I was involved in a forum discussion regarding ESB, and I’d like to share a small story here.\u00a0 Once upon a time, there was a Small Bank which was, small.\u00a0 It had only 8 branches.\u00a0 The main transaction system was of course the one run on IBM mainframe.\u00a0 Nobody got fired by using IBM.\u00a0 Due to recession of economy, there were a lot of delinquencies for personal loans.\u00a0 Small Bank would need to pay pretty high percentage of the collected amount if it had outsourced the phone\u00a0collections.\u00a0 There were also concerns that third-party collection companies were not friendly and might damage the brand image of Small Bank.\u00a0 As a result, stingy top brasses of Small Bank had no choice but setup phone collection within the company.\u00a0 The collection module of IBM system was way too pricy, so they decided to try out a PC-based collection system from the Smart Vendor.<\/p>\n
A collection system\u00a0is a\u00a0very simple system: it fetches the data from mainframe, shows the data on collectors’ computers, stores summaries entered by collectors, and follows every promise that customers made to collectors.\u00a0 If any promise was broken, it needs to take corresponding measures according to preset business rules.\u00a0 Fairly easy isn’t it?\u00a0 The flavors only consist\u00a0a simple database, a small workflow, and a little bit of UI development.\u00a0 That type of system existed long enough using client-server architecture: a database server sit on the backend, workflows were divided into DB batches and UI logic, and a VB-based program installed on every collectors’ computer.\u00a0 Piece of cake no big deal.<\/p>\n
Sounds like problem solved.\u00a0 Well, was the cost low enough?\u00a0 Good question.\u00a0 Databases were priced by seat (at least when I were using them in the good old days).\u00a0 There were at least 100 users, and the license fee tasted a bit bitter.\u00a0 Installation of that VB-based client on 100 machines created great chances for collectors to take a long enough tea break, which implied hidden cost.\u00a0 To make things worse, if the client software had had bugs, the computers needed to be patched, which indeed was not a smart idea.\u00a0 On the other hand, if the client software was pulling too many data from the DB server, network infrastructure would require upgrade, thus\u00a0another unwelcomed cost.<\/p>\n
To assist with the cost reduction concern, Smart Vendor proposed a solution: multi-tier architecture.\u00a0 There were\u00a0middlewares consolidating all DB requests, so fewer seats were needed for DB software.\u00a0 There were web servers hosting front-end UI, which were now web pages.\u00a0 Collectors used their browsers\u00a0and navigated to an URL, then they could start their work.\u00a0 No more software installation, no more excuse for tea breaks.\u00a0 The last step was centralizing all workflow into application servers, and streamlined app servers, web servers, DB servers, and the system could light up.\u00a0 Done, cool, awesome cost-effective.<\/p>\n
However, the great recession of economy was unforeseen and Small Bank had to take more aggressive approaches to please the Wall Street.\u00a0 Small Bank was renowned for their professional banking services, not IT services.\u00a0 This simple little collection system required a vast infrastructure to operate: computer hardware, software, network equipments, dedicated real estate for the equipments, business class network infrastructure, and dedicated workforce to maintain all these.\u00a0 Everything in this big chain meant cost!\u00a0 Could we avoid the costs?<\/p>\n
Smart Vendor heartly understood the requirements of Small Bank and proposed a shiny, new, catchy solution: cloud computing and enterprise service bus.\u00a0 Smart Vendor provided data center, equipments, software, network infrastructures, and dedicated IT staff.\u00a0 All that Small Bank needed to do were to pay subscription fee and to build their DB\/workflow\/UI based on ESB spec.\u00a0 Collectors of Small Bank might need to\u00a0connect to a new URL, if that meant anything.\u00a0 Done, cool, awesome cost-effective.\u00a0 Small Bank could then sell the equipments, use cheaper DSL connections, layoff IT workforces, and boost stock price.\u00a0 This solution was so great.\u00a0 It was more cost-effective than outsourcing and traditional multi-tier systems.\u00a0 The only drawback was Small Bank now married with Smart Vendor together forever, and\u00a0divorsing would be as costly as hell … well, this was not really an issue.\u00a0 Small Bank could never afford divorsing Smart Vendor even with the client-server system.<\/p>\n
So the story ended.\u00a0 La viva cost down!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was involved in a forum discussion regarding ESB, and I’d like to share a small story here.\u00a0 Once upon a time, there was a Small Bank which was, small.\u00a0 It had only 8 branches.\u00a0 The main transaction system was of course the one run on IBM mainframe.\u00a0 Nobody got fired by using IBM.\u00a0 Due […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cchsu.com\/art-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cchsu.com\/art-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cchsu.com\/art-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cchsu.com\/art-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cchsu.com\/art-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.cchsu.com\/art-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106,"href":"http:\/\/www.cchsu.com\/art-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cchsu.com\/art-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cchsu.com\/art-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cchsu.com\/art-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}