Slides from my presentation at the GitHub Constellation conference November 2017

1. © 2017
THERE AND BACK AGAIN -
SIMCORP'S JOURNEY TO IMPROVE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
NIELS HARRE, DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
SIMCORP

2. © 2017© 20172
• whoami
• What do we make @SimCorp
• SimCorp Dimension under the hood
• Challenges
• Solutions
• How

3. © 20173
WHOAMI
• Husband and the proud father of three kids
• I like biking and yachtning
• Development Manager in a “DevOps” unit of 25 persons
• Background as developer
(24/7 apps / configuration management / DevOps)
• Improvements in software development
• Focus on value creation for our customer
• Make room for the Y/Z generation
• Foresight over hindsight
• @har1
• www.linkedin.com/in/nielsharre

4. © 2017© 2017
WHO ARE YOU?
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5. © 20175
BRINGING INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS TO INVESTMENT MANAGERS
THE WORLD’S LEADING PROVIDER
• Servicing the global buy-side market
• Established in 1971
• Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark
• Listed on Copenhagen Nasdaq
• 1.500+ SimCorp’ers working worldwide

6. © 2017
SIMCORP DIMENSION® IS A FRONT-TO-BACK SYSTEM
SEAMLESSLY INTEGRATED ACROSS OPERATIONS

7. © 20177
BRINGING INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS TO INVESTMENT MANAGERS
THE WORLD’S LEADING PROVIDER
MORE THAN
170
CLIENTS
WORLDWIDE
MORE THAN
20%
OF REVENUE
INVESTED IN R&D
MORE THAN
20
OFFICES
GLOBALLY
MORE THAN
40
YEARS OF
DEVELOPMENT
MORE THAN
16,000
USERS
USD +19 trillion
managed on
SimCorp Dimension®

8. © 2017© 2017
UNDER THE HOOD
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9. © 20179
INTEGRATING VARIOUS LANGUAGES AND TECHNOLOGIES
HETEROGENOUS DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS
MORE THAN
80.000
JOBS RUNNING IN OUR
ENVIRONMENT
DAILY
CODE LINES
+3,6 mill. C#
+2,3 mill. APL
USING
APL, C#,
C++,
ML, F#,
Oracle
MORE THAN
2,5TB
SOURCE CODE
IN TFS
MORE THAN
240.000
FILES OR 1 TB ON
“FILES VCS”
MORE THAN
270REPOSITORIES IN
GITHUB ENTERPRISE

10. © 2017
HOW ARE WORKING
• 18 Closed branches
• 1 Release branch
• 12 Integration branches
• 77 Project branches
• Tight coupling between
data, code and an installation
• Insanely high number of installations and Oracle
databases for test and development
• IBM Workload Scheduler, TFS, SYSVCS

11. © 2017© 2017
CHALLENGES
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12. © 2017
CHALLENGES
• Processes
- Changes costly & difficult
- Missing opportunities
- Tuning the processes
12

13. © 2017
CHALLENGES
• Architecture
• Almost no components
• Strong coupling
13

14. © 2017
CHALLENGES
• Adoption
• Transition
• Ramp-up time for new colleagues
• Recruiting
14

15. © 2017© 2017
SOLUTIONS
15

16. © 201716
Build Test & Release
Source
Code
Source
Code
Source
Code
Build Test
Build Test
Build Test
Build Test
Source
Code
Build Test
Integration
Test Env
Test Env
Test Env
Test Env
Staging ProductionPackage
Technology stack
Decided
Toolstack
Potential toolstack candidates

17. © 201717
• Layered vs Component vs service-based architecture
Layered
architecture
Component
architecture
Service-based
architecture
One repository:
single commit for changes
impacting several layers
Individual repositories:
Agility with small repositories
and fast relevant feedback
Product architecture needs different integration strategy

18. © 201718
• APL Dependency map• C# Dependency map

19. © 201719
Build Test & Release
Source
Code
Source
Code
“Mono” repostory
Build Test
Build Test
Build Test
Build Test
Source
Code
Build Test
Integration
Test Env
Test Env
Test Env
Test Env
Staging ProductionPackage
Technology stack
Decided
Toolstack
Potential toolstack candidates

20. © 2017© 2017
HOW?
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21. © 201721
2017
December
2016
Invited
teams to
experiment
in our trial
February
Signed
contract with
GitHub
March
Migrated tool
code from TFS
to GH (dog
fooding)
April
Migrate the ML
team to GitHub
September
Migrated OM
team to GitHub

22. © 201722
ADOPTION RATES
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
Count of created ”production” repositories
In total
273
repo’s
0
50
100
150
200
250
Seats taken

23. © 2017© 2017
FROM THERE AND BACK AGAIN
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• It used to be fun
• Having entrepreneurship
• We want that back
• In a more standard way

24. © 2017

25. © 2017© 2017
LEGAL
DISCLAIMER
The contents of this presentation are for general
information and illustrative purposes only and are used at
the reader’s own risk. SimCorp uses all reasonable
endeavours to ensure the accuracy of the information.
However, SimCorp does not guarantee or warrant the
accuracy, completeness, factual correctness, or reliability
of any information in this publication and does not accept
liability for errors, omissions, inaccuracies, or typographical
errors.
The views and opinions expressed in this publication are
not necessarily those of SimCorp.
© 2017 SimCorp A/S. All rights reserved. Without limiting
rights under copyright, no part of this document may be
reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or
for any purpose without the express written permission
of SimCorp A/S.
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