The document discusses a case study of modernizing a client's inventory and manufacturing modules. The client is a leading education company that needed to standardize its technology stack, increase availability, and reduce costs. The key tasks of the project were to reverse engineer the existing applications, change the architecture to support a new J2EE, Struts, and EJB stack, introduce load balancing and caching, and integrate the applications on a common platform. The benefits included improved user experience, high availability, faster response times, internal branding, integrated solutions, and lower maintenance costs. Lessons learned focused on scope management, code refactoring, performance testing, and automating regression testing.

1. Inventory and Manufacturing Modules
Application Modernization - Case Study
May 29, 2014

2. 2
Client Profile
 World's leading education company
 From pre-school to high school, early learning to professional certification
 Curriculum materials, multimedia learning tools, electronic learning programmes and testing
programmes, test development, processing and scoring services
 Operates in more than 70 countries

3. 3
Business Objectives
Challenges:
• Existing applications were accessed using thick clients that were built using client-server architecture
• Business was facing operational challenges with the current technology platform
• The technologies used in existing application (PowerBuilder, Presenter, Filemaker) were getting outdated
• Some of the third party controls used in existing technology were deprecated and source code / support was not available for
those components
• Lack of technical documentation for old platform and components used in the applications
• Applications were distributed under multiple source codes
• Different business units were using there own version of software to perform similar business functions
• There were several performance issues due to network latency in client server architecture
Key Asks:
• Standardize technology stack with a full fledged integrated platform
• Retain existing functionality and address perceived issues
• Increase the availability and resiliency and reduce development and operational costs
• Reduce ongoing development and operational costs
• Reduce hardware and software license costs
• Reduce downtime support requests
• Improve reliability, availability and scale of customer-facing portal
• Increase agility, productivity and reusability
• Embrace open source with abundant skill-set availability
• Enhanced user experience and system performance
• Integrated ERP solution for Publishing Business to support the end to end product lifecycle
• Bring the applications to a common standard technology stack, to minimize cost of future enhancements

4. 4
Our scope
• Reverse engineering of existing application to extract business logic and to understand application flow
• Architectural pattern changes in all tiers, application, middleware and database
• Minimal code changes in database to utilize the existing business logic
• Support for Inversion of Control: code refactoring
Solution robustness
• Reduced dependency on the back-end (introduction of EJBs and middleware)
• Increased performance through selective code refactoring
• Fault tolerant application server architecture (load balancing)
High availability
• Addition of monitoring tools to the deployment and manageability
• Improved business data reporting
Operational enhancements
• We had to change the architecture to support the business case
• Minimal code changes to support those architecture changes
• Along with documented operational enhancements
Summary

5. 5
Understand
• Application
Debugging
• Reverse
Engineering
• Focus Groups
• 1:1 User
Survey
• Brain
Storming
• Heuristic
Evaluations
• DRD
• New Features
• Use Cases
• Basic Sitemap
Analyze
• Technology
Evaluation
• Wireframes
Creation
• Information
Architecture
Planning
• Creative
Composition
• FRS
• Proposed
Sitemap
• ERD for
existing
database
Design
• Page Layout
• Logo, Icon,
Banner design
etc.
• Web Design
Layout
• Develop
Prototype
• Design Mock-
up
• LLD and HLD
with flow
diagrams
Develop
• Implement the
application
frontend in
new
technology
• Incorporating
Standards
Compatibility
• Browser &
Platform
Compatibility
• Application
Code
• Functional
Test Results
• Performance
Report
Integrate &
Deploy
• Technology
Integration
• Internal
Application
Integration
• Data and user
migration from
Old Portal
• Application
access
• User Manual
• Technical
Handbook
Project Management, Requirement Change & Control, Configuration Management,
Reviews, Support & Maintenance
Deliverables
Migration Process

6. 6
Architectural changes
• Implementation of enterprise level application using J2EE, Struts and EJBs
• Introduction of middleware technology and database connection pooling
• Introduction of load balancing and failover strategy at web and application server level
• Hosting static content on web server
Application changes
• Introduction of customizable and easy to predict navigation controls
• Introduction of highly interactive functions using JQuery and AJAX
• Standardization of UI using CSS
Portal changes
• Introduction of data caching for major database tables
• Introduction of caching at session and server context
Caching changes
• Comprehensive monitoring of database, application and web servers
• Generate logging at Portal and middleware layers
• Improved backup and disaster recovery plan
Monitoring changes

7. 7
Technology Stack

8. 8
Application availability
• Access on both intranet and internet
• Around the clock availability, supported
through load balancing
Enhanced user experience
• Predictive and easy navigation
• Consistent look and feel across
various modules
Improved business functions
• Extensive product search
• Improved approval workflows
• Enhanced reporting capabilities
Salient Features

9. 9
Business Benefits
Improved user
experience
High availability Faster response
Internal branding Improved Security Integrated Solution
Low maintenance
cost
Increased scalability
Ease of
enhancements

10. 10
Lessons learned
Lockdown the scope and
avoid functionality scope
creek
Be prepared to re-factor code
as there is no one-to-one
pattern translations for all the
patterns
Lockdown the target platform
components and avoid
introducing new components
Define usage patterns of new
frameworks, components for
faster on-ramp and code
quality
Define the criteria and the
scope of different caching
levels usage for optimal
performance
Allocate large amount of time
for performance tests as
tuning of new platform is an
iterative process
Minimize business UAT test
time as very less functionality
change involved and
compliment with automated
regression testing

11. 11
Thank You