High Availability Architecture

The following diagram represents a sample architecture that can achieve High Availability based on Bitwise customer projects.

A distributed architecture can have front end load balancer, multiple sets of web servers cluster, application servers cluster, SOA appliance, and multiple web services accessing various databases. This architecture can allow for multiple failover points to be introduced:

• If any of the server clusters fail, seamless failover can be achieved with the help of load balancer.
• If any of the primary web services becomes unavailable, the SOA appliance will failover to a secondary web service.
• If any of the primary databases is not available, the information can be retrieved from secondary data storage with the help of web services.

High Availability Case Study

When a leading credit card company in the U.S. faced challenges delivering a reliable user experience, Bitwise provided a solution that achieves 99.999999% availability for its card member website.

Challenge

• Card members were not able to log in on Sunday as key account-related data was stored in a mainframe database that had scheduled maintenance on every Sunday.
• There was a single point of failure resulting in the unavailability of the entire website for a significant amount of time. None of the functionality could be served even if one service/functionality went down due to a single point of failure.
• Unavailability of website introduced compliance issues.
• There was difficulty in detecting slowness in RMI and CICS environments.
• The scheduled maintenance every week caused a loss of business.

Solution

• Bitwise migrated login and registration data from DB2 (Mainframe) to Oracle. Migration and testing was done through automated scripts.
• Several Mainframe DAPs were converted to Microservices and Oracle stored procedures.
• Mainframe batch processes were migrated to standard batch processes.
• We analyzed applications then designed and introduced five failure points based on functionality to be served to card members. This helped in partial availability of website.
• We built a functionality to allow card members to login even if any of the other functions are not available and they could browse/use available functions.
• We achieved high availability using load balancing and failover maintenance tools like IBM DataPower and IBM eXtreme Scale. DataPower’s unique features are leveraged to make the applications more robust and make enterprise services more scalable.

Results

• An increase in revenue and customer satisfaction with high availability of the website application and customers’ experience with seamless failover.
• The solution enabled site compliance for audit related to governmental regulations.
• There was a 30% reduction in required time for maintenance window.
• Improved reliability as the system is made tolerable to hardware/network/server/software failure.
• Enhanced web application security through DataPower usage.

Getting Started with High Availability

Your customers expect your website to be available and functioning whenever they seek to access your web applications. What are the deficiencies preventing you from achieving high availability for your website and web applications?

The critical first step in implementing a high availability solution is to review your code and architecture to identify key areas for improvement. With cloud technology, designing and implementing failovers has become easier, but complexities remain.

If you need help getting started with high availability, contact us for guidance on assessment and strategy development. Our team of experts will help you identify an appropriate solution with technology recommendations to deliver a reliable user experience.

Effective Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM)

An effective EMM strategy should factor in business advantages and goals while devising policies for secure access to corporate network and data. Overall the strategy should focus on:

1. Easy maintenance and central management of all devices
2. A controlled access and authorization system
3. Consistent user experience
4. Increase in productivity
5. Minimized attack surface

The rate at which new mobile devices are entering the retail market makes it essential that companies keep an updated list of approved devices and share it with employees. However, the best way to ensure application and data security is to make sure that all data resides on the server. There are several products on the market (Citrix, Vmware) that ensure the actual data residing on the server is fully controlled by the administrator. This validates that the mobile solution, whether BYOD or a corporate-issued device, is always secure.

With virtualization being the mantra for attaining efficiencies, it is also an important parameter in considering workforce virtualization. Allowing users to access IT infrastructure from remote locations may not be sufficient if they are provided a separate environment for each type of connectivity. A seamless and consistent user experience is necessary to get the right amount of productivity from the users, otherwise, considerable time is spent on getting acquainted with the new user interface.

The central theme of going mobile is to further productivity and efficiency. At Bitwise, we helped one of our financial services clients to design a mobile app which would allow their customers to use their cellphones as a credit card at points of sale. This saved them from carrying their cards and by using NFC technology, it was ensured that all transactions were secure.

Similarly, we implemented a security solution for one of our clients where their team members were blocked from using a camera in their work areas by using a combination of geo-locking and NFC. Both of these solutions took mobility to the next level where production innovation helped businesses achieve their goals.

Focusing on security

There are several mobile device management solutions (MDM) available on the market and each has its own niche set of tools and security framework. These solutions have a standard implementation, which will block the security deviations or provide reactive security alerts. The outputs from these tools and other security logs can be used to build a proactive security solution. In addition to giving security alerts, they will also provide inputs on improving the implemented mobility solution.

These analytic solutions have to be built by the organizations to passively and actively to monitor the behavior of users and their mobile devices. These analytic solutions should have the intelligence to report on:

1.Location
2.Application and information access
3.User access and authentication

The Bitwise DART team has created a solution which helps our clients identify potential weakness in this mobility policy framework. It also provides feedback on ways to improve the existing mobility policies and attain higher efficiencies.

To learn more about how Bitwise can help your mobility strategy, click here.