WGI Engineers Application Integration Strategy with SOA

The concept of a service-oriented architecture was designed with companies like Washington Group International in mind. What else could possibly integrate applications for a company whose business ranges from homeland security to building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, power plants and manufacturing facilities?

The $3.2 billion global engineering, construction and management services firm's ongoing SOA project is part of a wider corporate initiative for sharing common business processes across its vast lines of business (See "The Hard Sell"). "This is where SOA fits in nicely," says Rich Colton, application integration manager for WGI, headquartered in Boise, Idaho. So far, WGI is focusing on integrating applications across its industrial process, mining and power groups, where there's the most potential synergy among business processes, Colton says.

WGI is using its SOA to build new Web services (functions and processes), as well as reuse existing Web services across multiple applications. That simplifies software development for WGI, and also provides its users with more features for their favorite apps.

It's no surprise that WGI--which has locations across the U.S. and in more than 30 countries and provides its services to power, mining, transportation and other industries--has a wide mix of application and server platforms that support its diverse operations. "In our industries, there's no one product you can go out and buy. There's no ERP system to address engineering and construction, for instance, so we must use various best-of-breed applications," Colton says.

The firm uses Oracle's BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) Process Manager software for creating and deploying its new Web services-based application infrastructure. The first phase of its SOA deployment focuses on integrating apps that support its contracted engineering and construction projects and upgrading its back-end IT processes, such as moving data to its data marts and between applications. A thousand users worldwide will initially have access to these SOA-enabled apps--through an Oracle Portal client--and the company says that number will eventually reach 8,000.

Colton says WGI chose Oracle's J2EE-based Web services over Microsoft's .NET architecture for its SOA server platform because, at the time, it was more robust than .NET, and because WGI already had other Oracle software in-house.

SOA Much Simpler

So what exactly does SOA do for WGI? Take WGI's Documentum content-management system, for example. Previously, the IT group would have had to embed the Documentum API in each application that needed to push or retrieve information from Documentum. But with SOA, WGI instead put a Web Services "wrapper" around the Documentum API, Colton says, so the API is only executed in one place and is therefore simpler to maintain.A user updating a design specification document with his McLeran Software Enterprise Engineer app, for example, now also automatically gets document-control information from Documentum, so he can print an official WGI project label for a hard copy of the updated file. Other Web-based apps can also use this document-control information function, Colton says.

Colton also is currently testing SOA for producing and digitally signing purchase orders, one of the next big business requirements at WGI. Today, POs are printed out of Oracle eBusiness suite and Intergraph Marian materials management applications, physically signed by a WGI employee, scanned back in and then posted to the Documentum application. "We'd like to be able to generate a PO, digitally sign it and push it into our content-management system," Colton says.

Aside from Oracle's BPEL Process Manager, WGI also runs Oracle Application Server and Web Services Server software across its app and database servers and Web Services Manager. To prevent SOA from adding complexity to its servers, WGI runs Oracle InterConnect, which along with BPEL Process Manager, handles the bulk of the Web services back-end processing, Colton says. "This makes the SOA 'footprint' as small as possible," he says.

WGI hasn't experienced any Web services interoperability or other problems. "The amazing thing about this [SOA] market is that most vendors are going in the same direction," Colton says, unlike in the earlier days, when Oracle's Application Server, for example, came with its own proprietary extensions to Web services. "I'm not buying into extensions to the standards ... and if tomorrow we decide to use Oracle or IBM for our security environment, we would just plug and play," he says.

But interoperability was a problem at first between WGI's J2EE servers and .NET clients. "When we went to test Web services with .NET, it wouldn't work ... it failed when we called a Web service," he says. The problem was how .NET supports W3C's Web services XSD:any data-type standard. The team developed a simple workaround for the problem before it went operational, and now .NET clients can work with its Web services servers.What's in Store

There's still a missing link to WGI's SOA architecture: a way to manage performance of the SOA-based business processes. Colton hopes to purchase Oracle's BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) software, which provides real-time monitoring of business processes and events such as orders or shipments. In WGI's case, BAM would provide real-time dashboards on project-management functions such as employee time collection. "We could see if business processes start to slow down," for example, and make adjustments, he says.

Employee hours are currently posted weekly, so a WGI construction manager doesn't get updated information on who's available for a specific project or who may be adding overtime, for instance. "BAM could take this time connection and marry it with historical data, to give us current employee time information," Colton says. That would help a project manager find the right workers.

Meanwhile, WGI also is using SOA to automate updates to its data marts on construction and engineering project costs. This was formerly an error-prone, partially manual batch process within IT. "The advantage here is you get better, automated error-handling. Before, we had to check for errors and correct them before finishing the updates," Colton says. He expects SOA to bethe basis of WGI's next-generation knowledgemanagement system.

[15 minutes]Rich Colton
Washington Group International

Rich Colton, 54, is application integration manager for Washington Group International, based in Boise, Idaho. He oversees the company's SOA initiative and other application development projects across the global firm's business lines. He's been in IT since 1981 and with WGI eight years.

Biggest myth about SOA: "That it is a new technology. While some of SOA is new technology, most is repackaging of existing technologies. This stuff isn't difficult to understand, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to [do] it. But you have to have an understanding of XML, XML schemas and SOAP [Simple Object Access Protocol]."

When not to go SOA: "If an ERP system satisfies all (or most) needs of an organization, SOA adds no real value."

Best thing about SOA: "The ability to orchestrate disparate legacy systems."App development today: "With SOA in particular, we use GUIs and the code is generated behind the scenes for us ... we just tweak it. If you look at what we do today, 90 percent of the time we don't write a line of code. Most tools do the writing [for us.]"

Most bizarre IT request: "To automate the scrubbing of vendor records' input from various systems into a data mart, after the data mart was already populated."

Worst thing about working for a company that destroys weapons of mass destruction (WMDs): "Worrying about being asked to help destroy the WMDs."

Insomnia happens: "When I take a nap in the afternoon."

Worst day at work:"9/11--worrying about fellow employees in the South Tower [of the World Trade Center in New York]."In my CD player now: "Pink Floyd, 'The Dark Side of the Moon.'"

Must-see TV: "March Madness. I don't watch TV--except for an occasional sports event."

Comfort food: "Buffalo wings."

After hours: "Road bike and hike."

Favorite hangout: "The Colorado mountains."

SOA in Sync with WGI Corporate Vision It's a dream come true for an IT manager when a technology project proposal fits hand-in-glove with the corporate business strategy. Just ask Rich Colton, application integration manager for Washington Group International, a Boise, Idaho-based engineering, construction and management firm. WGI's corporate initiative to integrate applications and eliminate duplicate processes across all lines of the business--called the Washington Way--so far has made Colton's job of selling IT's new SOA projects to upper management a breeze.

When Colton accepted his position at WGI in 2004, his boss, the director of information systems, had already established SOA (service-oriented architecture) as a priority within IT. The firm's first real SOA buy was low-key, by WGI project standards: The Oracle BPEL Process Manager software and related hardware purchase (about a half-million dollar investment) didn't require scrutiny by upper management because it was part of previously approved, single sign-on software buy for Oracle Portal. Colton and his boss did, however, have to sell the project within the IT organization itself. "Some IS managers were skeptical about SOA, particularly the performance," Colton says. Once they saw the technology demos, however, they were on board with the project.

Colton will have to make his case to upper management for his next big SOA purchase, Oracle's BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) software. He doesn't expect much resistance, however. The software has some obvious benefits for WGI: BAM's real-time information would be helpful for tracking progress on a construction project, for example. "Normally, project [management] information is posted on a weekly basis, but it would be nice to see what's going on currently in a project," he says.

And the company's success with its existing Web services-driven apps should help sell BAM and other future SOA initiatives. Even so, Colton says it's too soon to measure any ROI on the Web services projects due to the long-term nature of WGI's projects for commercial clients. And, next time around, he'll try to do a better job of talking business capabilities, rather than getting tangled in the technological weeds of the acronym-laden and developer-focused SOA market. "I think each time I do this, I get better at selling the business capabilities," Colton says.