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Integration Paradise For Affinity Sutton
Affinity Sutton is in the process of bringing together over 150 interfaces between disparate applications using Datadialogs' Eden platform.
Chris Battye, Head of Business Systems, Affinity Sutton, said "We have more than 150 applications interfaces. They have been written by different people, over many years, on different operating systems, and in different languages or scripts, and involve a large number of disparate business applications. With so many interfaces, it is difficult to manage and control them effectively, so that if one fails the IMS department only know about it when the business identifies a data issue or inconsistency, prompting them to call the support desk."
Affinity Sutton therefore needed a better understanding of its existing interfaces, to know immediately when they had failed and why, and how to manage all the interfaces within a common hub to give the IT department much better control and visibility.
Affinity Sutton began talks with Datadialogs with the idea of using the Eden platform to re-implement all of its existing interfaces. However, it soon became apparent that it would be a massive project as it would involve reverse engineering more than 150 interfaces, redesigning each of them (if required) and then re-implementing them. Added to which there would be a considerable amount of redundancy in the project as most of the interfaces work most of the time. Datadialogs advised that Affinity Sutton wouldn't need to re-implement all the interfaces; it simply needed to monitor what was there and only re-implement the interfaces that fail often.
Affinity Sutton has decided on a phased implementation of Eden. The first phase will use Eden to monitor all of the Affinity Sutton's interfaces, checking that they are working properly, identifying failure points and emailing the relevant people when particular interfaces fail. The second phase will use Eden to re-implement the problem areas, which themselves will be built in Eden and will therefore be covered by the monitoring system.
Commenting on the other benefits, Battye said, "We can now rationalise the management of what seemed to be 150 distinct interfaces into a simpler and more manageable structure. For example, we previously considered each rent-payment file received and its flow through the various systems as one interface, but we can now view a single 'rents' interface which contains sub-levels for different types and individuals files. This has given us a much better perspective on what we thought was an unmanageable and growing problems."
Affinity Sutton and Datadialogs are also using Eden to build a web-based front-end for the monitoring system which shows the real-time state of each interface and allows users to drill-down as necessary. Once Affinity Sutton moves into the second phase of this project, it will use the same monitoring system to implement part or all of certain interfaces and to manually intervene when required.
Battye concluded , "The monitoring system lets us react to interface failures and potentially re-initiate them before the business even becomes aware of a problem, and because of the drill-down facility into the underlying application database, failure due to data inconsistencies can be resolved within the business, failure due to data inconsistencies can be resolved within the business, without the need for the IT department to be involved."
About Affinity Sutton
The Affinity Homes Group Ltd. Affinity is one of the largest independent providers of affordable housing. As the parent company to both large and small organisations, Affinity provides the necessary group infrastructure, financial and corporate services, leaving our operating companies to concentrate on providing first class local services.
www.affinitysutton.com
About Datadialogs
Datadialogs, part of TelephoneticsVIP (TPH.L), provides enterprise software that empowers organisations to achieve service-oriented architecture (SOA) and sustained business process management (BPM) success with its unique technology - Eden.
Eden is the enabling technology that empowers organisations to create and deploy rapid business solutions alongside existing business systems and infrastructure. Eden is a 'codeless' technology that integrates in real-time with virtually any IT infrastructure, rapidly bringing disparate systems together into a single unified environment and without the need to develop code.
Eden is highly regarded across private and public sectors with customers including Kier Group, Affinity Sutton, Morrison Facilities Services, Comet and Bournemouth & Hampshire Water. Datadialogs works with a network of partners including; Civica, Differentia Consulting, 1st Touch, and SunGard Aspiren.
www.datadialogs.com
