A Dutch energy provider was looking for a monitoring solution which would provide insight in the end-to-end processes. Untill now monitoring was only performed on a application/platform level. For TIBCO BW they had Business Process Monitoring (BWPM) installed. This product only showed what went in and out of the Business Works. The applications surrounding the BW were not being monitored. Whenever something went wrong people had a hard time figuring out where the problem was situated and often did not find the problem at all.
Problems were not being found
Every application manager then had to go through each of his logfiles to find the mistake. That took time and the origin of the problem was found too late, or even not at all. The chance that you miss something in a logfile is high. Whenever problems were not found this had large consequences for the business. A result of such a problem can be that the client portal gets unreachable and unsatisfied customers start calling. To avoid such situaties the energy provider was looking for a monitoring solution that would monitor the whole end-to-end chain, to quickly locate problems and even to prevent them.
Our approach
Review BWPM
Together with Integration Matters we have reviewed the existing BWPM product (a product of Integration Matters sold by TIBCO). The review showed several performance issues. For example, not only the errors but also the well performing messages were monitored and saved. This caused the server to be packed which resulted in failure. Therefore, ajustments tot the system were made in the configuration and the BWPM product was upgraded to a new and improved version.
Solution
Two end-to-end proccesses have been implemented with the monitoring software nJAMS (a product of Integration Matters). The first process entailed the retreiving of financial data. This process had two seperate entries (an internal and external portal). The second proces concerned collecting and saving the meter readings in a database. While implementing these processes in TIBCO BW other processes such as SAP iDoc, the .net application MPR (Morphis Process Runner) and the Java application Axway (API Gateway) were covered. For the last application (Axway) Integraion Matters build a (in the future) reusable plugin by using the SDK (Software Development Kit).
The result
Mistakes become visable
With nJAMS business process flows are now being monitored from end-to-end. When something goes wrong the application manager knows exactly where the mistake is situated. He does not have to go through his logfiles anymore to locate the mistake, but can see it directly in the flow. Whenever at some point in the flow something goes wrong, a new message can be send from that exact point. This way neither the client nor the internal employee has to be bothered with double requests.
Problems are being prevented
Problems are not only visable, they can also easily be prevented. Starting to use nJAMS in the test and development process (reusable scenarios) can prevent mistakes in an early phase before they get into production. A service level agreement (SLA) can be directly build into the software. For example requesting financial information cannot take longer than 200 miliseconds. If this is nevertheless the case, than the system sends a warning message. This monitoring system therefore does not only quickly locate problems, it also prevents them from happening.
