A US Retailer’s middleware team was being tasked with a growing administration and support demand from the business. Application deployment and configuration management was mostly a manual, labor intensive effort with little visibility and control. They identified a need to automate and standardize processes and to script elements to improve overall performance and quality. They needed the ability to automate and orchestrate application deployment processes.
Utilizing Rational Automation Framework and the MidVision Extensions, they derived repeatable, predictable results in WebSphere management (WAS/MQ/WMB) and application deployment automation across distributed (AIX) and mainframe targets (zOS). Processes were automated providing faster triage, reduced errors and downtime. Efforts to update, migrate and patch were efficiently automated thereby improving productivity and business agility. Traceability, auditability and compliance were standardized in all instances.
The retailer provided a plethora of specific use case requirements for application release automation, automated deployment and configuration management for IBM WebSphere Application Server, TIBCO, Oracle and other 3rd party tools. These formed the basis for the conditions of satisfaction for a Proof of Concept. The ability to integrate with 3rd party tools like Remedy and ESP Scheduler was also included. The solution’s ability to deploy to the mainframe targets was a key metric and differentiator. IBM Rational and Haddon Hill Group (Rational Business Partner) assisted with this process and deployed the base version of the IBM Rational Automation Framework, Build Forge and configured the use cases. The Proof of Concept was held onsite through the month of September, completed successfully the retailer acquired Rational Build Forge Enterprise Edition Plus, RAF (1000 PVUs) and MidVision’s Extensions for WebSphere Connectivity (5 licenses) and Oracle Weblogic (1 license) in September.
