EUROPEAN UNION
European Economic and Social Committee
Committee of the Regions
Joint Services - Directorate for Logistics
IT Unit
APPEL D'OFFRES OUVERT
CDR/ARCH/41/2014
Annexe B
The EESC-COR
IT environment
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.
CONTEXT ......................................................................................... 3
1.1.
BACKGROUND .................................................................................. 3
1.2.
COOPERATION BETWEEN THE COMMITTEES ................................................. 3
1.3.
IT ORGANISATIONAL SETUP ................................................................... 4
1.3.1.
Information Systems .................................................................. 4
1.3.2.
IT Infrastructure ........................................................................ 5
1.3.2.1. Data Centre ............................................................................ 5
1.3.2.2. Office Automation...................................................................... 5
1.3.2.3. Telecommunications .................................................................. 6
1.3.3.
2.
User Support Services ................................................................ 6
IT ENVIRONMENT ............................................................................... 7
2.1.
NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE .................................................................. 7
2.1.1.
Local Area Networks (LAN) .......................................................... 7
2.1.2.
Wide Area Networks (WAN) .......................................................... 7
2.1.3.
Building wiring .......................................................................... 7
2.1.4.
Network administration................................................................ 7
2.2.
TELEPHONY..................................................................................... 7
2.3.
WIFI ............................................................................................. 7
2.4.
SERVERS ....................................................................................... 8
2.4.1.
1.1.
Servers for centralised IT management ............................................ 8
WORKSTATIONS ...............................................................................10
2.
ENVIRONMENTS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF CENTRALISED APPLICATIONS ..... 11
3.
DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS...................... 12
3.1.
DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS - OVERVIEW ...............................................12
3.2.
DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS - TOOLS AND ENVIRONMENTS ............................13
3.3.
DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS - TECHNOLOGIES ..........................................14
3.4.
METHODOLOGICAL RECOMMENDATIONS ....................................................16
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1.
CONTEXT
The IT unit works under the terms of the Cooperation Agreement between the European
Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions.
1.1.
Background
European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)

The EESC is an assembly of 353members representing organised civil society.

The EESC issues opinions based on mandatory or optional referrals, using the
right of initiative or as exploratory opinions.

The EESC promotes civil dialogue with networks of national economic and social
councils and with civil society organisations at the level of the European Union, in
Member States and other European countries, in Latin America, India, China, etc.

The EESC is one of the most active protagonists and promoters of participatory
democracy.
Committee of the Regions (COR)

The COR is an assembly of
government.

The COR gives local and regional government a say over the drafting of EU
legislation (70% of EU laws are implemented at local/regional level).

The COR encourages a culture of Subsidiarity.

The COR provides a meeting place where regions and cities can share best
practice and take part in a dialogue with the European institutions.
1.2.
353 members representing local and regional
Cooperation between the Committees
Cooperation between the Committees is based on a Cooperation Agreement for the
sharing of services in the area of Logistics and Translation. The current agreement entered
into force on 1st January 2008 for a period of 7 years
The agreement contains the following provisions concerning Governance:

Political Monitoring Group – responsible for political supervision (6 Members of
each Committee meeting 3 times per year)

Secretaries General – responsible for strategic issues affecting the Joint
Services (6 meetings per year)
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
Cooperation Committee – responsible for the supervision and coordination of
services provided (Joint Services Directors, Directors of the Administration and
concerned HoU’s meeting every month)
The agreement also defines the rules concerning assignment of staff & budget to the Joint
Services
In certain areas, including IT, the Cooperation Agreement is complemented by "MiniAgreements" defining technical arrangements for each department concerned. The main
points of the IT "Mini Agreement" are that each Committee should appoint an IT Coordinator
responsible for collecting the IT needs & priorities of their respective users, and that each
Committee should establish an IT Steering Committee.
1.3.
IT Organisational Setup
The IT unit serves the computing needs of the Secretariat and the 344 Members of each
Committee.
The IT unit is composed of the following services:

Information Systems

IT Infrastructure

User Support Services
The main activities of each service are summarised below:
1.3.1.
Information Systems
The role of the Information Systems Head of Service encompasses:

Mission, vision & governance

Quality programme

Aligning IT & business strategy

Balancing supply & demand

Managing change
Information Systems Management is reinforced by:

Project Support – implements best practices in terms of Methodology,
Architecture & Portfolio (MAP);

Project Resources – implements Supply & Demand Management, Technology
Tracking and Inter-institutional co-operation in the field of "Information systems"
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Project Managers are in charge of each of 4 "Business" sectors:
i.
HR & Finance
ii. Political Work
iii. Document Management
iv. Communication
1.3.2.
IT Infrastructure
The IT Infrastructure service is composed of 3 sectors: Data Centre, Office Automation &
Telecommunications whose respective activities are summarised below. The IT
Infrastructure service is also responsible for IT security and coordination with EU CERT.
1.3.2.1.
Data Centre

System administration of database and application servers

Database administration (Oracle)

Design, implementation and operation of the standby Data Centre and back-up
procedures

Deployment, and technical support for third party applications

Technical support for the application framework

2nd level support

Inter-institutional co-operation in the field of "Database technologies"
1.3.2.2.
Office Automation

Design, implementation and operation of the "Back-office" infrastructure –
installation, monitoring, upgrading, anti-virus measures, shared resources and
back-ups – file servers, e-mail servers, print servers, , …

Development and maintenance of the tools for user management

Access, "who is who", mailboxes, "quota" and "active directory"

Reference configuration for the standard PC and software packages

2nd level support
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
Inter-institutional co-operation in the field of "Office Automation"
1.3.2.3.
Telecommunications

Telephony & networks - design, implementation & operation

Integrated data/voice network for all buildings and interbuilding links

External network connections – Internet & Testa Network & telephony operations
including inventory

2nd level support

Inter-institutional co-operation in the field of "Telecommunications"
1.3.3.
User Support Services
The User Support Services are responsible for:

Helpdesk – the Single Point of Contact for all IT queries

1st line user support

User/Identity Management

Communication and Documentation

o
"Welcome sessions" for new users
o
Preparation of weekly information messages
o
Preparation and updating of documentation
Logistics
o
Installation and replacement of equipment and software
o
Writing-off of obsolete equipment
o
Updating of the inventory

Telephone switchboard & associated services

Coordination with the other IT sectors (User & Change Committees)

Coordination with the training services
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2.
IT ENVIRONMENT
2.1.
Network infrastructure
The EESC-COR currently has a routed TCP/IP network infrastructure.
2.1.1.
Local Area Networks (LAN)
The following LAN technologies are used at present:

Switching Ethernet

VLAN

Fast Ethernet / Gigabit Ethernet / 10 Gigabit Ethernet
2.1.2.
Wide Area Networks (WAN)
The EESC-COR has various resources for external communications:

Internet;

Network interlinking the European Institutions.
2.1.3.
Building wiring
IT wiring in all EESC-COR buildings is based on the following rules:

horizontal cabling: multipurpose wiring, four twisted pairs, Category 5, Class D (as a
minimum requirement);

vertical cabling: multi-mode optical fibres / twisted pairs.
Optical fibres (single-mode and multi-mode) are the main media used for interconnecting
contiguous buildings.
2.1.4.
Network administration
Administration of the EESC-COR network is handled via redundant stations at each site.
2.2.
Telephony
All Telephony is based on an entirely IP telephone architecture.
2.3.
WiFi
WiFi coverage is available in all conference rooms and public areas.
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2.4.
Servers
2.4.1.
Servers for centralised IT management
The computer centre uses mainly Windows servers and Oracle servers.
The Windows servers provide the following services:
o
File servers, terminal server, system supervision;
o
Logon validation services (Active Directory), DNS, DHCP, folder replication,
data transfer, remote access services via Windows Terminal Services,
application servers;
o
E-mail, Intranet/Internet;
o
Virtualisation (VMware)
Oracle servers:
o
Database servers (Oracle)
The computer centre also has SAN storage infrastructure based on EMC VNX.
The following table sets out standard hardware and software configurations for servers:
Hardware
Current configurations
VMware servers:
Intel,4 Quad-Core CPUs, 128 GB RAM
Windows servers:
Intel,Quad-Core, 2 to 4 CPUS, 8 to 32 GB RAM
ORACLE servers:
SPARC64, 8 Quad Core CPUs, 64GBs RAM
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Software
Current configurations
Operating system:
Windows 2003 (phase out)
Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise 64 Bits
SUN Solaris 10 SPARC
Relational Database Oracle 10 (phase-out)
Management
Oracle 11
Software
Application server:
.NET, JBoss, Tomcat
Web Server:
IIS 6 (Windows 2003)
IIS 7 (Windows 2008 R2)
Apache
Reporting and
analysis tool:
Business Objects XI (phase out)
Business Objects BI
With regard to software, and in line with the policy adopted by the European Institutions, the
EESC-COR is taking an open source solution approach whenever possible:
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/informatics/oss_tech/index_en.htm
Tools are used for server administration, supervision and backup at central and
departmental level.
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1.1.
Workstations
The EESC-CPR workstations run in a Windows environment. Users and resources are
managed through one specific Active Directory domain. A DNS structure is used for name
resolution.
In order to meet specific needs with regard to applications, together with management,
security and portability requirements, the EESC-COR has defined a standard configuration
seeking to make workstations totally user-independent and give users an enhanced level of
service based on the portability of their parameters and documents.
The following table sets out the EESC-COR's standard hardware and software
configurations for work stations:
Hardware
Current configuration
Intel Celeron CPU G530
(2,4GHz); 4 GB, HD 250GB,
NIC 10/100/1000, DVD-RW,
USB
Software
Current
configuration
developments
Operating system:
Windows Seven 64 bits SP1
Office suite:
Office 2010 32 bits SP1
Mail user agent:
Outlook 2010 32 bits SP1
Web client:
Internet Explorer 9
/
Mozilla FireFox 15
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2.
ENVIRONMENTS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF CENTRALISED APPLICATIONS
For centralised applications hosted at the EESC/CoR, the following environments are
provided:
Name
Purpose
Kind of data
Development
Development
No "real" data
Test
Development
tests
Representative test data, where sensitive information –
derived from real data – are obliterated
Technical barrier
Acceptance
User acceptance
tests
Production
Real work
Contains real data which are copied on a regular basis
from the production environment
Real data
The technical barriers between these environments are maintained by the database and
system administrators.
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3.
DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
3.1.
Development environments - Overview
At present, there are 4 main development environments been used, Power builder, JavaJ2EE, .NET and SharePoint.
PowerBuilder
It has been one of the main leaders world-wide in the Client-server application architecture.
Because of its powerful features to access databases, the rich functionality and the relatively
low learning curve has been extensively used in our organisation. Several of the critical
systems are developed using this technology. By now the Client-server paradigm has been
questioned, since the internet has imposed the use of web based applications.
.Net
.Net has become the standard development environment for the Members portal and all the
internet applications.
It has a high degree of flexibility and it is well suited for agile development. It supports
multilingualism and it has become a robust development platform.
Java
Java was introduced in the year 2002 with the development main operation applications
such as Agora (Political work back office). Java was chosen to be the main development
language for the Enterprise development. Back then Java-J2EE was the standard of modern
enterprise application development. Java-J2EE offers reliable enterprise architecture for web
based applications. From the different java products and providers the IS service choose to
use the Open source tools and servers.
SharePoint
SharePoint is a Content Management platform. SharePoint was introduced in the year 2009
with the development of Web platforms.
SharePoint is now:

the main development environment for the Websites

and the main environment for the Document Management
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3.2.
Development environments - Tools and environments
Programs used by the development team to carry out the implementation of the applications
Power Builder
Tools
Power Builder
Subversion - SVN
Power Builder
runtime
environment
Description
Usage
Integrated development
environment from Sybase
Application development and release
(creation of executable).
Source control system..
Versioning of objects. Each new version of
an objects is registered and kept save. The
system allows recalling the previous versions
of an object.
Runtime environment for
PowerBuilder applications
The runtime environment has to be installed
in the client PCs using Power builder
applications. The runtime environment and
the development environment have to be
synchronized.
Java – J2EE
Tools
Description
Usage
Eclipse
Integrated development
environment for Java. Open
source.
Application development
JBoss
Application server
Each developer has a JBoss instance
running in his/her PC. This server is used for
testing the development.
Ant
Scripting tool to build and deploy
the application. Open source.
The java code is transformed in executable
code that can be deployed in JBoss ready to
run.
Source control system..
Versioning of objects. Each new version of
an objects is registered and kept save. The
system allows recalling the previous versions
of an object.
Subversion - SVN
.NET and Sharepoint
Tools
Visual Studio 2010
Description
Integrated development
environment for .NET.
Usage
Application development.
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Microsoft.
SharePoint Designer
MOSS designer
Website design
InfoPath 2010
Forms
Creation of forms
IIS
Applications server.
Each developer has a IIS server instance
running in his/her PC. This server is used for
testing the development.
Search Server Driver
Driver for access to content
management system
TFS
Espace public interface (phase-out)
Source control system.
Versioning of objects. Each new version of
an objects is registered and kept save. The
system allows recalling the previous versions
of an object.
Description
Usage
Reporting
Tools
Business Objects
Reporting development
environment
Tool used to produce reporting environments
and predefined reports. The reporting
environments allow final users to access the
enterprise information and produce ad-hoc
reports based on it.
Corporate tools
Tools
Description
Usage
SQL navigator
SQL developer
Database management system
Consultation of database structure. Creation,
modification and deletion of database
objects (tables, synonyms, …)
TOAD
3.3.
Development environments - Technologies
Programming languages, modelling languages and techniques used by the development
team to produce an application.
Power Builder
Tools
Description
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Power script
Power builder programming language
SQL – PL/SQL
Database access programming language
Java – J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition)
Tools
Description
Java
Generic programming language
Jsp
Programming language to produce dynamic web pages
Javascript
Programming language to add behaviour in jsp pages
Ajax
Techniques that allow web applications to retrieve data from the server
asynchronously
Struts
Java framework used to support the application web pages
Server side technology used to implement the business rules of the application.
EJB
Part of the J2EE architecture.
Ant
Low level programming used to build and deploy Java applications
SQL – PL/SQL
Database access programming language
.NET and Sharepoint
Tools
Description
VB .net
Generic programming language for .Net environment. to create dynamic pages
and/or web-services
C#
Generic programming language
Asp .net
Programming language to produce dynamic web pages
Ajax
Techniques that allow web applications to retrieve data from the server
asynchronously
VB 6
Generic programming language, VB .Net predecessor.
SQL – PL/SQL
Database access programming language
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3.4.
Methodological Recommendations
Joint Services has adopted the RUP methodology. There are several reasons:

RUP is a wide spread and well known framework that covers the complete
development process.

JS - Information Systems has carried out a project in order to adapt RUP to their
needs.

Training is available.

Some supporting tools are already used in the Information System Service.
Join Service use, as much as possible Agile development methods.
As a general guideline, in order to reduce the risks linked to integrating new components on
the production site, developers or contractors will have to carry out their activities in an
interactive manner and in close collaboration with the IT services of the EESC/CoR. Namely:

The use of mock-ups and prototyping will be the preferred methodology during the
analysis and development phases.

The contractor will have to present and deliver regularly, within a maximum
timeframe of four to five weeks, the successive versions of the components in his test
environment. This will allow progressive validation version by version.

In order to allow corrective and perfective maintenance of work accomplished, the
contractor will have to hand over the source codes of this development and produce
relevant technical documentation.
Recommendations concerning SharePoint developments
As a general guideline, the contractor undertakes to use standard SharePoint 2010
components rather than developing new components. In particular, the only database to be
used will be the native SharePoint 2010 database. Standard SharePoint "lists" will be used
for saving data.
Corporate tools
Programs used by the development team to carry out the analysis design and
implementation of the applications
Tools
JIRA
Description
Change management and bug
track system.
Balsamic is used to design Mockups
Usage
The system contains all the changes
requested for the existing applications. The
changes can be followed-up and organized
by version, release, etc.
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Green Hopper supports Agile
development
StarUML
Software modelling tool for UML
Production and management of UML
documents used to model applications
(behaviour, structure and data)
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