VERNON HILLS, Ill. -
So, when something goes wrong, the information technology (IT) team used to start a game of 20 questions with other business units at the CU: Does the problem lie in one of the databases? Or perhaps a firewall? Maybe it’s inside of the servers? If it is one of the servers, will the problem affect other applications as well?
Even when all systems are go, BCU’s project management organization (PMO) at times decides to tweak a member service at one of the six websites. Then, different questions pop up: Do we have to buy new technology to make that change, or can we make use of what we’ve got? What other online services will be affected if we make that change?
BCU found a way to minimize the guesswork. The CU started efficiently answering questions about its complicated business processes and enterprise architecture in September, when it started using the MEGA Modeling Suite, provided by MEGA International of Sharon, Mass.
“Now I’ve got a comprehensive chart that explains the entire website application for the employees who support it,” said Tim Tibbals, BCU’s director of enterprise architecture. Tibbals’ job is to look at the big picture regarding the CU’s business processes, projects, people and IT infrastructure.
The website model takes all the knowledge about the website infrastructure and related business processes that is swimming around in the staff’s mind, or in hundreds of Microsoft Word and Visio files, and transforms it into an edifying diagram.
“Technical support can use this chart as a communication tool with specific employees when a service goes down to figure out what particular technical infrastructure drives that particular step in the business process,” he continued. “That way, Information Services can respond more quickly to issues.”
Previously, Tibbals would have to send a mass e-mail to various employees to pinpoint the appropriate support staff. Then, they’d puzzle over BCU’s haystack of hardware and data before finding the glitch.
“Support can use a knife instead of a machine gun to find the problem,” said Tibbals.
MEGA can categorize each system at the CU according to its business processes, or according to its relationship with other technologies, said Pradeep Raghunath, enterprise software architect at BCU.
Modeling isn’t merely a reactive task. The $1.2-billion CU can also use MEGA to eliminate repetitive tasks, help design an efficient technology infrastructure or budget purchases.
“One of the biggest benefits is to business process improvement,” said Tibbals. “MEGA helps you see the where each task is handed-off and to how many people. If we see eight ‘hand-offs’ for one process, we can work with the business group to streamline the process.”
For IT, the modeling suite builds a “five-year road map” of the entire technology architecture, said Raghunath.
“End users can see how the tools they have now might help them in future projects,” Raghunath explained. “And if they add a new system, they can see how the new system will contribute to the road map.”
“That’s a benefit to the PMO in using existing assets rather than generating new assets,” Tibbals added.
Raghunath can query MEGA to find out which systems are nearing the end of their life-cycle, “which helps when planning the IT budget,” he said.
Baxter CU has modeled not only its website application, but 29 other applications and nearly 400 web services, technical infrastructure and servers, and won’t stop over the next 18 months until about 95% of the enterprise is modeled, said Tibbals.
“At that point, we’ll have utopia–a knowledgebase of information about our complete architecture in one location,” he said.
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For info on this story:
* www.bcu.org
* www.mega.com
