At IBM Think 2019, FlowFactor shared insights into the transformation and migration from a traditionally managed WebSphere application to a modern platform that provides your development team with self-service capabilities. This helps you overcome the typical challenges in a traditionally managed application environment. The result is a lower TCO and a faster time-to-market. A recent project carried out by FlowFactor at ENGIE / ELECTRABEL, the largest E & U provider in Belgium, is used during the session. We share the challenges and benefits.

1. WebSphere application transformation
and modernization at ENGIE / ELECTRABEL
SESSION ID:
3379
Joris Verberckmoes,
Head of Delivery&Operations, IS M&S, ENGIE
Johan Janssen, Kilian Niemegeerts
Managing Partner FlowFactor

2. Who is Engie – Electrabel – M&S Belux?
§ World’s biggest non-state owned energy company
§ Operational in 70 countries on all 5 continents
§ 155.000 employees
Objectives:
§ Key player in energy Europe
§ Leader in energy transition
§ Benchmark energy provider in the emerging world

3. Who is Engie – Electrabel – M&S Belux?
o 2,8 million customers
o Decentralised production
o Prosumer
Offering added value via Products and Service.

4. What were our main challenges?
TODAY
TOMORROW
We’re organized to
guarantee
We must be ready
To guarantee
RESILIENCE
STABILITY

5. § Part of the Cronos Group
§ IBM and Opensource Middleware
§ IBM Pure Application
§ IBM Cloud Private
§ Innovation
§ Automation
§ 24/7 Managed Services
The Business partner

6. EOS (Energy Offering System)
§ Support the offering, contracting and PMR
processes
§ Used by pricing engineers, account manager
and back office users
§ Offered to both M&S and GEM Business Units
§ Monolitic Java Application
§ Available as a web app, mobile app (ipad)
and from the Electrabel website
1.1M
lines java
code
1.2TB
database
9000+
offers
created /
month
200
Unique
users
/month
4
production
releases /
month
6.6K
unit tests

7. EOS
DataSet CostModel/ProductModel GUI
Profiling
Offering
Pricing
Reporting
SAP CRM
IBM MQ/IIB IBM Datapower (ESB)
Full WEB UI Mobile App M&S Website
SAP ISU
SAP CRM SAP ISU
IBM Datapower (ESB)
IXOS
Printing &
Archiving
Deeplink
RMS_Online
Mercure
MeasureMail
MDC
ADCS
GPS
ClickTool
Road65
MailService
Smartfocus
Deeplink
TargetAlert
IBMDatapower(ESB)
SAS
Reporting
FStudio
Functionality
& Integration

8. LoadBalancer - F5
Win Server
IIS
AIX Server
IBM WAS
AIX Server
IBM WAS
NAS
Active Directory
Win Server
IIS
Architecture & responsibilities
§ Stability
§ Operational
§ Inconsistencies
§ Agility
DB

9. Challenges & impact
Hours Days Weeks Months Years
New application environment delivery
Full Deployment cycle
Single deployment
Regression testing
Minutes
Infrastructure upgrade
§ IT Silence – Application stability & performance
§ Cost – Budget optimization
§ Empower development team
§ Speed to deliver – Agility

10. Tomcat vs Liberty
INFO POC DESIGN BUILD OPERATETEST
Description Weight Liberty Tomcat Comment
Support 8 9 5 PureApp includes support for WAS. (no support for TOMCAT on PureApp)
Support Pricing 5 10 9 Support to be bought for Tomcat -> TC server managed by Spring -> Low cost + 1K€/year
License policy 5 10 10 Included for WAS , depending on the support contract
Monitoring 6 10 8 ITM monitoring agent for WAS; custom agent for Tomcat needed
Performance 8 9 8 Better overall performance
Resource usage and system tuning 8 8 8 Resource usage are similar
Stability 10 8 8 No difference
Patching 6 10 8 Easy Liberty updating with patterns on PureApp
Scalability 3 10 7 Out of the box with PureApp patterns and Liberty features
Portability 6 8 9 One technology (WAS L. or Tomcat) from DEV till PRD
Flexibility / innovation 3 7 10 Who comes with the newest stuff; how much do we use?
Developer productivity 10 8 10 Issue with forced restart in Liberty needs to be solved -> blocking
Total 687 644 more is better
KIR vs Development

11. Platform migration
IBM PureApplication System
Optimize COST
1
Uniform Technology stack
WebSphere Liberty
Consistency
2
Self service
Automation
Agility
3
What we decided and why

12. WAS Plug-in
liberty liberty liberty
clusters
liberty
controllers
liberty liberty liberty
Admin Center
IHS
or
DP
web routers
Liberty Collective
§ Certified massive scalability
§ Easy/Flexible configuration
§ Scalable/HA ops/monitoring
§ Key functions:
§ Admin Center
§ Dynamic routing
§ Auto-Scaling
§ Health management
§ Monitoring

13. LoadBalancer - F5
NAS
Active
Directory
§ WebSphere Liberty
§ Easy/Flexible configuration
§ Dynamic routing
§ Health management
§ Monitoring
§ JMX REST interface
§ Active / Active
§ Dynamic routing
§ Stabilize
§ Front-end vs Back-end
§ Self Service Deployment
§ TFS
§ Java deployment application
§ JMX REST interface
OKTA
Red Hat
Controller
Red Hat
Liberty
Red Hat
Liberty
Red Hat
IHS WAS Plugin
Red Hat
IHS WAS Plugin
TFS
Architecture &
responsibilities
DB
Red Hat
Liberty

14. Demo
Development Operations

15. Demo video of self service
deployment by DEV / Business
Demo recording available at http://bit.ly/2SPrdZB

16. Advantages of new solution
Technology Consistency WebSphere Liberty DEV -> PRD
Performance increase > 25%
Overal TCO 30% less
Hours Days Weeks Months Years
New application environment delivery
Full Deployment cycle
Single deployment
Regression testing
Minutes
Infrastructure upgrade

17. Conclusion
§ Embrace DevOps culture
§ Liberty to replace Tomcat / tWAS ND
§ Automation -> Speed to deliver – Agility

18. Q&A

19. Johan Janssen
Managing Partner, FlowFactor
Johan.Janssen@FlowFactor.be
+32 496 57 41 98
https://be.linkedin.com/in/JohanJanssen
Joris Verberckmoes
Head of delivery and operations, IS M&S, ENGIE
Joris.Verberckmoes@Engie.com
+32 474 80 26 13
https://www.linkedin.com/in/JorisVerberckmoes
@
M
@
M
SESSION ID:
3379

20. Across Clouds, Public and Private
Docker build Helm installSource code
Jenkins X
IBM Multicloud Manager / Cloud Automation Manager