andrés vettori-from saas to paas

8/3/2019 Andrs Vettori-From SaaS to PaaS

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From SaaS to PaaS

Andrs G. Vettori, CTO

[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Agenda

About us

What is SaaS / PaaS? Differences?

Emerios 1.0: our SaaS solution.Our Pain Points

Emerios 2.0 : our PaaS solution.

Emerios 2.0 DemoLearned lessons


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About vmbc

1997: Inbound and outbound call routing withPreferenceManager1998: 28 DS3s brought on line to scale to the needs of any client

1999: Automated call compliance withComplianceLock2000: Live reporting capabilities withInReport

2001: Virtual routing intelligence withActive Listening2002: Multiple message testing withRapid Recycle Resonance2004: SMS capabilities to 2.2 billion mobile users withVClient 2005: Web, Voice, and Mobile interoperability with VLink 3602006: Artificial intelligence and speech recognition withVoiceRec2007: Mobile internet and rich media delivered by VContent2008: Multi-channel enrollment and verification withERS


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About vmbc

Pioneer the of Message Broadcasting Industry Authoritative leader in compliance with State & FTC regulations

Best record in the industry for state-by-state and HIPPA compliance

Unmatched Experience and a Worldwide Presence:

Founded in 1997, over 4 Billion+ Contactsand counting

Worldwide Presence: Los Angeles, London, Buenos Aires, Irvine

Market Leading Intelligence Response Technologies

Emerios Response Services database and response platformensures superior customer experience

Storied history of innovation and development


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About me

Love technology in general, self-taught.With a Digital electronics background, I equally enjoy writingcode and building stuff (computers, networks, etc.)

30 years as a software developer Thats true. Im 42 and wrote my first program (a text version of Luna Lander) when I

was 12, using a Casio programmable calculator.

17 years as Project/Team Leader

15 years as Software Architect

10 years as CTO / Chief Architect

Microsoft Certifications: MCSE / MCSD / MCTSome projects leaded: Renault Argentina Extranet Licitaciones,ISP Ciudad Digital, Proyecto Middleware TERNIUM.


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SaaS == Software as a Service

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SaaS

Software as a service, or "on-demand

software," is a software delivery model in

which software and its associated data are

hosted centrally (typically in a public or

private cloud) and are typically accessed by

users using a thin client, normally a webbrowser over the Internet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SaaShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SaaShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SaaS


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SaaS vs PaaS?

SaaS: focus on providing

application services to solve

ONE vertical industry problem.

PaaS: focus on providing

platform services to build anyapplication for any industry.


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SaaS PaaS?

Building a PaaS solution might bemore complex and harder.

Becoming a PaaS provider is notthe natural evolution step for allSaaS providers.

Is just an strategic businessdecision based on what you wantto be.


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SaaS == PaaS?

Multi-tenancy

Scalability

Fault-tolerance

Configurability & extensibility:

optional for SaaS, mandatory

for PaaS


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Our SaaS Solution


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Emerios 1.0

Real-Time Customer Verification and Response

End-to-end multi-channel Enrollment processes.

Vmbc verifies name, address, social security number, phonenumber, tax information, email address and desired outcomes ofcustomer.

VMBC requests communication preferences from customer in orderto understand the method by which they prefer a response.

After verification, Vmbc responds with appropriate forms,instructions and requirements in order to service the customer

VMBC follows up to ensure the customer has responded with allnecessary documentation necessary to qualify for the service.

If the enrollment business process includes periodic verification,vmbc manages that as well.


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Lifeline Enrollment Timeline

A History of Success!

Q4-Y2008

-Multi

language

New StatesVirginia

Georgia

Massachusetts

#Reqs:281

Q3-Y2009

-LexisNexis

-BackOffice

-Update info

-De-Enroll

-FCC Audit

-Verification

New States

Illinois

#Reqs:1059

Q2-Y2009

-Process

Versioning

& deploy

New StatesAlabama

West Virginia

New Jersey

ConnecticutNew Hampshire

DC

Ohio

Wisconsin

#Reqs:794

Q1-Y2009

-Fraud rules

-BackOffice

-CSR Notes

-Rejection

reasonsNew States

New York

Pennsylvania

Michigan

North Carolina

Delaware

#Reqs:595

Q3-Y2008

Initial

Release

New States

Tennessee

Florida

#Reqs:608


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SafeLink Enrollment

Outstanding achievement

Less than 4 months from final PDD to production release after UAT in

August, 2008.

Definition, development and rollout of 7 states in less than 4 weeks(AL, CT, DC, NH, NJ, OH, WI, WV) on June 2009. An average of 1 State

every 4 days.

Less than 12 weeks to design, develop, test and release the

customizable Fraud Prevention Engine through LexisNexis Validationrules. Released in July, 2009.


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SafeLink Enrollment

Applications Received 8,646,325

Applications Active 4,334,443

Phones Shipped 6,364,266

In Process ~50KPublic site daily visits: ~260K

New Enrollments per day: ~10K

Phone calls processed per day: ~30K

Documents processed per day: ~5,000


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Development Platform & Tools

.NET based

Team Foundation Server / Team Build

Visual Studio 2010 - .NET 4

ASP.NET, MVC, Ajax, WCF, WPF, WFSilverlight 3.0

Enterprise Library 4.x

WS-Federation, Identity Framework

Retina.NET 2.0 OR/M

Others: ABCPdf, Moq, Selenium


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Emerios 1.0 Platform

Private Cloud with two redundant Data Centers

Operating System Windows Server 2008 R2 x64

Microsoft Hyper-V 2.0

IIS, MSMQ, NLB, Active Directory

Database: MS SQL Server 2008 x64

IVR Services: Speech Server 2007 x64

Supporting Services: TMG 2010, SUS, System Center 2007

Storage: 2x SAN Dell Storage: 45 Disks 450Gb 15K (20Tb Raw)


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0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

Count

Poly. (Count)

New Enrollments by day

Daily Average: 9,599

Total: 2,401,483

Maximum: 13,910

SafeLink Enrollment


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0

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

350,000

400,000

450,000

Page Views

Poly. (Page Views)

Public site daily visits


Maximum: 386,707

SafeLink Enrollment


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0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

Calls

Poly. (Calls)

Phone calls processed by day


Total: 6,988,123

Maximum: 42,050

SafeLink Enrollment


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Emerios 1.0 System Block Diagram

Public WebSite

CSR WebSite

Web public CSR User

STS

Enrollment Service

Web FaadeWorkflowServIce

SecurityTokenService(ST

S)

Enrollment System

DDBBPrincipal Mirror

CRMSTS

SSL

SSL

AddressValidation

Public Calls

IVR

Mail - Fax

FormRequest

Corporative Services

STS

3rd Parties

EnrollmentIntegration

Staging

WorkFlowManager

CRMManager

Admin WebSite

Admin User

SSL

STS


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Our Pain Points

Development life cycle for content changes

Implemented a CMS (Sitefinity 4.x)

New Release Deployments

Custom tool on top of MSDeploy

Storage IOPS vs. effective space

Monitor usage patterns to keep optimizing things

Database monitoring & tuning

Partitioning / Sharding


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Our Pain Points

Server Memory consumption

Server role consolidation (POD strategy)

Memory usage optimization

Shared caching strategies (Velocity)

Data replication

Settled down on SQL Mirroring

Production Monitoring & Diagnostics Mix of System Center and custom tools (performance

counters, Http Trace, self-diagnostics, etc)


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Our PaaS Solution

On top of all that, we then focused on the

business part of our requirements:

How hard is to add new functionality or change

something existing in a system?

How easy we could create a new solution for a

completely new industry?

How fast and easy we could deploy a newinstance of a system for a new customer?


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Motivation

Enrollment System (Emerios 1.0)limitations:

Designed for the implementation of clientsLifeline government programs

Customizations require extensive knowledgeof the code and the developmentenvironment -> long lead times for theexecution ofchanges requested by clients

No economy of scale to maintain and supportdevelopment of new features for newcustomers


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Motivation

Emerios 2.0 must entice the market through apowerful, graphic User Interface that providesend-to-end customization of processes andworkflows that are not limited to one

industry.

In order to improve the value of Emerios,create business opportunities and get more

clients on the platform, the solution must bedynamic and easily customizable by non-developer team members.


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Typical Requirements Lifecycle with

Emerios 1.0 :

Motivation

Deployment

to PROD

Deployment

to PRE

For User

Acceptance

Tests

Quality

Assurance

DevelopmentProduct

Backlog

Requirements

prioritization

Product

Development

Requirements

gathering and

definition

Customer

Sign Off

Customer

Sign Off

2 weeks


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Requirements lifecycle with Emerios 2.0:

Business Analysts are able to capture business

requirements and execute their design models

as working applications -> no more ultra-detailed documents to be interpreted by

developers and testers

Motivation

Deployment

to PROD

Change

Implemented

in PRE

For UserAcceptance

Tests

Product

Development

Requirementsgathering and

definition

Customer

Sign Off

Customer

Sign Off


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An example of module-based development onEmerios 2.0:

A new Financial Module is added to the existingQualification, Billing and Data Validationmodules.

Motivation

Emerios

2.0

Core

BillingModule

DataValidation

Module

Qualification

Module

Emerios

2.0

Core

Finance

Module

DataValidation

Module

QualificationModule

Billing

Module


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Research

With the aim at learning from existing

model-oriented platforms, the following

products were analyzed:

Salesforce

Mendix

Outsystems Agile


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Research - Salesforce

What we liked:

Rich business entity definitions

Formula-based fields and field validations supported

Automatic CRUD forms for business entities

Business model published as a web service (API)

Common business entitiy aspects (notes, attachments, etc.)

Modular Extensibility

Approval Templates (Mail, Web forms)

Business Model testing support

Integrated public UI and reporting Module Market (like the AppStore)


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Research - Salesforce

What we did not like:

Propietary extensibility language (Apex)

Form-based configuration tools (as opposed to point-and-click and drag-

and-drop UIs)

Configuration tools oriented to business developers (with some degree

of programming skills)

Web-based tools with poor user experience (i.e. no intellisense, HTML

source code editing, etc.)

Workflows do not enable the definition of operations, just rules


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Research - Mendix

What we liked:

A basic application can be developed in less than 5 minutes

Workflows can invoke other workflows

Document Templates (same as Emerios Enrollment System's generated

PDF forms)

Business Model Versioning

Business model published as a web service (API)

API with multiple entity formats (JSON, XML, Java native), and multiple

hosting protocols (HTTP, Web Services, Java native)

Both Cloud and On-premises hosting supported


Module Market (like the AppStore)

Integration with SAP


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Research - Mendix


Only Java extensibility supported (our know how is .NET-based)

On-premises hosting using Java technologies only (our know how is

based on Microsoft technologies)

Configuration tools are Desktop-only

Business Entity Modeling using complex UML notation


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Research - Outsystems Agile

What we liked: A basic application can be developed in less than 5 minutes

Configuration tools with outstanding user experience, oriented to non-technical users

Workflows for site navigation

Integrated public UI, reporting and performance KPI.

Business Model Versioning with 1-click deploy and 1-click rollback

Business data and Business Entity definitions can be imported from Excel

Application Templates (with predefined functionality for commonbusiness models)

Supports multiple platforms and languages (.NET / Java)

Automated deploy and rollback


Both Cloud and On-premises hosting supported


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Research - Outsystems Agile


Configuration tools are Desktop-only

Requires platform services side-by-side with business services (when

hosted on-premises)


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Research - ComparativeSalesforce Mendix Outsystems Agile

Modelling Interface

Web site with form-based UIDesktop App (Visual Studio alike) Desktop App Desktop App (excellent UX)

BUSINESS MODELEntities

Form-based UML class diagram / Entity-relationmodel

Entity list (can be imported form

Excel)Workflows Form-based Workflow Designer Workflow DesignerTriggers/Events Form-basedBusiness Rules

Expression editor (textual DSL) Special Workflow DSL WorkflowsUser Interface Raw custom-HTML editor / Visual

Force Desktop editor Form editor Form editor + Workflow fornavigationVersioning Supported Supported SupportedExtensibility Apex propietary programming

language Java .NET / Java1-Click Deploy Supported Supported Supported1-Click Rollback Supported (what about data

changes?)ARCHITECTURECloud Hosting Supported Supported SupportedOn-premise Hosting Not-supported Supported SupportedFault-Tolerance They claim they don't have single-

points-of-failure

(this means full redundancy on

every layer)Reporting Integrated reports (web UI)

Full audit of data changes Integrated reportsIntegrated reports

Automatic performance KPIs


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Research Conclusions

Building Emerios 2.0 as an application platform, with almostthe same functionality as the ones analyzed, would demand agreat effort, thus a project of several months.

However, Emerios 2.0 cannot wait so much time to enter the

market, which leads to evaluate the following possibilities: Buy approach: use an existing platform, taking full advantage of

every aspect that it has out-of-the box, and focus on building thosemodules whose business Emerios knows well and has experience on.

Incremental Build approach: build a minimal core that can executebusiness models coming from different sources (code, workflow,database, etc.), using coded processes in a first stage (fastest to buildand do not require a user interface), and then, in future stages,include other types of business model configuration tools (that abusiness analyst could use to replace every coded process).


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Research ConclusionsBuy Approach

Pros Cons Best time-to-market.

Proven technology and architecture.

The most cost-effective:

Analysis, Development, Test, IT costs demanded

when building a new product.

Maintenance costs.

Less flexible (it might be impossible to extend beyond

the current scope of the platform and we cannot assess

this until faced with the platform limitations vs.

business requirements).

Worse fit to the business (generic solutions might not

be able to fit the business model as tightly as a custom

solution could).

Startup cost (after buying the product, we might need

to write lots of business modules to fit our current

business model).

Learning curve.

Security requirements might restrict the tool selection.Build Approach

Pros Cons

Best flexibility (there are no platform limits; we could

always extend our kernel to accomplish anything, nomatter how complex).

Best business modeling accuracy (we could model only

which is necessary for the business, without the

overhead of writing generic modules we do not really

know we will need).

More time-to-market to come up with a polished

product (Salesforce has more than two years ofimprovement over a working platform).

Need to build and integrate the modeling tools

(business entities, business processes, etc.).


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Emerios 2.0 Product Vision

The Emerios 2.0 solution is a highly configurable

business modeling platform that can host

multiple business models at the same time,

providing an API to interact with externalsystems.


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Emerios 2.0 Business Models

Emerios 2.0 is centered on Business Models, typicallyconsisting of: Business Entity Definitions: a description of the data

involved in the business (e.g. products, purchase orders,enrollments, customers, etc.).

Business Processes: the operations involved in the business(e.g. purchase product, list products, create enrollment,etc.). These can be executed by direct execution, anevent/trigger firing or scheduling.

Business Events/Triggers: can be seen as part of thebusiness process definition, but important enough to benoteworthy. They provide support for asynchronousinteractions (system or human based) and provide a way toconnect and reuse business processes.


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At design time Business Analysts create or maintain

Business Models using the Emerios 2.0 Modeling Tools.

Those Business Models are stored in an internal database

known as the Business Model Database.


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At run time, the Emerios 2.0 Runtime Engine loads Business

Models, from the Business Model Database, and exposes

Business APIs that can be used by external sites and services

to interact with the Business Models.

As a result of interaction with the Business Models throughthe API, business data is created, updated or deleted within

the Business Data Database.

For example, a Customer might

browse a product catalog online

and purchase a product.

Afterwards, he might call an IVR

to check the status of his

purchase order.

For example, when a customer purchases some

products, the stock of those products is reduced and

a new purchase order is created. This business data

is stored in the Business Data Database.


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Emerios 2.0 Modeling Tools

Business Analysts are the main users ofEmerios 2.0 ModelingTools.

These tools enable them to model a specific business, whichincludes the definition of: The Client whose business is being modeled

The Application to be hosted on Emerios 2.0 platform

Billable Items that will be part of the client/application billing

Business Entities, to store the data involved in the business

Business Processes, to model the behavior of business operations

Web Portals that will act as points of entrance to the applicationhosted on Emerios 2.0 platform

Security for the application hosted on Emerios 2.0 platform

Reports on business data and operations

Data transfer between Emerios and the clients system


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Emerios 2.0 Modules

Emerios 2.0 supports extensibility and configurability through amodular architecture.

A Module is a logical grouping of components that provide aspecific functionality by integrating with external servicesand/or extending other Emerios 2.0 modules.

Emerios 2.0 Modules: Can be enabled and disabled on a per-tenant basis without the need

to deploy or restart services.

Extend both the design-time and the run-time aspects of Emerios2.0.

Could be developed in-house or by third-party development teams.

The Emerios 2.0 Core is the set of essential built-in Modulesthat are always available for any Business Model of any tenant. Our Emerios 2.0 Standard Module Library built on top of our Core

will provide additional functionality like: Security (authentication,authorization, data encryption), Auditing, Logging, etc.


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Emerios 2.0 Architecture

Emerios Core Modules

Workflow Metadata Data Access Audit

Multi-Tenant Database Storage

OLTP DWH Staging

Emerios Core Services

DynamicDataExchange

DynamicReportingEngine

Security

C

MS

Emerios Standard Modules

CRM Enrollment Admin

Business Modules

DES DEEP


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Emerios 2.0 Core

Metadata Module

Describe Business Entities

(e.g.: products have

price, sku, etc.)

Data Module

Create, Read, Update and

Delete Business Entities

(e.g.: products)

Process Module

Create, Read, Update and

Delete Business Processes

(e.g.: purchase products)

REST API Module

Expose business processes through

HTTP REST (e.g.: to be consumed

by light iPhone applications)

SOAP API Module

Expose business processes as SOAP

Web Services (e.g.: to be

consumed by ETCs workflows)

Other Modules Examples

Address Validation

Enrollment

Lifeline

Customer Identity Validation (LexisNexis)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transferhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAPhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAPhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transferhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer


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Case Study: E-CommerceEmerios 2.0 Modeling Tools

Business Entities Business Processes

(*) Provided bya Customers Module


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Case Study: E-Commerce


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Emerios 2.0 In a Nutshell

Emerios 2.0 is centered on Business Models.

A Business Model is a software representation of a real-world business.

The Emerios 2.0 Modeling Tools are a set of tools used by Business Analysts to create and

maintain Business Models at design-time.

Business Models define entities, processes, events and additional configuration (security

permissions & roles, for example) , which are stored in the Business Model Database.

The Emerios 2.0 Runtime Engine loads Business Models from the Business Model Databaseand exposes Business APIs for those models.

Customer-facing apps such as Web Sites, IVRs, etc. access the Business Model through its

Business API.

Business data (e.g. products, orders, etc.) is stored in the Business Data Database.

A Module is a logical grouping of components that provide a specific functionality by

integrating with external services and/or extending other Emerios 2.0 modules.Modules can be enabled and disabled on a per-tenant basis, without the need to deploy or

restart services, and extend both the design-time and the run-time aspects of Emerios 2.0.

The Emerios 2.0 Core is the set of essential built-in Modules that are always available for

any Business Model of any tenant.


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Emerios 2.0 Demo

Administration site

Process Workflow designer


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Learned Lessons

Before building anything, define your business objectivesBecoming a PaaS solution provider is not the natural (and

mandatory) evolution step after SaaS

It might be, if you are worried by the economies of scale

of your potential business and projectsThere are a lot of architectural and technical challenges in

any SaaS and PaaS solution. PaaS adds on top of SaaS the

ability to define and build completely new applications

We focused on business processes as the way toexpress and build applications by non-technical users

Put usability and accountability as top priorities


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Learned Lessons

Keep It Simple (KISS principle)Do performance Testing Early in the process

Unit test / micro testing

Stress test

Load test Long duration tests

Resource consumption

Think about production monitoring and debugging

Think about reporting and data integration


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Andrs G. Vettori, CTO

[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]