Product set summary information for the SOA Suite / ESB acquisition
The following are summary extracts and descriptions from the Contractor’s proposal for the SOA Suite acquisition.
Summary of Product Set
The Contractor’s proposal includes a full ESB stack at the Regional and Central systems and an option between a full
ESB or a lightweight ESB at the Local sites. The proposal uses IBM‘s WebSphere Message Broker application stack
for Central and Regional data centers, and the option of WebSphere or Mirth at the Local sites, all of which are
supported by Layer 7‘s Networking Gateway and CA Technologies monitoring and capacity management products.
At the Central and Regional levels, the Contractor proposes a full-featured suite of SOA software from IBM including
ESB, messaging, rules, and business processing. The open solution suite includes the IBM WebSphere Message
Broker (WMB) Connectivity Pack for Healthcare that provides out-of-the-box integration capabilities and
healthcare-specific standards based on Health Level 7 (HL7). At the Local level, the Contractor proposes Mirth
Connect to provide messaging for health connectivity. At all levels the Contractor proposes the Layer7 Networking
Gateway for security and ESB features.
The software and licensing is proposed to be dynamically scalable through the use of clustering and hardware load
balancing, allowing additional installations to be added, with the purchase of additional licenses, if increased capacity or
reliability is needed.
In addition, the Contractor will deploy CA Wily APM at all Local sites to which the SOA solution is deployed. The CA Wily
APM software can natively monitor Java Virtual Machines upon which Mirth is built. CA will monitor each Local site‘s
Mirth, with the ability to isolate bottlenecks in the application right down to individual Servlets, JSPs, EJBs, Classes and
Methods. The Layer7 Networking Gateway provides its own gateway health monitoring capabilities as well.
A summary of products supporting the WebSphere Message Broker, and the roles for these products, is listed in the
table below.
COTS PRODUCT
IBM Business Process Manager (I-BPM)
WebSphere Services Registry & Repository
(WSRR)
WebSphere MQ/MQ File Transfer Edition
WebSphere ILOG JRules BRMS
ROLE
Advanced Business Process Management services
including BPEL capabilities, application
choreography, and human task management /
workflow.
Services registry including full capabilities for
services metadata management, rich discovery,
search and notification, impact analysis, lifecycle
management and services governance. Also
includes advanced capabilities for ESB Federation
services.
Messaging service providing assured delivery of
messages and files.
Business Rules authoring & management. ILOG
provides comprehensive capabilities for
developers and architects to build and deploy
rules-based applications. In addition, ILOG
provides an extremely robust rules engine enable
Layer7 XML Networking Gateway
WebSphere Transformation Extenders
CA Application Performance Management (APM)
for SOA platforms and WebSphere
CA Capacity Management and Performance Suite
Mirth
iTKO LISA
SOA based sharing of rules across a variety of
applications and infrastructure components. The
VA currently has an enterprise license for the
WebSphere ILOG JRules BRMS.
Lightweight ESB including routing, orchestration,
protocol translation, XACML, federation, and
SAML. The XML Networking Gateway provides
a means for consistent enforcement of policy in a
distributed SOA at a granular XML or SOAP
message level. The Gateway provides TLS .
Data conversion services for SAP, Siebel, etc.
CA APM for SOA and WebSphere is an
enterprise application performance management
solution that enables IT to monitor complex SOA
and web applications, 24x7, detect problems
before they affect end-users, and resolve these
issues quickly and collaboratively.
Provides prescriptive insight into the
infrastructure components needed to optimize IT
operations, supports ongoing planning and
includes capabilities to plan new enterprise
application deployments and changes in a
virtualized environment.
Messaging engine that provides local site HL7,
X12, SOAP, File Transfer and other messaging
capabilities. It also provides data transformation
capabilities.
Agile SOA testing tool.
Summary of Licensed Product Names:
The following is a list of IBM software license titles for the main SOA Suite software:
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IBM WEBSPHERE MESSAGE BROKER
IBM WEBSPHERE MESSAGE BROKER CONNECTIVITY PACK FOR HEALTHCARE
IBM PROCESS SERVER ADVANCED
IBM WEBSPHERE DECISION SERVER
IBM WEBSPHERE SERVICE REGISTRY AND REPOSITORY
IBM WEBSPHERE MQ
IBM WEBSPHERE ADAPTER FOR SAP SOFTWARE
IBM WEBSPHERE ADAPTER FOR PEOPLESOFT ENTERPRISE
IBM WEBSPHERE ADAPTER FOR SIEBEL BUSINESS APPLICATIONS
IBM WEBSPHERE TRANSFORMATION EXTENDER FOR APPLICATION PROGRAMMING
IBM WEBSPHERE TRANSFORMATION EXTENDER PACK FOR HIPAA EDI
IBM WEBSPHERE APPLICATION SERVER NETWORK DEPLOYMENT
IBM BUSINESS MONITOR
IBM RATIONAL APPLICATION DEVELOPER FOR WEBSPHERE SOFTWARE
IBM INTEGRATION DESIGNER
IBM WEBSPHERE TRANSFORMATION EXTENDER DESIGN STUDIO
To provide for disaster recovery, the licensing allows the software to be installed at backup sites as long as the software
is not running (cold and warm standby – hot standby licensing is extra). The standby definitions are as follows:
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COLD - a copy of the program may be stored for backup purposes on a machine as long as the program has not
been started. There is no charge for this copy.
WARM - a copy of the program may reside for backup purposes on a machine and is started, but is "idling", and
is not doing any work of any kind. There is no charge for this copy.
HOT - a copy of the program may reside for backup purposes on a machine, is started and is doing work.
However, this program must be ordered. There is a charge for this copy and was not licensed by the Harris Team
to reduced costs.
Computer Associates and its subsidiaries iTKO and Wily will provide three applications in support of the SOA Suite
solution:
1. CA Capacity Management and Performance Suite – This tool provides the MHS and VA with a capacity
planning tool.
2. CA Wily Introscope – A performance monitoring tool to allow the VA and MHS to know the current state and
health of the SOA solution during runtime.
3. iTKO LISA – A load testing tool for the demonstration and proof of concept activities.
All CA software licenses include support and training. iTKO will also provided dedicated training services.
Layer 7 Technology will provide an XML Networking Gateway product for the SOA Suite solution.
Mirth will provide Platinum level support for their no-cost open source software through the period of
performance as well as provide training materials and support.
Example Server Hosting of Software
The following is a sample configuration of software locations on servers. This shows a proposed layout for a SOA Suite
Sandbox environment:
Software
Server Requirement
Central / Regional
IBM Message Broker Advanced with
Healthcare pack
IBM Processor
IBM WebSphere App Server
IBM ILOG rules engine
IBM Business Monitor
IBM MQ Processor
IBM WebSphere Transformation Extender
IBM SAP, PeopleSoft, and Sieble plugins
IBM WSRR
Layer 7 XML Networking Gateway
1 servers, 2 cores each
1 servers, 2 cores each
1 servers, 1 core each
1 servers, 1 cores each
1 servers, 1 cores each
1 servers, 2 cores each
Runs on the same server as MB
Runs on the same server as MB
1 server, 2 cores each
1 server, 2 core CPU
Local
Mirth
1 server, 2 cores each
Layer 7 XML Networking Gateway
1 server, 2 core CPU
Note: Hardware environments can be virtualized to reduce hardware costs
Deployment Topology of Products and Existing Interfaced Systems
The following is the Contractor’s proposed deployment topology.
The following shows detail of Local site locations.
The use of two or more servers for Mirth and for Layer7 Networking Gateway provides failover, redundancy, and higher
throughput. Additional servers may be required for high volume sites. The Layer7 Networking Gateway and Mirth are
site licensed so additional servers may be added as required.
The proposed approach supports queuing of messages and files in Mirth, creating a store and forward solution. HL7
messages, X12 messages, files, etc. will be queued persistently until bandwidth is sufficient to transfer the message to
the regional or clinical sites. Messages inbound from Regional or clinical sites will be queued using the IBM Message
Broker queues at the Region or Central location until the destined Local site can receive and acknowledge the message.
As seen in the diagram below messages and files can be queued at both the Local site and the Region for later
transmission. This also applies to HL7 acknowledgements.