BMC > Case Studies > Compuware ISPW speeds and simplifies source code management for this Telecom Service Provider!

Compuware ISPW speeds and simplifies source code management for this Telecom Service Provider!

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Compuware ISPW
Topaz

Tech Stack

DB2
VSAM

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Digital Expertise

Technology Category

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

About The Customer

The company provides mainframe-based software applications and solutions support for companies that deliver digitized communications services to businesses and individuals. Their solutions include service management (e.g. moves/adds/changes), billing, service acquisition, customer relationship management, etc. Their customers provide a wide range of digital services to commercial, service and production companies across all of North America – Canada and the US. The company is provided with IT outsourcing and managed services from a premier provider. The software development group is responsible for managing the software used by operations to provide services. The computing environment consists of four (4) major LPARS; three (3) are production LPARS and one (1) development LPAR. Multiple software production databases are maintained for their different customers. The parameters and software code used to provide services evolve, change, converge and diverge according to customer demands and activities.

The Challenge

The company, a major communications industry service provider located in the United States, was struggling with Source Code Management (SCM). Their existing mainframe code management tools were outdated and could not keep up with the pace of change in today's world of agile development and rapid programming styles. The in-house developed SCM processes were inefficient and inconsistent, resulting in unnecessary errors. Deployments would slip out without all of the correct software changes and updates incorporated. Old and new versions of software were being deployed in error. There wasn’t a standardized way to implement changes. Procedures for version control and verification processes were not standardized. As a result, ‘clean-up’ of existing libraries was inconsistent, so that old versions of software would remain in ‘updated’ libraries. Changes could be made at any level making auditing, repeatability and traceability difficult.

The Solution

The company chose Compuware ISPW for their SCM solution. ISPW uses a totally different approach from their current solution. So, choosing it meant they would undergo a fundamental, significant change to the existing culture. Therefore, they prepared for the migration with a detailed project plan which included significant ISPW support. The company attributed much of the success of its smooth implementation to the fact that they spent roughly 10 months researching and learning about the product with ISPW staff. They had to rethink how they did things and learn how to do what needed to be done with ISPW. Being a services provider, they also expected to have to create a number of new complex processes to modify ISPW for use in their multi-customer environment. This meant they undertook extensive planning and engineering of new processes to be created.

Operational Impact

By the time the company implemented ISPW into their environment, they were able to quickly and easily make the sophisticated, complex modifications and reconfigurations they needed.
They found the ISPW solution to be highly flexible and functional.
The functionality and structure that is integral to the ISPW solution helped them to achieve previously unobtainable levels of consistency, repeatability, auditability and traceability in code management.
Processes for handling changes have become automated resulting in freeing up a significant amount of IT staff time.
Today, developers easily handle 50 to 100 production changes per day. They design the modules for deployment, get approval and run them automatically.

Quantitative Benefit

After going live in late 2015, they have had only one rogue ‘old’ software version slip into production. Under the old system, while not a regular occurrence, an old version might slip through every month or so.
Significant amount of IT staff time has been freed up due to automation of processes for handling changes.