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Client Case Studies: Financial and Insurance Services
USAA
Business Challenge
USAA was in the process of replacing their core Policy Administration System
(PAS), had selected a prime contractor, and were anticipating a very large and
lengthy development effort ($60M over 3 years). Lightship was the only consultant
invited to participate in a Red Team review of the project prior to the green light
for full-scale development. The Red Team was responsible for reviewing the overall
requirements and high-level design. Due to the size of the project, the other Red
Team members did not have the time to review the documents prior to the review meeting.
Lightship Solution
On behalf of the Red Team, Lightship provided a detailed review of all requirements
and design documents and project plans. Lightship's approach was to:
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Review the technology requirements, in the form of Use Cases, for
completeness against the current Policy Administration system, and several
new business requirements.
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Ensure that the object models were compliant with IBM's Insurance
Application Architecture (IAA). Product Agility (i.e., the ability of the
PAS to rapidly administer new insurance products) was evaluated.
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Use Project Management Institute guidelines to evaluate the quality
and completeness of the project plans.
Significant findings included:
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The level of detail of the Use Cases varied significantly. The prime
contractor was instructed by the Red Team to provide more depth for several
Use Cases.
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The object models did not conform to IAA. The prime was instructed to
revise all designs to their models to become compliant.
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Many of the Project Plans were simply copies of other plans and did not
address all PMI project plan components. The prime was instructed to provide
complete plans specific to the project.
Guardian Financial Services
Business Challenge
Guardian's agent community required a browser-based account management application.
One of the core features required was the ability to view a consolidated statement
for each of their client's portfolios. Being that many of the Guardian insurance and
financial products were result of mergers and acquisitions, the data required for the
consolidated statement resided on dissimilar systems in geographically dispersed
locations.
Lightship Solution
This project required both new application development and large-scale system
integration. Guardian data architects had created a design featuring operational data
stores (i.e., relational databases providing interactive access to data) for each of
the batch account administration systems (whole life insurance, brokerage, term life,
etc). Lightship developed a Web application framework capable of extracting data from
each of these systems to develop the consolidated view of each portfolio. In addition,
account management features, such as adding, modifying and deleting client information
was developed.
The Web application was rolled out to the agent/broker community with great success.
Input on the User Interface was received from some of the heavy producers
and rapidly incorporated into the application. The pilot program was eventually expanded
and put into production. Now called My Guardian, it is Guardian's self-service
portal being successfully used by consumers, producers, and benefit managers.
Technologies Implemented
- IBM WebSphere
- IBM DB/2
- Together ControlCenter
- Visual Age
- StarBase StarTeam
A.G. Edwards
Business Challenge
A.G. Edwards decided to modernize the skills of their development staff and the
implementation technologies to develop new applications. As a result, they required
that their development staff begin to develop applications using object technology
and Java.
Lightship Solution
Over a period of two months, Lightship provided Java training and object technology
mentoring to their development staff.
Technologies Implemented
- Together ControlCenter
- Symantac VisualCafe
Electronic Broking Systems
Business Challenge
EBS provides foreign currency broking services. They were in a state where they
had a successful application that they had previously deployed on a Vax mini-computer.
When they decided to develop a new product in the marketplace, they were forced to
copy all the code of the working application and make changes to develop a second
"product." Realizing how onerous it would be to repeat this process for each new
product, they decided to build an entirely new, very flexible application.
Lightship Solution
Lightship collaboratively architected a new Java-based solution to their Trading
Floor/Foreign Exchange Marketplace application. During the mentoring process,
Lightship helped them expand their concepts so that, in the future, EBS had the
ability to rapidly develop and deploy new products in the anticipation of entering
new markets. This capability was achieved by defining new, highly agile objects or,
to use a more familiar term, data-driven configurability.
Technologies Implemented
- Together/J
- Borland JBuilder
Client Case Studies: Manufacturing
IBM IndustryView Development
Business Challenge
In 1995, IBM was contemplating an upgrade of its Manufacturing Execution System (MES).
Initially, the upgrade was to be evolutionary, providing new functionality to the
existing application. However, due to the obsolescence of many of the technologies
in the previous version, the decision was made to re-write the entire application
using object technology. IBM contracted several consultants, including Lightship,
to develop the solution.
Lightship Solution
Lightship provided all of the technical leadership roles in the project over three
years for this very large development project. Lightship was selected due to its deep
experience in object technology. Lightship roles included:
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Chief Application Architect - Working in conjunction with many IBM
manufacturing experts, developed and maintained an overall object model
for the entire application. Provided design guidance to individual
developers.
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Middleware Lead - Created a message-passing framework to be used by
all client-server developers. Implemented message marshalling, emission,
and capture software.
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Client and Server Leads - Responsible for periodic builds of the client
and server applications. Developed automated build procedures. Worked with
individual developers to resolve build problems.
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Object Developers - Responsible for the implementation of manufacturing
objects. Objects built by Lightship include those responsible for: Work
Claiming, Shop Floor Design, Manufacturing Order, Bill of Materials,
Process Plans, and System Administration.
Technologies Implemented
- Windows NT 3.5.1
- IBM AIX
- Oracle 7.1.1.3
- IBM DB/2
- Neuron Data Open Interface Elements
- Neuron Data Database Access Elements
- Modulus Technologies InterAgent middleware
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0, 4.2, 5.0
- Microsoft SourceSafe
Flowserve (Formerly Ingersoll-Dresser Pump)
Business Challenge
Flowserve, formerly Ingersoll-Dresser Pump (IDP) manufactures pumps for diversified
industrial use and specialty pumps for process, power generation and marine
applications. To facilitate the sales process a software tool has been designed
to assist the sales person with selection and configuration of pump products.
Flowserve PROS+TM (Proposal and Order System) is the most complete and
comprehensive pump selection program in the industry. It provides the capability
to hydraulically select all of Flowserve's primary centrifugal pump lines including
complex selection of Wet Pit and Canned vertical turbine pumps.
Lightship Solution
Lightship, since it's early years, has been strategic in the development and
maintenance of this sales support software application. Lightship has designed
and implemented the software upgrade of multiple components of this configuration
and selection tool from 16-bit DOS to 32-bit Windows components. Lightship has also
been instrumental in the design and implementation of software to support the
integration of additional pump products into the PROS+TM application.
Technologies Implemented
- Microsoft Visual C++
- POET Database
- Access Database
- Stingray Components
- SftTree/DLL
- Microsoft COM
Kulicke & Soffa (K&S)
Business Challenge
K&S, the world's largest supplier of semiconductor assembly equipment, had
engineering support applications that required access from multiple locations
around the world. These applications support the documentation and assignment
of engineering activity. The expansion of this client's engineering facilities
internationally, necessitated access and maintenance of this engineering data
from multiple locations around the world.
Lightship Solution
Lightship provided Internet application software engineering services to K&S,
integrating secure, web access into their engineering resource planning process.
Lightship designed and developed an upgrade from Perl scripted web pages storing
data in a flat file to a web-based application that uses Active Server Pages
(ASP's) to access COM objects, written in Visual Basic, interfacing to an Access
database, providing a web based interface and integrating in a standard database
storage tool for critical engineering parts data.
Lightship worked with K&S in the design and development of an Intranet application
to support the creation, update and storage of critical Engineering Change Request
data, allowing management and engineers the ability to access the status of any EC.
Lightship designed and developed the upgrade from an Access database application to
a web-based application that uses ASP's to access COM objects, written in Visual Basic,
interfacing to the existing Access database. This takes the function from the desktop
to the Internet, improving accessibility for their many overseas engineers and creating
a cohesive and coordinated team-no small feat when the improved functionality is
translated into hard dollars and cents.
Technologies Implemented
- Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)
- Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0
- Microsoft COM Objects
- Microsoft Active Server Pages
- Microsoft Access Database
Client Case Studies: Financial and Insurance Services
OrderOffice.com
Business Challenge
OrderOffice.com, a start-up Business-to-Business Application Service Provider
for a community of small to medium-sized companies, envisioned an Internet
platform that would link industry retailers, sales representatives and vendors,
and provide each with a common means of:
- Order generation
- Commission reconciliation
- Invoicing
- Accounting
- Inventory Management
- Customer relationship management
Although the ASP's principals had extensive giftware industry experience,
they did not understand the Internet technologies that would be necessary
to make their proposed digital marketplace a reality. As with all dot-com
startups, the critical challenge was in producing a solution that would meet
the needs of the client's current and potential customers as quickly as possible.
One requirement identified was the ability to support order generation via Hand
Held (PDA) devices to upload orders to the web site for processing.
Lightship Solution
The initial step in any successful project is proper and thorough planning.
Utilizing Lightship's Requirements FirstTM methodology, our
engineers gathered the business requirements from all of the project stakeholders
in order to effectively evaluate and select the appropriate technology platform on
which the digital marketplace would be built. An object model was then designed that
represented the integral components and the relationships between them. Lightship
worked with the client in planning a phased schedule to bring the marketplace
online as quickly as possible with the key features implemented, keeping less
critical features for subsequent phases.
To accommodate the Hand Held requirement, Lightship designed a solution that utilized
generic PDA devices equipped with a bar code scanner to scan product bar codes and build
a purchase order for subsequent transfer to the web site for processing. Software was
written to identify a product via bar scanning or SKU# entry by the user. The identified
products were then organized by vendor and purchase orders generated for electronic
submittal to the web site for processing.
Technologies Implemented
- Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition 3.0
- Microsoft IIS 5.0
- Microsoft SQL Enterprise Server 7.0
- Active Server Pages
- Windows 2000 Advanced Server
- Microsoft Visual C++
- VeriSign
- COM
Client Case Studies: Technology
Questar
Business Challenge
Questar, a leader in the innovative application of optical technologies,
had the need for quality software engineering design and development services
to produce the control software required to bring the control of its products into
the hands of its customers. As an innovative optical solution provider, our client
focuses its resources on engineering instruments that fuse superb optics with
equally fine mechanical and electronic support thereby allowing the user long-range
surveillance capabilities, provide precise measurement, image analysis and data
acquisition. The instruments developed, such as the Remote Measurement System (RMS II)
and the SZ family of products, require software that supports high precision motion
control as well as real-time remote control.
Lightship Solution
Lightship brings many years of real-time and embedded software engineering expertise
together to meet this clients needs. Utilizing its years of software engineering
expertise to diagnose and resolve various hardware/software integration problems,
such as multiple servomotor and stepper motor control, and serial communications
failures to complete a critical embedded systems project.
Lightship's Requirements FirstTM program facilitated the requirements
gathering and utilized the Features Driven Development techniques to build a desktop
application that emulates an existing handheld remote control device for the RMS II
product. Lightship continues to provide software enhancements and upgrades to Questar's
products under production, as well as those in later stages of development.
Technologies Implemented
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- SDS C/C++ Compiler
- 68HC11 component drivers
- 68332 component drivers
- Stepper Motor control drivers
- DC Motor control drivers
- RS232/422 communications drivers
Competitive Media Reporting (CMR)
Business Challenge
CMR is the leading provider of strategic advertising intelligence and
marketing information solutions to advertising agencies, advertisers,
broadcasters and publishers. As with all strategic leaders, this client
is continually upgrading and enhancing the quality of their product. New
technologies must be investigated and evaluated to identify their potential
to enhance the quality and/or quantity of information critical to clients.
Once a potential technology has been identified an engineering approach must
be developed and executed to integrate the new technology.
Lightship Solution
Lightship provided software engineering services to CMR, supporting a research
and development effort to enhance existing functionality in an embedded data
acquisition system. Lightship, with CMR, developed a VxWorks device driver for
a new video capture board, which will enabled them to increase the number of
broadcast frequencies monitored and to capture color video data at a higher
resolution.
It fell to Lightship to research the latest image capture boards and design a
distributed video acquisition system to meet CMR defined requirements of enhancing
the quality and size of the video data captured.
Lightship also designed and developed the software to archive audio/video signature
data to an AVI file for review at a later date, this software was instrumental in
verifying the integrity of the data collected as enhancement to the existing
system are implemented. Lightship designed and developed software enhancements
to an existing video clip display application to include the display of
proprietary audio/video signature data. Both of the above tasks were instrumental
in supporting the evaluation of new audio/video capture devices into the existing
data acquisition system.
Lightship developed a web interface to support remote maintenance activity on the CMR
embedded data acquisition system. The project involved integrating an open source web
server into the real-time operations environment of the embedded data acquisition
system that greatly enhanced the user interface and maintenance functionality.
Technologies Implemented
- VxWorks real-time OS drivers
- Visual C++
- Apache Web Server
- Perl
Client Case Studies: Technology
Princeton School District
Business Challenge
A local school district had deployed a pilot wireless LAN in parts of their high
school for proof of concept and testing. The success and acceptance of this pilot
program prompted a desire to deploy a complete enterprise-class secure wireless
network. Because of the weaknesses uncovered in the last year with the use of
802.11b static encryption keys, they were concerned about students connecting to
the wireless network with personal laptops outside school hours. These students
could potentially crack static encryption keys with publicly available hacking
tools, and then proceed to attack or try to gain access to sensitive systems and
resources. As a result of this very real threat, their goal was to make the
wireless network as secure as possible thereby reducing the risk that those
attacks could be successfully executed. The customer had a basic understanding
of wireless technologies and requested that their solution to be based on the
Cisco wireless product line. They also conveyed the need for their solution to
meet the following technical and security requirements:
- Wireless coverage of classrooms and offices on the second floor.
- The network must support seamless roaming throughout the coverage area.
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Wireless workstations and laptops allowed on the network must be
restricted to an approved list and must be enforced by all access points.
Centralized management of these lists is desired.
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Once valid workstations associate to the wireless LAN, users must
authenticate on the wireless network before being allowed to transmit any
data.
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User accounts exist in multiple databases. As a result, authentication of
users must be supported against Windows domain accounts, a SecurId server,
and a stand-alone user database. The access points require a single, unified
authentication interface, so a single authentication server must provide
seamless integration to these databases.
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Because of the vulnerability of the static encryption keys defined in the
wireless 802.11b standard to cracking techniques, the dynamic key capabilities
of some implementation of EAP should be implemented for user sessions wherever
possible. These keys should be different for each connected user and
automatically change every 30 minutes to provide resistance to cracking
attempts.
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All workstation and user connections to the wireless network must be
audited and centrally logged.
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Wireless connection traffic statistics should be collected and centrally
logged for each wireless session.
Lightship Solution
With the feature-rich requirements of the desired solution, Lightship met with the
client and performed an on-site wireless site survey. This survey provided the
necessary real-world information about environment in which the wireless LAN would
operate. Any issues that would affect wireless performance were noted and used to
accurately select the correct number of access points, antenna types, and mounting
locations. Wireless cells were designed to overlap and provide coverage for classrooms
and offices on the desired floor. Properly varying frequencies and overlapping cells
provided the means to support continuous coverage and seamless roaming throughout the
required area.
In order to support the extensive security requirements of the wireless network, a
Cisco Secure Access Control Server (ACS) was selected to provide the necessary
centralized authentication and logging functionality. All of the wireless access
points were configured to communicate with the ACS to validate wireless card MAC
addresses before allowing association to an access point. With this enabled, an
invalid or unknown wireless card (identified by its MAC address) would be denied
access to the wireless network. Using the ACS server to manage valid MAC addresses
centrally locates the valid MAC address list. Without this capability, an independent
list would be required on each access point. This would have been much more difficult
to deploy and manage.
In order to support user authentication and dynamic per user-session encryption keys,
the access points were configured to use the Lightweight Extensible Authentication
Protocol (LEAP). With this enabled on the access points, users authenticate via username
and password before being allowed to use the wireless network. Failure to authenticate
results in denied access to the wireless network.
The Cisco ACS also provided a single unified authentication server for the wireless
access points to speak to irrespective of where the user accounts are stored. The
ACS was configured to use its internal user database as well as speak to a Windows
domain and a SecurId server. The result of this unification is a simplified
configuration on the wireless access points and a more seamless login process for the
wireless users. A user simply needs to have a username and password or a SecurId
account name, pass code, and key fob token to gain access. The ACS then correctly
validates the account against the correct account database.
The ACS uses groups to organize properties for user accounts, again irrespective of the
user account location. These groups were configured to require that WEP keys expire and
be automatically regenerated every 30 minutes. These groups were also configured to
allow for control of time-of-day schedules and restrictions for certain workstations.
In order to address the logging and accountability aspects of the design, the wireless
access points were configured to log authentication information and connection statistics
to the ACS. The ACS therefore is responsible for consolidating all logging information
and statistics into a single location for review and analysis. This allows administrators
to know who is connected on what machine, and how much data was transmitted and received.
This information would be used for both security auditing and network capacity planning.
Technologies Implemented
- 802.11b Wireless LAN
- Cisco Aironet access points
- Cisco Access Control Server
- LEAP authentication
- Windows NT/2000
- RSA Security SecurId
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