Requirements

BT wanted a portal through which any employee or partner could access the intranet enterprise applications base from anywhere in the world. The following features were required:

• A portal which would allow zero configuration on the client side, run in a browser or mobile device, and provide seamless access to greenside applications and systems.
• Highly scalable, reliable, confidential channel
• Security - Work with the existing product (Siteminder) to provide profile based content
• Ability to integrate existing applications into the portal without the need for development
• Content management features - work with the existing product (Livelink/Obtree)
• Rich user interface
• Community features - personal blogs, wiki, MS Exchange integration

Challenges

• Diverse types of applications that needed to be plugged in to the portal - legacy, desktop, existing web applications, web services etc.
• Every integration method required Siteminder security/profile based access
• Since this was one of the first weblogic based deployment at BT, they required consultancy on best practices, deployment, support, performance tuning for this solution. Also there was no production environment available for weblogic suite of products
• Mentoring of in-house technical resources

Solution

• Analysis of the enterprise application base - we had to find out what kind of applications could be accessed from a portal interface - whether there was any need to implement webservices, develop custom interfaces or minimal impact. We then developed various integration solutions (webservices, remote portlets, WSRP, new portlet front-ends, Citrix, screen scraping).
• Developed the profile based security model - this worked with BT's corporate active directory (groups, roles), SSL-VPN solution (Juniper/Nortel), Weblogic Portal security, Siteminder and Active Card tokens. Sometimes direct integration was not possible without developing bespoke plugins for Siteminder.
• Developed the whole portal Web 2.0 based UI - this was dynamic in nature and only presented content based on the user profile (roles/groups). This was also mobile device enabled and worked on a number of PDAs, Blackberries, Smartphones etc.
• Designed the end to end Physical/Deployment/Support/Performance Architecture for the new portal solution - we had to provide support for installation of the Weblogic/Aqualogic and also act as a liaison with BEA technical support contractors.
• An end to end development environment was set up for BT's internal staff - this includes setting up development guides, testing plans, educating them on AGILE methodologies, getting BT staff to commission development/testing/production platforms etc.

Duration

1 year

Technologies used

J2EE, Weblogic 8.1/Portal, Visio, SiteMinder, Active Directory, Struts (JPFs), XML/Schemas, Weblogic Workshop, Rational Rose, Solaris, Web Services, SQL, ANT, JUnit, JWebUnit, Oracle 9i, UML, Agile/XP, SunOne 6.1 Webserver, IBatis, Stored Procedures, Weblogic Security, StarTeam, CruiseControl, Content Management, SSL, The Grinder, Compuware QALoad, JSF, Tiles, Hibernate, Struts, AJAX, Eclipse, LiveLink/Obtree content management, Spring, BEA AquaLogic User Interaction

Client Benefits

• Lower costs without compromising quality
• 90% of BT applications were web-enabled
• The system was scalable for 30,000 users
• Every access mechanism was BT Security compliant
• A user friendly, intuitive, and rich portal user interface
• Further cost savings by retaining internal staff and increasing core competencies