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Enhancing agility while integrating global IT infrastructure
Enhancing agility while integrating
global IT infrastructure…
There didn't seem to be much choice in the matter.
For this leader in life sciences, integrating the company's global IT infrastructure to support their newly purchased enterprise resource planning software in the traditional way appeared to be an enormous amount of work with only questionable payback.
It meant thousands of discrete integration points, tens of thousands of work-hours over years of effort, and millions of dollars in additional consulting fees. Yet for all the expense and hard work, constant maintenance would still be required even after the main work of integration was complete.
That's when Hemant Ramachandra and his team of IT consultants came to the company with an idea.
They suggested that the organization approach the integration a bit differently. For example, instead of creating thousands of separate connection points—each linking one part of the IT infrastructure to another—Ramachandra recommended that the company batch components of the their applications around the business processes they support, then loosely connect those process components to the other parts of the underlying IT infrastructure. That way, different applications could make use of data from different sources, and business processes could be rearranged in new ways to meet shifting business needs.
In short, Ramachandra was suggesting that the client adopt something called a service-oriented architecture—an approach to organizing IT infrastructure that enables enhanced businesses processes by allowing separate applications to exchange data more easily.
Service-oriented architecture, or SOA for short, typically enables businesses to better align their IT capabilities with the actual services they provide consumers, equipping companies to more effectively respond to changing consumer demands. SOA also makes it possible to separate different application functions into discrete units, or services, thereby enabling them to be recombined over a network to create entirely new applications.
That was a little over two years ago. Recently, Ramachandra and his team kicked-off the third year of a multi-year engagement for that client. The thing is, the team has made so much progress to date it looks as if they just might finish the work early.
"Our goal was to migrate everything from old technology to new, streamlining integration points into services while also developing brand new services outside of the actual migration," says Ramachandra, a PwC managing director who joined PwC earlier this year as part of the acquisition of BearingPoint. "Right now, we anticipate being able to meet the target ahead of schedule."
The quick pace of success is due in large part to the tireless work of a PwC team of technical architects in the United States and developers at PwC's Global Development Center (GDC) in Shanghai, China where the firm maintains a SOA center of excellence. The team was assembled gradually over time, leveraging resources in China—and from across the firm—to achieve the right mix of technical acumen and project knowledge.
"We don't just ask the team at the GDC to deliver their own small piece of the effort and move on," says Ramachandra, "we've built a group of top-notch professionals that work well together day-in and day-out—a team that understands how each piece fits into the overall solution. That way, they aren't just performing tasks in isolation, they are integrating each piece into the overall solution."
The SOA center of excellence allows us to assemble the right blend of resources to meet a client's need. PwC's "Anyshore" model of delivery—which couples on-shore systems architects with off-shore development teams—provides end-to-end solution delivery services, from blueprinting the solution to implementation and production support. Our teams have hands-on experience with every major integration vendor and industry which allows us to bring a well-rounded, objective point-of-view to our systems and business implementations.
Rakesh Bhatia, the managing director responsible for overseeing PwC's development centers in both China and India, says the strategic use of off-shore resources has been very instrumental in ensuring quality work gets delivered on time and within budget, not just for this client—but for dozens of others.
"Not only are the skills and the perspectives of our on-shore and off-shore resources complementary, but the two groups often work overlapping work days to make it easier for them to seamlessly partner together around the globe, enabling around-the-clock progress, " Bhatia says. "The flexibility of the GDC team allows us to quickly ramp up and down, responding to rapidly changing work demands while maintaining a stable core team."
So, just how is service-oriented architecture making a difference for this particular client? One big benefit involves mergers and acquisitions.
As expected, SOA improves the rapidity and effectiveness with which the company is able to integrate new acquisitions on the heels of a deal. Right now, as a result of the work to date, the client estimates it saves about $1 million per acquisition just by streamlining the integration of the human resources, supply chain, and vendor contract management functions through the new architecture.
The solution also enables the client to take better advantage of a networked world, allowing them to more effectively join together with other organizations for limited periods to accomplish a specific purpose—then breaking apart cleanly and efficiently once that purpose has been met.
Plus, according to Ramachandra, the client estimates that their total savings due to re-usable services and infrastructure consolidation is already well over $2 million.
"The client is seeing real progress in its ability to reuse a common set of IT services across a whole host of different business processes; they're doing a better job of sharing data across multiple applications; and they're learning how to more easily adapt core processes to new challenges. None of this is easy," he says, "but it's critical if a company wants to enhance IT agility and drive business innovation."
global IT infrastructure…
A global leader in life sciences better integrates its business and optimizes ERP investment by adopting a service-oriented architecture
There didn't seem to be much choice in the matter.
For this leader in life sciences, integrating the company's global IT infrastructure to support their newly purchased enterprise resource planning software in the traditional way appeared to be an enormous amount of work with only questionable payback.
It meant thousands of discrete integration points, tens of thousands of work-hours over years of effort, and millions of dollars in additional consulting fees. Yet for all the expense and hard work, constant maintenance would still be required even after the main work of integration was complete.
That's when Hemant Ramachandra and his team of IT consultants came to the company with an idea.
They suggested that the organization approach the integration a bit differently. For example, instead of creating thousands of separate connection points—each linking one part of the IT infrastructure to another—Ramachandra recommended that the company batch components of the their applications around the business processes they support, then loosely connect those process components to the other parts of the underlying IT infrastructure. That way, different applications could make use of data from different sources, and business processes could be rearranged in new ways to meet shifting business needs.
In short, Ramachandra was suggesting that the client adopt something called a service-oriented architecture—an approach to organizing IT infrastructure that enables enhanced businesses processes by allowing separate applications to exchange data more easily.
Service-oriented architecture, or SOA for short, typically enables businesses to better align their IT capabilities with the actual services they provide consumers, equipping companies to more effectively respond to changing consumer demands. SOA also makes it possible to separate different application functions into discrete units, or services, thereby enabling them to be recombined over a network to create entirely new applications.
That was a little over two years ago. Recently, Ramachandra and his team kicked-off the third year of a multi-year engagement for that client. The thing is, the team has made so much progress to date it looks as if they just might finish the work early.
"Our goal was to migrate everything from old technology to new, streamlining integration points into services while also developing brand new services outside of the actual migration," says Ramachandra, a PwC managing director who joined PwC earlier this year as part of the acquisition of BearingPoint. "Right now, we anticipate being able to meet the target ahead of schedule."
The quick pace of success is due in large part to the tireless work of a PwC team of technical architects in the United States and developers at PwC's Global Development Center (GDC) in Shanghai, China where the firm maintains a SOA center of excellence. The team was assembled gradually over time, leveraging resources in China—and from across the firm—to achieve the right mix of technical acumen and project knowledge.
"We don't just ask the team at the GDC to deliver their own small piece of the effort and move on," says Ramachandra, "we've built a group of top-notch professionals that work well together day-in and day-out—a team that understands how each piece fits into the overall solution. That way, they aren't just performing tasks in isolation, they are integrating each piece into the overall solution."
The SOA center of excellence allows us to assemble the right blend of resources to meet a client's need. PwC's "Anyshore" model of delivery—which couples on-shore systems architects with off-shore development teams—provides end-to-end solution delivery services, from blueprinting the solution to implementation and production support. Our teams have hands-on experience with every major integration vendor and industry which allows us to bring a well-rounded, objective point-of-view to our systems and business implementations.
Rakesh Bhatia, the managing director responsible for overseeing PwC's development centers in both China and India, says the strategic use of off-shore resources has been very instrumental in ensuring quality work gets delivered on time and within budget, not just for this client—but for dozens of others.
"Not only are the skills and the perspectives of our on-shore and off-shore resources complementary, but the two groups often work overlapping work days to make it easier for them to seamlessly partner together around the globe, enabling around-the-clock progress, " Bhatia says. "The flexibility of the GDC team allows us to quickly ramp up and down, responding to rapidly changing work demands while maintaining a stable core team."
So, just how is service-oriented architecture making a difference for this particular client? One big benefit involves mergers and acquisitions.
As expected, SOA improves the rapidity and effectiveness with which the company is able to integrate new acquisitions on the heels of a deal. Right now, as a result of the work to date, the client estimates it saves about $1 million per acquisition just by streamlining the integration of the human resources, supply chain, and vendor contract management functions through the new architecture.
The solution also enables the client to take better advantage of a networked world, allowing them to more effectively join together with other organizations for limited periods to accomplish a specific purpose—then breaking apart cleanly and efficiently once that purpose has been met.
Plus, according to Ramachandra, the client estimates that their total savings due to re-usable services and infrastructure consolidation is already well over $2 million.
"The client is seeing real progress in its ability to reuse a common set of IT services across a whole host of different business processes; they're doing a better job of sharing data across multiple applications; and they're learning how to more easily adapt core processes to new challenges. None of this is easy," he says, "but it's critical if a company wants to enhance IT agility and drive business innovation."
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