Performing a Mission-Critical webMethods Upgrade for the World’s Largest Aerospace Company

150+ Countries

10,000+ In-Service

Commercial Jetliners

Goal: Frictionless Business

Guess what’s fundamental for companies to become disruption-ready? An agile and flexible operating model! So, when our client wanted to modernize their integration platform and put their operations in 150+ countries aligned to speed and scalability, we emerged as a valued digital partner and panned out a strategy with a value shift.

Benefits

Snapshots

Challenge

Outdated, inflexible webMethods platform that could not respond to business needs; single server architecture that could not handle all the incoming business transactions and resulted in downtime; high overhead costs.

Solutions

Implemented the new, upgraded webMethods 10.7 solution based on the ‘pay-as-you-go’ model; deployed and configured Central User Management to manage access control and mitigate risks; installed Terracotta Server Array (TSA) for ensuring high availability clusters within the IT estate.

Benefits

Ensured operational uptime; improved business scalability; increased cost savings

Key Challenges

Running a business today is about managing dynamic business needs and being disruption-ready. Our client, however, was struggling to cope with business shifts because they were not technologically current. They realized that their process integration platform, webMethods, was fast becoming obsolete, so much so that their workforce was spending valuable time on maintenance and troubleshooting instead of driving new forms of value.

System failures proved to be a major business distraction. Since our client was relying on a single server configuration to support real-time transactions, a highly congested infrastructure was built in place that could not perform load balancing and was not dependable enough to operate continuously without fail.

Our client was compelled to hire multiple support teams to manage the existing, outdated webMethods platform, which resulted in huge cost overheads.

Based in the United States, our client is the world’s largest aerospace company and a leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners, defense, and space and security systems. With a customer base in over 150 countries and a revenue pool worth billions, our client has a long tradition of aerospace innovation and is committed to focused engineering.

Our Solutions

Our client identified the growth priority facing their business and wanted to increase the pace and scale of their processes through a webMethods upgrade. The changes would restructure the entire organization, and so, our client was looking for a key-value partner that had the desired experience. They took Kellton on board to achieve this goal.

We began with a quick assessment and defined what could help shape an agile and seamless transition from webMethods 9.10 to webMethods 10.7. Throughout the journey, we paired our cross-functional capabilities with the industry’s best practices to bring every digital component up to speed and build a highly-available ecosystem with speed, scalability, and intelligence at the core of it. Our strategic approach protected the organization against the failure of a single availability zone,eliminating points of friction and keeping the service always on.

In another crucial move, we implemented Central User Management for the client with an objective to break down shadow IT and allow our client the control and visibility they needed to manage every device, application, and network across the organization. As a result, our client had the flexibility to regulate access based on defined user roles and tighten governance. We also installed Terracotta Server Array (TSA),aiming to establish failover ability and help our client automatically switch to a reliable backup system in the event of downtime.

Cost-efficiency was a cardinal goal to achieve. Keeping this in mind, we implemented the webMethods 10.7 based on the ‘metering’ or ‘pay-as-you-go’ licensing model. Under this form of licensing, our client was supposed to pay fees based on the actual usage of the software and not the average of it. This went a long way in helping our client save more and reduce TCO substantially. However, a prominent challenge was to block the transfer of aggregated usage values to the cloud and keep them entirely on-premise—just how the client wanted it. As a solution, we installed metering software within the range of our client’s on-premise network and established regular checkpoints so as to ensure that data stays within the bounds of the organization.