A Midwest Medical Supplier adds a “zing” to their web front and gives a web 2.0 face-lift by migrating to the latest release of WebSphere Portlet Factory. Along the way they reduce their operational costs by transitioning to the latest version of WebSphere stack (Application Server).

When a mid-west medical supplies provider begin to see low dealer satisfaction and high operational costs for their web-front, the business came to IT with request to “update” the old e-commerce store front to a more modern social and smart device e-commerce store. Upgrading the technology stack to the latest version of WebSphere and Portlet Factory was the first step in that direction. However, our customer’s resources did not have the bandwidth and were tied down with production and scheduled maintenance. Streebo, a recognized leader in portlet factory and software automation, was looked upon as a trusted advisor in the inner IT circles at the company. We were called upon with a deadline where the modern upgraded store front had to go-live before the upcoming dealer conference in the summer. We had 14 weeks to go. There was no time to lose.

Getting Started

Based on a clearly laid out plan Streebo automation engineers wired up the pre-built Factory assembly lines in Streebo’s Houston Lab tapping into SAP R/3 (QA data) via VPN connections - Salesforce.com access was given on the cloud. Our client had simply placed an order for a “custom modern store-front” – a store with a smart web-front that will surface well on desktops, laptops, kiosks and smart devices. Streebo applied lean manufacturing principles and Just-In-Time delivery by leveraging IBM Software automation and standard builders and parts.

Building a Smart Interface

The latest version of IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory had out of the box support for the latest Dojo User Interfaces and AJAX technology. As soon as the models were loaded in the new version of the Factory designer and upgrade touch ups were given, a fresh new interface that was compliant with the latest Portlet Specifications (JSR 286) was created. The modern Store front was up and live in weeks (ahead of schedule).

SAP R/3 Integration

IBM provided out of the box SAP R/3 builders were continually used to tap into existing BAPI (Business APIs) and RFC (Remote Function Calls) – Builders automate creation of SAP services and the architecture was thus SOA compliant. IBM provided out of the box SAP Call builder also has support for SAP Transactions and complex objects such as SAP Tables and Imports. Under the covers it leverages SAP JCO connection that is set-up at a WebSphere Application Server level. This Java Connector is provided by SAP and is version dependent. Here, we wanted to ensure that our client gets support from both IBM and SAP and we leave them with a compliant, standard, scalable solution and hence due diligence was done from all angles. IBM provided SAP set of builders automated integration with SAP R/3 (MM module) and no additional Java coding was required.

SalesForce.com integration

The objective was to create a smart store front that will keep give their sales team seamless access to customer order history from their SalesForce.com (CRM on the cloud). Further certain sales information of the client was required to be integrated in the Sales Agent View of the Store Front – thereby allowing their sales team members cross-selling opportunities.

Two-way integration points were created with SalesForce.com using IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory. IBM offers out of the box support to both create and integrate standard web and REST services.

IBM’s Factory consuming SalesForce.com services – Building an integrated Smart Front with SAP R/3 & SalesForce.com data

SalesForce.com offers service end-points that were consumed in their store front. The Sales Agent experience on the smart web-front was seamless and cross-selling opportunities quickly translated in an improved pipeline and increased revenue.

Factory as a Service Provider (Create Web-Services for SalesForce.com consumption)

Further, certain amount of SAP data was exposed using the Services Definition and Provider models available in the Factory. They automate creation of standard WSDL/SOAP or REST services. The SalesForce.com team had laid out a specification and the Factory tooling automated the creation of the web-service based on the schema provided by the SalesForce.com team. These services were secured using standard WebSphere Application Server security model. It now provides ready access to back-end corporate systems for the Sales team as they are sifting through the leads in their cloud based enterprise CRM (SalesForce.com)

Technology Stack: IBM WebSphere Application Server, SAP R/3, SalesForce.com, IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory

Streebo Services Package: Factory & Dashboard Upgrade Package (link to the package) + Smart Portlet Package (implementation currently underway)

IBM customers that are looking to upgrade their existing Portlet Factory and Dashboard environments can learn from our repeatable processes. We have identified list of builders that are now sun-set by IBM or are on the deprecation path. For instance, IBM has now put the Web-Charts builder on the sun-set path.

Should customers migrate to the ILog JView chart? Or should they migrate to Dojo Charts?

Can they continue to use the existing web-charts builder? What is the road-map from IBM? We have answers to many such questions. We advise our customers to stay away from those integration approaches that will eventually have no support from IBM.

Instead we highlight new features available in the latest version of Portlet factory and Dashboard Framework (Active Insight) that our customers can leverage. We can show your IT staff a cost optimized migration path that is battle tested, ensuring smooth upgrades of your critical applications.

Talk to us or call us to find out why so many existing portlet factory and dashboard customers like to have us around when they are upgrading and adopting the new Web 2.0 and Smart Interfaces.