Project Case – Migration of The Global Logistics Management System
The article “Migration of the global logistics management system” was published in “SOFT DEV” Outsourcing Journal Special Edition focusing on shared knowledge in software development and software development outsourcing with contributions from German, Dutch, British, Bulgarian, Belarus, Ukrainian and Chinese authors.
Below you may read the shortened version of the article.
The customer, Ingersoll-Rand (ingersollrand.com) company, is a Fortune 500 listed Irish global diversified industrial company founded in 1871.
Ingersoll Rand’s products range from complete air compressor systems, tools, ARO pumps, material handling systems and more. It was the first migration project which was implemented practically by Softengi experts at the territory of Switzerland.
At the moment the project was initiated the customer had one of the offices in Fribourg, Switzerland, where was established one of the biggest logistics centers working with companies worldwide, except U.S. and Canadian markets. Thus all the orders the company was receiving all over the world were processed and realized at that Fribourg logistics center.
In order to process all logistic orders the center had its own logistics management system which was used by thousands of employees worldwide. Then current logistics management system was including all logistic components such as ordering, invoicing, packaging, shipment, delivery, payment, as well as customers’ database and their history.
Legacy System and the need for change
The old system was created in 1980, written at COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language), one of the oldest programming languages designed for developing business, typically file-oriented, applications. This it is self-documenting language, which means that none applications written at COBOL have ever had any documentation. At the moment the customer initiated the reengineering of the current system it was counting more than 20 years of use.
The company took the decision not simply to create a new system, but to transfer the current desktop solution to the new modern web-based platform. Moreover, the idea was to keep both systems run in parallel mode for smooth transition, synchronizing the data in both systems in real-time.
Mohsen Taghavi, Manager of International Trading Companies’ Systems and responsible for the project from customer’s side says: “With continues high demand from our worldwide users for system connections, growing year after year, it was obvious that we had built up a successful Global Order Processing application supported by a Swiss based International Trading Company. We were processing half billion U.S. dollar-orders annually throughout the world with over 490 distributors and 1,200 connected users for a system availability of 365/24/7”.
Increasingly, the company was receiving requests from its business units and users around the world asking for a modernized and WEB enable application. “Due to our business specifics, we could not identify any ready out of box application to support our businesses; hence, we adventured into converting our legacy system. After reviewing and analysing various IT development vendors and professionals in different geographical areas, finally we have identified a serious partner and thus started our business application development/conversion journey…”, – continues Mr.Taghavi.
Softengi experts, who were then working as a team of Softline JSC and later became its spin-off, have proposed a solution to migrate the current system to the new modern J2EE platform. The basis of the system was Oracle database and Weblogic application server.
The migration process
During the project implementation stages the project team has performed following work:
- reengineering of business processes (based on the analysis of existing Cobol code);
- with the help of communication with the employees there was restored system business logic, which was thoroughly documented;
- there was made a deep analysis of the system, allowing to find weak and vulnerable points which might cause serious damages to the work of the system and losses of money;
- designed and developed modern secured web-based J2EE system;
- designed and developed the open architecture to support further growth of the system (WAP, Web-services, etc.).
The most complicated task during the project implementation stage was integration and syncronization of legacy and new systems, as well as integration with other existing systems. However, both systems were synchronized in the way that the employee using the system could insert data in the legacy system, then change to the new system and the data was synchronized in the real time without time and information losses.
Consequently, the training of employees how to use the new system was as well conducted by the project team.
The gap analysis, security analysis, the analysis of possible weak points in business logic were conducted, some parts of business logic were impossible to restore, therefore the specialists had to newly develop them.
As a result of project team work, the new online logistics management system was developed and the transfer from the legacy system to the new one was successfully conducted. The project composed a set of more than 5 projects with total duration of 2,5 years were implemented. In general, there were more than 25 man/years delivered for the project. The Ukrainian team successfully completed the project in cooperation with the Swiss customer’s team.
Source : Softengi
