions and technology
• Moderate understanding of UT mainframe based processes
• Familiar and utilizes ITS central services (PyPE and Transfer)
• Multi-tasker, voices problems and concerns but also solutions
18. SUCCESS METRICS
New Consumers
• 1 CSU every six months
Existing Enterprise Orchestration Consumers
• Increase average task instances in production by 10%.
Service Usage
• # of Jobs executed
• Task instances over time
Reliability
• Failure Rate (defined as failure without automatic restart) will be less than 20%
with B2B Gateway.
• Service uptime
19. FEATURES
Rank Feature Theme
1 Managed Internal (Fault Tolerant) File Transfers Enable better user experiences with Managed
Fault Tolerant File Transfers
2 Familiar Protocol integration support (FTP, FTPS, HTTPS) Enable better user experiences with Managed
Fault Tolerant File Transfers
3 API Based Job Scheduling Improve IT Service, Delivery or features by
incorporating user feedback and enhancement
requests.
4 Consumer Automation and processes mapping consultation Improve IT Service, Delivery or features by
incorporating user feedback and enhancement
requests.
5 Managed External (Fault Tolerant) File Transfers. (1 Trading Partner available every six
months up to 5 partners)
Enable better user experiences with managed
external 3rd party cloud File Transfer
Integrations
6 Advanced Protocols: (AFTP, Web API Protocols) Enable better user experiences with managed
external 3rd party cloud File Transfer
Integrations
7 Consolidated control for 3rd party management Enable better user experiences with managed
external 3rd party cloud File Transfer
Integrations
8 Pre-configured Templates Enable better user experiences with Managed
Fault Tolerant File Transfers
9 Customized Templates Enable better user experiences with Managed
Fault Tolerant File Transfers
“Offering” / Enhancement of the Enterprise Orchestration (service sponsoring development)
Good for - Repetitive or manual task that involves data that can be automated to save time, reduce errors and remain compliant with sensitive information
Task manager was retired, Enterprise Orchestration was developed with Stonebranch to replace Task manager. We’ve modernized job scheduling, next we can modernize file transfers as the functionality is usually coupled with job processing and the existing functionality provided by the “Transfer” Service isn’t adequate
Current Architecture - Background
The “Transfer” Service is a SFTP Server and is utilized for internal, unmanaged file transfers. External file transfers are not a standard feature and requires a high amount of effort for low value results if supported.
Customers frequently used “Transfer” along with mainframe application “Task Manager” together to execute workflows including file transfers. Stonebranch Enterprise Orchestration Service is a recently released, mainframe independent application for task and workflow processing that replaced the mainframe application “Task manager” for task and workflow processing.
When “Task Manager” was retired some consumers adopted Stonebranch, and others found or developed their own solutions for job scheduling, but kept using “Transfer” for unmanaged file transfers.
Stakeholder - Management / Assumption Architecture
It was assumed consumers wanted managed External file transfers and B2B Gateway would be built on top of existing IT Services.
Consumers would continue to use “Transfer” for Internal unmanaged file transfers and B2B Gateway would be for external managed file transfers.
Stakeholder - Consumer Need Architecture
Consumers want Managed (Fault tolerant), Internal file transfers. The “Transfer” Service offers Internal unmanaged (Fault Intolerant) File Transfers but consumers want want better functionality. Managed enables workflows to restart if interrupted, so consumers aren’t called at 3 am to manually restart a critical job that failed.
Future consumers will need/want managed External File Transfers to 3rd party cloud applications and data sources.
B2B Gateway can support both Internal and External Managed file transfers and can be implemented in phases to satisfy all stakeholders and consumer needs to provide improved file transfer functionality for the University Administrative IT community Service consumers.
Proposal: B2B Gateway to Replace Transfer
B2B Gateway will provide Managed Internal (on premise) and Managed External (3rd party cloud) File Transfers. B2B Gateway will offer better Managed File Transfer functionality to consumers, reduce redundancy across IT services, and save “Transfer” Service operating costs.
B2B Gateway aligns with IT application modernization and reduces mainframe dependencies, improves upon managed file transfer Service in the mainframe architecture, and considers future adoption by developing 3rd party cloud integrations.
The video shows what it looks like to be a user launching a task workflow in Stonebranch. The demo shows the process of a file being created on one host, the file being edited on the same host, the application monitoring for a file with a certain file name and moving that file to another host once detected.
Major Features start with Internal, followed by feedback and enhancement features including consulting time, and then External managed file transfers and associated enhancement ability features
Backlog, Quarters are this year 2017, major releases split through the year – first major release internal file transfers, second major release external managed file transfers. Minor releases of smaller features/enhancements
Phase 1: Internal File Transfers
The Development of B2B Gateway will be phased. Phase 1 will be the development of Managed, Internal File Transfers.
The “Transfer” Service will need to be retired ideally 6 months to a year after Internal File Transfers are released to allow consumers time to transition and attend training. It is possible Transfer could remain past phase 2 until mainframe retirement, this decision is subject to management.
Phase 2: External File Transfers
Phase 2 will be the development of managed, External File Transfers. This will allow consumers to integrate with external 3rd party hosts (1 Trading Partner available every six months up to 5 partners or until demand is required).
Consumers will now be able to execute internal and external fault tolerant file transfer jobs as a part of the B2B Gateway Offering.
Transfer Retired
The dependency on the Mainframe and it’s architected Services for File Transfer job scheduling has been removed as B2B Gateway has been implemented and Transfer retired.
Consumers have an improved functionality File Transfer Service B2B Gateway as a replacement option that satisfies future integration needs. “Transfer” is retired and the mainframe is retired.
