the progression of disease associated with
family or lifestyle risk factors, and promote
the best possible health for those already
affected by disease.
I T professionals at Healthways use
Oracle Enterprise Manager 11 g to manage
a diverse service-oriented architecture
(SOA) environment that includes Oracle
Database 11 g with Oracle Real Application
Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle E-Business
Suite, Windows Communication Foundation
services with Microsoft . NE T applications,
IBM WebSphere Message Broker queues,
IBM WebSphere services, and Java
applications. Between 50 and 100 system
administrators, developers, and operations
personnel regularly access the Oracle
Enterprise Manager 11 g console to manage
various aspects of the system.
Healthways also maintains a large
Oracle database of claims information
from employers and health plans for approximately 70 percent of
all Americans with health insurance policies. In order to manage
the tremendous influx of data into its member database, which
originates from Oracle and third-party information systems, the IT
team has created a SOA that processes millions of transactions per
day. The Healthways IT team uses Oracle Enterprise Manager 11 g and
its SOA management capabilities to gain real-time visibility into this
diverse infrastructure.
“Oracle Enterprise Manager 11 g instantly alerts us if performance
starts to degrade anywhere within this
architecture,” says Kevin Forbes, chief
enterprise architect at Healthways. “It also
captures exception messages in a repository,
which helps us diagnose issues faster.”
For example, by revealing how various
service invocations are chained together,
Oracle Enterprise Manager 11 g determines
how long it takes Healthways’ IBM
WebSphere broker service to perform its
work, even when administrators can’t
monitor these services at the container or
component level. Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 g also helps with SOA governance by
auditing SOA usage to ensure compliance
with Healthways’ security policies in Oracle
Access Manager.
“We’re doing SOA governance as well
as monitoring the runtime aspects of
distributed business transactions,” Forbes
explains. “Using Oracle Access Manager
and Oracle Identity Management, we know who has access to
what systems and who called those services at runtime, even when
external Web services are involved. If a business user initiates a
change, such as removing a role from the security policy, Oracle
Enterprise Manager 11 g gives us the visibility into the entire process
so we are sure we don’t break anything.”
The SOA management solution also provides visibility into the
functional logic and context of Healthways’ Java applications, which
are deployed within IBM WebSphere. It interfaces with Oracle
Enterprise Manager 11 g to analyze the root cause of problems and
displays performance metrics for both Oracle and non-Oracle software
through a single interface. This convergence of information lets
system administrators trace transactions from the URL down to the
actual piece of problematic Java code, improving application visibility
by correlating application services with underlying code components.
“Our Oracle management software gives us a more complete
picture of the SOA environment at runtime,” Forbes sums up. “It
reveals how any discrete change to a complex SOA process impacts
any other process running through the system.”
Healthways
healthways.com
Location: Franklin, Tennessee
Industry: Healthcare
Employees: 3,000
Oracle products: Oracle Database 11g, Oracle
Real Application Clusters, Oracle E-Business
Suite, Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g
SNAPSHOTS
Ingersoll Rand
ingersollrand.com
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Industry: Industrial manufacturing
Employees: 60,000
Oracle products: Oracle Database, Oracle
WebLogic Server, Oracle Application
Server, Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g,
Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel Customer
Relationship Management, PeopleSoft Human
Resources, Hyperion applications
Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g gives Healthways a more complete picture of its I T
environment at runtime, says Kevin Forbes, chief enterprise architect. “It reveals
how any discrete change to a complex SOA process impacts any other process.”
ENABLING MORE-PROAC TIVE CUS TOMER SUPPORT
Managing IT from a business perspective helps close the historical
gap between business and I T, and an integrated application-to-disk management strategy further supports this IT management
approach. Another key to comprehensive, business-driven IT
management, however, involves keeping technology and information
about technology up to date.
Ingersoll Rand is a US$13 billion diversified industrial company
and global leader in enhancing and sustaining safety, comfort,
and efficiency. The company is in the midst of a major project to
consolidate its IT assets, adopt shared services, and standardize
the information systems in its global datacenters: two in the
SHERI O’NEAL
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