Case One: BlueStar Profits from SOA and Open Source BlueStar Energy Services, fo
ID: 467784 • Letter: C
Question
Case One: BlueStar Profits from SOA and Open Source
BlueStar Energy Services, founded in Illinois in 2002, buys and sells electricity in Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. Its customers include businesses and residential customers looking to get the best deal on electricity custom suited to their needs. BlueStar is a certified Green-e Energy Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) marketer, providing its customers with power from renewable energy sources and traditional sources, with an option to earn carbon credits or buy carbon offsets. Carbon credits and offsets are tools that allow companies to balance overall carbon emissions between companies with high and low energy requirements.
Brokering electricity in today’s volatile and fluctuating energy marketplace is a complex process. BlueStar works with the companies that generate power, companies that control power transmission across country, and local distribution companies to access power from various sources and deliver it to its customers. In order to profit from this business, BlueStar must streamline and automate the flow of information with its partners in the industry to make the process as efficient as possible. CTO Tom Keen explains that the trick is to buy smart and deliver in an optimal way, which requires careful management of the flow of information. The challenge is that each of its partners uses different software that stores data in different formats.
Tom Keen worked closely with BlueStar executives to establish the company’s goals and enterprise architecture. This architecture defined the technology needs of the business. Keen initially set out to find off-the-shelf software that might have accommodated its needs but soon discovered that, while many software packages are designed for utility companies, none met the unique requirements of BlueStar. BlueStar needed software that could accept input in various formats from its business partners systems and process it to provide BlueStar with usable information. Tim Keen eventually decided to build the software in-house exactly to BlueStar specifications.
Rather than designing one large software application from scratch, Keen decided to use open-source software to create a service-oriented architecture that addressed each of the corporate processes individually. Using open-source software provided the stability that Keen desired. He explains that with open-source software, bugs are well documented and can be easily avoided. Commercial software companies don’t allow access to the source code, so bugs remain unknown to the users.
Keen and his team of programmers partitioned the business needs into narrowly defined domains. Once identified, software was developed to independently serve those needs while communicating with each other by passing data back and forth. This flexible SOA business infrastructure automates many of the tasks involved in negotiating with suppliers, partners, and customers. The modular design of SOA allows developers to tweak the software to accommodate new needs as the market changes.
Because BlueStar’s information systems were created to the specific requirements of the enterprise architecture, the information systems and how the business is managed are interdependent. Tom Keen built the systems that now contribute to the success of the company. He also established the software engineering principles and practices that are the cornerstones of IS operations. They include practices such as the software engineering lifecycle, domain-driven design, model-driven development, continuous integration, and several other approaches to software development. Today, 50 programmers trained in these practices work for BlueStar at a development center in Lima, Peru. By using offshore resources for their continuous software improvement processes, BlueStar has enjoyed considerable savings. In fact, between offshore resources and use of open-source software and SOA, the company estimates that it has saved $24 million over the past five years—an incredible amount in difficult economic times.
Tom Keen and his work have earned awards and recognition over the past few years. In 2008, BlueStar earned a top 10 business award from InfoWorld for its successful SOA implementation. Tom Keen was named one of the top 25 CTOs by InfoWorldd in 2009.
Discussion Questions
1.
Why did BlueStar decide to develop proprietary software rather than purchase off-the-shelf software?
2.
What advantages did open-source software and SOA provide to the development process?
Critical Thinking Questions
1.
Tom Keen believes that the open-source community is better at managing software bugs than commercial software vendors. Do you agree with his reasoning? Why or why not?
2.
What types of software development projects are best suited for a service-oriented architecture (SOA)?
Explanation / Answer
Discussion Questions
1 A ) Keen initially set out to find off-the-shelf software that might have accommodated its needs but soon discovered that, while many software packages are designed for utility companies, none met the unique requirements of BlueStar. BlueStar needed software that could accept input in various formats from its business partners systems and process it to provide BlueStar with usable information. Tim Keen eventually decided to build the software in-house exactly to BlueStar specifications. several other approaches to software development.
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2 A ) Advantages of open-source software and SOA provide to the development process : Using open-source software provided the stability that Keen desired. He explains that with open-source software, bugs are well documented and can be easily avoided. By using offshore resources for their continuous software improvement processes, BlueStar has enjoyed considerable savings.This flexible SOA business infrastructure automates many of the tasks involved in negotiating with suppliers, partners, and customers. Tom Keen built the systems that now contribute to the success of the company. He also established the software engineering principles and practices. Practices such as :
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Critical Thinking Question :
1 A ) I agree with Tom Keen , open source community is better at managing bugs as its specifically meant to clear out the bugs. Keen believed to use open-source software to create a service-oriented architecture that addressed each of the corporate processes individually. This open –source software provide the required level of stability that he desired. Bugs are well documented and bugs can be easily avoided. Another important reason is commercial software companies don’t allow access to the source code, so bugs remain unknown to the users.
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2 A ) SOA – Service Oriented Architecture : It’s a architectural pattern in which an application provides services to other components,
Best suited to Software development projects that have unique and different needs.This can be more suited to personalized applications that demanded more care in executing the tasks , provide more stability to the process and reduce / avoid bugs .
SOA operates in 2 different methods :
Service Providers : This application creates a web service platform to access and utilize the information in the system. Systems confidentiality and security can be maintained by what kind of information that has to be shared within the systems .
Service Consumers : This application is the end user who utilizes the services providers.These can access multiple servers at the same time .