Case Study: Infrastructure for an Off-The-Shelf Package
Abstract
The global $12 billion bio-technology company sought Amaro and Associates, Inc (AAI) to assure its rollout of a Commercial off-the-shelf (or COTS) product would meet the business requirements related to user load, response time and operational integrity.
The Challenge
The development team did its due diligence of working with the COTS vendor to create its initial infrastructure design to support its projected user load. The AAI team, while in the process of creating a functional test plan, discovered the software and hardware configuration would likely result in severe operational limitations even for a small number of users.
How We Helped
The AAI team analyzed the system and created a test plan to determine the appropriate infrastructure solution. Working with the development team and the COTS vendor, Rational Test scripts and scenarios were created to test against various configurations in a controlled environment. The AAI team, using its best practice of iterations of collect, interpret and construct, was able to provide hardware alternatives, changes to customized code, tuning of the COTS configuration, tuning of the database tier and tuning of the web tier. After one year post-rollout, the AAI team’s recommendations and projections have proven accurate and resulted in a stable, successful operation that supports the intended user load..
Lessons Learned
Even the simplest modifications to a COTS system can dramatically affect the performance characteristics in ways not anticipated by the development team and the vendor. Planning, analysis, assessment and testing during implementation are key to avoiding costly post-rollout operational difficulties and subsequent emergency changes.