PHP in Enterprise: Modernize Application Development to Bring Projects to …

Editor's Notes

• #2: PHP in the enterprise: how Zend helps modernize application development to bring projects to market faster Faster time to market has become a critical business driver, differentiating your company from the competition.  But achieving this goal  has caused IT organizations to grapple with challenges in how to reduce development time while keeping costs down, and how to find developers with the right skills.  In this webinar, we’ll discuss specific examples demonstrating the combined benefits of the Zend PHP stack and  Compunnel’s expertise in designing, architecting & developing enterprise grade applications:  significant reduction in development time, faster time to market, lower total cost of ownership & long term sustenance.
• #4: Thank you Ed.Thank you all for joining this webinar.I am Sriraj Mallick, EVP at Compunnel. In todays webinar we will take you through a 50 minutes session on how Zend PHP adoption is growing rapidly in the enterprise space and how Zend helps modernize application development to bring projects to market faster We will discuss 2 case study’s of our customers one of them is a social media marketing company for whom we developed a social media marketing platform & the other company is a leading meat processing company in US for whom we executed an application modernization programWith the help of these 2 case study’s we will demonstrate the combined benefits of the Zend PHP stack and  Compunnel’s expertise in designing, architecting & developing enterprise grade applications & how it leads to significant reduction in development time, faster time to market, and lower total cost of ownership & long term sustenance. We will spend last 10 minutes with questions and answers. A copy of this webinar will be posted on our website www.compunnel.com as well
• #5: Quick introductions:Compunnel is a technology services company and has been in the software & consulting business for last 22 years. We are headquartered in New Jersey and have a global footprint of customers and delivery organization. We bring deep expertise in enterprise system architecture, application development, business intelligence, mobility, cloud computing and more recently big data servicesWe share a special relationship with Zend. As a global partner of Zend we have built CAPACITY to deliver… enterprise grade systems and solutions built on the Zend PHP stack. This partnership is very strategic to us as we believe that the solutions we develop on the Zend stack helps us achieve key business goals most enterprises are looking for: Like…reduce there development spend & achieve lower total cost of ownership, fasten there time to market & have accessibility to skills for long term sustenance. I will ask Ed to talk to introduce Zend to all of you:Zend is a PHP technology solutions and framework company and has more than 40,000 customers worldwide with 15 million downloads.
• #6: Let us walkthrough some statistics here: You are aware that PHP is still the leader on server side programming languages. It owns 78.2% market share on server side programming. In a recent survey conducted by UBM Techweb of IT managers and decision makers who are actively using PHP or are planning to develop on PHP soon we found growing adoption of PHP in the enterprise… lets look at some of these survey resultsWhen asked what type of applications have you built with PHP out of 232 IT executives 64% said “External facing applications”… 62% said “internal facing web applications”…while 47% said “ Business integration applications”; 21% said backend systems for mobile apps…When asked what was the primary goal for your application:… 38% said increase efficiency and save on cost….27% said drive revenue and customer growth while 21% said improve customer experienceWhen these senior IT executives were asked what was there most important goals for their application development process…40% said they wanted to deliver higher quality application and they trust PHP for that while 25% said they wanted to improve user experience When the survey asked them what are the main reasons for you to develop in PHP… 61% said SPEED of DEVELOPMENT while 37% said they get widely available talent pool in PHP…Then they rated their PHP experience on various aspects of development when compared to the next most used languages in there organization…here is how they rated PHP: they said PHP was 88% better then the next language they used in terms of Speed a development…this is huge…IT executives said PHP allows 79% times better in ramping up new developers in PHP as compared to other languagesThey thought PHP was better in Performance and Management by 65% and 76% than there neared competitor in programming languageThis survey clearly tells us that: PHP is pervasive among large enterprises. Organizations are relying on deployed PHP applications to generate revenue or to manage critical processes. PHP is being used in growth areas, such as mobile application support, PHP has direct benefit to end-users, as the resulting applications are of higher quality, and are updated or enhanced more quickly.
• #7: Here are some of the most popular sites using PHP. These are the flag bearers and have tested the PHP platforms to its extreme. Lets looks at these amazing numbers and reflect how they test the limits of any platform on availability, performance, scalability, security & interoperability. Facebook has over 1 billion active users while Wikipedia had over 470 million unique visitors monthlyThese companies have made serious investments in PHP
• #8: In this slide you see a list of companies that have adopted Zend application server for deploying there applications & Zend studio for there development teams. There are case study’s on the projects that have been done by these companies available on the Zend website. BNP Paribas uses banking and financial applications & portals developed on Zend PHP & running on Zend servers. You also see companies like GE, Cisco, Bank of America, EBay, HSBC have all adopted Zend PHP server stack to develop front end applications, intranets or portals & missions critical applications for there business.
• #9: In this next section we will talk about KEY DRIVER’s for enterprise adoption of a programming language or platform & what we have experienced based out of our interactions with CTO’s and IT organizations of different companiesWe will also talk about how Zend through its framework and Compunnel through its services deliver on those key drivers, I have 2 case study’s to present to you today
• #10: For most of you in the IT organization we see 2 core areas that drives your decision making while selecting a system or a platform. Technology drivers that revolves are non-functional goals you want to achieveBusiness drivers where development time, availability of resources, costs & sustainability issues are importantTechnology drivers:Within the technology drivers we see these features as being very important for any IT organization. Achieving the goals of having a highly reliable & available system, a system that allows you to scale up or scale down depending on the usage pattern, a system that is secure and has demonstrated capabilities to manage your sensitive & confidential data & a system that is interoperable, easy to integrate with other systems in your current IT environment. We at Compunnel … has been architecting & developing such enterprise ready applications on the Zend PHP server stack Business drivers:Business always wants systems or applications to be taken to market faster. Faster development time is so important…it helps you release your applications earlier than your competition it creates a differentiator & a leverage for your company. We will tell you how IT organizations have experienced significant reduction in development time when using Zend PHP & how they have been able to go live with many applications at a much lesser time than they have experienced with other platforms like Java & even .NETAvailability of good technical skills is another key driver & I often get to hear from various IT organizations how they are finding it increasingly difficult to hire good resources and in time. This eventually leads to a high cost & time on your application development initiatives. Support & practice of agile development model is becoming defacto need & having a mechanism to easily develop and deploy your applications on premise or on cloud; to have the ability to identify errors and bugs in the system to fix them faster & to be able to easily support the application throughout its lifecycle. At Compunnel we practice agile development & one of the key goals we have as part of our project orchestration is how we can make the environment more self sustainable through training, documentation, standardized development, tools for management & monitoring & Zend helps us achieve these goalsThis is where we come across as a partnership between Zend and Compunnel to provide you with the platform & the skills & expertise you need to achieve these goals for Lower total cost of ownership & Faster time to market & Long term sustenance
• #11: Here is the first case study this is a Social media marketing platform: RedKonnect. Its architected & developed by Compunnel & built on Zend.RedKonnect is a social media marketing company. RedKonnect is trying to do is that it measures your social media influence based on your connects, likes, posts and then rewards you for talking about the brands and causes you love.There mantra is, "No Information Without Compensation" & it is built on two basic truths:1) every person has a network of friends, acquaintances, and contacts and2) every network has valueIt wants to help its users monetize there social influence. So you can subscribe to there service and promote any brand or marketing campaign that is listed in there platform and earn rewards or money for promoting it through your Facebook or twitter accounts.Great concept… 
• #12: As a user you can login and signup with your Facebook or twitter account information. This platform then evaluates your social media influence and gives you a Klout score or influence score.And based on the influence score you end up getting paid for every product, brand, or event you promote. Every time your friends click on campaign you have promoted on your Facebook wall page you get paid. As you grow your circle of influence or the Klout score on these social networks, you can earn even higher rewards for each post and click. You have the ability to pick and chose which campaign or brand you wish to promote on your Facebook page.Companies… benefit from authentic, word-of-mouth advertising. Companies can run campaigns to promote their businessby purchasing predefined packages from redKonnect & Users are compensated upfront for each campaign post, as well as for each click their posts generate. This system has an intuitive administrative panel to manage the platform,content management system to manage content on the site, unique klout algorithm to calculate the influence score, dashboard and KPI’s for campaign performance for marketers
• #13: So when the redKonnect team came to us for developing there social media marketing platform we had lots of whiteboard sessions detailing out the specifications of the platform, design & features with there team. They came predominantly from the Microsoft world & were used to the waterfall methodology of developmentDuring our initial discussions they wanted to make sure that Compunnel can achieve the 3 most important goals they had set:The first goal they asked us to achieve was to develop and deliver the Beta within 3 months & achieve FASTER TIME TO MARKET. They wanted to get the idea out in the hands of users faster. They wanted real user & company feedback. Timing was essential because they had other companies in the same space trying to release a new platformThe 2nd goals was to make sure that they stretch the dollar as much as possible and therefore they wanted to work with a company that can offer them a model for low cost of development to achieve LOWER TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIPThe 3rd most important goal was that they wanted there investment in the platform and the application lasts them throughout there growth cycle. As business grows, users grow… and specially in the social media space spikes on demand and users grow dramatically. When such times comes the software or the platform that Compunnel develops should be truly scalable, highly available and demonstrate a very high level of performance. They wanted to make sure there investment on technology and the application is protected for a long termThese are very challenging goals & most of you would have similar goals in your own application development initiatives.
• #14: So did we achieve those 3 goals…..YES…we did.The first goalCan you design, architect, develop & deploy beta in 3 months….YES it was challenging we have to do many things together to achieve this goal.….first was get the project team together immediately…as a development organization with a center of excellence on PHP we have a large pool of highly qualified & experienced Zend PHP resources. So we were able to put the development team together immediately without losing time in rampup. Then we evaluated use of Microsoft .NET or Java or PHP. It was here that Zend as a platform became a natural choice because we have experienced that development in Zend studio is very fast. We have in the past experienced saving over 30%- 40% development time on Zend.The reason why Zend studio allows for faster development time… is because… it provides a very powerful Integrated development environment or IDE for developers that makes you more productive with time-saving features like refactoring, code generation, code assist, semantic analysis, quick bug identification & fixes & it provides libraries, routines and APIS that developers frequently use to save time and focus on the unique needs of the application.Zend also allowed us to execute the project in a Agile development methodology. A waterfall model would have been very time consuming and a roadblock to the first goal. So we decided to follow agile development methodology & created 2 week & 4 week sprints. A lot of ideation continued to happen while the project was being developed so this iterative approach helped us incorporate changes easily within the systems being developed. Zend Studio, Compunnel’s ability to ramp up quickly with a expert PHP team & our ability to execute the project in Agile methodology helped us at Compunnel to improve time to market for this application. And we achieved our FIRST GOALThe second goalThe next goal was to keep the development cost low. They wanted to achieve over 40% cost reduction on the total project cost they got from other companies. Our choice of Zend helped us….Faster time to design & develop using the Zend studio kept the time & cost down but we did much better on the cost side because we were able to leverage our Global delivery model. In this model we established an onsite project management, design & architecture while development, QA were done from our delivery center offshore in India. This hybrid model which is a combination of onshore project leadership & offshore development & support helped us reduce costs dramatically and at the same time maintain control over the project. Once the application went on production we continue to support the application from our offshore development center, we have a roadmap of enhancements that we are currently working on. Compunnel global delivery model & choice of Zends platform helped us achieve the 2nd important goal of LOWER TOTAL COST of OWNERSHIP for redKonnectThe third goalWe had to design the social media marketing platform to be highly scalable & available. We had to develop an enterprise grade application that is reliable & robust. Our solution architect’s chose Zend application server & Zend cluster manager to build in reliability, availability, scalability & performance in the system. It was a natural choice given all the things we had to achieve for this customer. It was also the preferred choice because we have experienced tremendous success in deploying many enterprise grade applications on Zend and all of then have been very successful in achieving these goals.Let me show you how Zend server and cluster manager works and how it helped us achieve the 3rd goal…
• #15: Zend server is truly enterprise grade and well tested on mission critical applications it allows us to centrally monitor and manage multiple Zend Server instances, both on-premise and in the cloud. It provides performance enhancement features like data & page caching, acceleration, optimizer, Job queue & download server.When you buy Zend application Server you also get 24X7 support from Zend directly. To meet the scalability & reliability goals of this project we decided to use the Zend cluster manager. To achieve highly available application, we are now able to distribute the applicationacross a cluster of multiple servers, ensuring that a given server isn't a single point of failure. Redundancy is a significant aspect of high availability, and architecting the redKonnect platform to use the capabilities of Zend Server & Zend cluster managerhelped us makes it easy to scale the redKonnect application across a cluster.Redundancy at session level:However, redundancy and failover are not enough by themselves. What will happen if there is a failure at the session level? We wanted to address a situation when one of the servers in a cluster fails or it has to be brought down for maintenance.So lets look at this example where PHP sessions stored on a server like user clicks that generate revenue for redKonnect users or posting of new campaign on there facing book pages, must be available to be serviced. We cannot afford to lose them otherwise the end-user may find their transactions broken, not getting paid for clicks, or not having the campaign live on there pages. This is unacceptable as it downgrades the user experience and will frustrate customers of redKonnectSo how does Zend server & cluster manager helps us: First it offers PHP session clustering capabilities. It helps us maintain redundancy at the session level. With Zend Server's cluster management, user sessions are always maintained on multiple servers. So….when one server becomes unavailable, session data is automatically retrieved from a different server within the cluster, thus making the event completely transparent to end users. Should a different server handle a given user's requests, the session will seamlessly fail over, and the end-user won't see any degradation of service.Like in this example you see Server A has gone down so what happens to the sessions that Session A was servicing…well what happens is Zend cluster manager maintains a backup of sessions in this case Server B was acting as the backup and it takes over the responsibility to respond to the sessions that have not been responded by Server A and assigns itself as the new master & then designates sever C as the new backup server for those sessions.So you can see how we are able to achieve enterprise grade availability & scalability on Zend Server & cluster manager
• #16: We delivered in timeWe delivered within budgetWe delivered an enterprise grade system that is highly available & scalableAnd we achieve all 3 goals…
• #17: Today redKonnect is growing & the platform we built is supporting this growth. They have over 30,000 users signed up on the platform within 3 months of go live and they have generated over 100,000 social clicks …launched over 274 marketing campaigns and they have customers like Disney, NBC, direct TV to name a few….You can a snapshot of a new film that will be released soon “Despicable me 2” being promoted by NBC on this platform. A great success story
• #18: Here is the 2nd case study we wanted to talk about in this webinar. Our customer here is a leading meat processing company with processing plants in the mid west in North America. It supplies processed meat products to some of the leading brands and retail chains.This company asked us to work on there application modernization program. They have legacy systems and they were selecting a vendor who will partner with them and help them migrate from there legacy applications to a new one.
• #19: Similar Application Modernization initiatives are being executed or being planned for 2013 in many IT organization’s. Companies have invested heavily on building systems and tools in legacy technologies like the main frames IBM AS400, Cobol, RPG FoxPro, Visual basic, client server applications or desktop applications. These systems are critical for the business which is why companies have had them for so many years. As business grows & customer behavior changes and technology matures….modernization becomes a big differentiator in making companies more efficient and in providing better business outcomes. Companies just like this meat processing company that are running these systems are looking for a credible and well thought out way to migrate there legacy systems to a modern application not only from the opportunity perspective but more so from the current challenges they face in running there legacy systems….Compunnel& Zend partnertogether to provide you with application modernization service that offers a credible modernization roadmap, a plan & helps your transform your legacy systems into a modern system address your current challenge's & helping you meet your modernization goals of:Faster time to marketLower total cost of ownershipAnd long term sustainability
• #20: This meat processing company has various business functions & similar functions are there in other businesses.Automation & integration of business functions like sales, marketing, customer service, production, manufacturing, operations, logistics, etc…is critical for business performance. It builds efficiencies & supports growth of the companyModernization projects are very challenging as well. We have done over 100 modernization projects and we know that a successful program requires a holistic view. It is this holistic approach and our deep experience that the meat processing company asked us to work on their modernization program.
• #21: Some of their key business functions include procurement, production, processing, packaging, shipping, customer management & order management. This company had multiple legacy systems built on FoxPro & Cobol & were depended on using excel sheet for reports. These systems were working in silos and automated some parts of there business. They ran Sage accounting system and wanted to continue using it…They were facing challenges in managing, maintaining and sustaining there legacy systems. This was limiting there business growth, they faced issues with production management & customer experienceWhen we started working with our customer we captured there pain points and challenges they were facing… many of these challenges are similar to what we hear from other customers as well … so what are these challenges…
• #22: Its broken….My system is important for our business but it does not map to all my business processes…we are spending way too much time to do manual stuff…it is inefficient and costly.I spend hours on Excel consolidating data and making final reports every day…..and I don’t trust my report….Its costly: We pay tons of money to vendors to manage and maintain the system…because I don't find any more vendors supporting it.Every time I want some changes it take a lot of time in development and release…business needs the job to get done faster…I cannot do because my legacy system architecture is closed….its not modular…I have to make changes to so many placesMany of my existing developers have learned new technologies and have left the company…I have few people who know this stuff and my entire company is at risk should these last few people leave….Business is asking us to provide them new interface, give them ability to use the systems on mobile devices, on web…I simply cant invest on this legacy system any more….In this particular case with the meat processing company there was an additional challenge….government changes compliance regulations and systems have to be upgraded to maintain compliance to new regulations. This meat processing company had to integrate barcode systems, stringent tracking and traceability capabilities according to new FDA regulations. This is important to stay in business.These are common stories we hear with many customers…Legacy systems are a RISK...companies invest in modernization projects to de-risk there business
• #23: This is a high level overview of there business process. Meat processing & production system starts with procurement of cattle which is then tagged and goes into the knocking floor after which each part of the cattle is cut and processed for various types of meats…like ground meat, rib, steak or round meatMeat is processed, weighted and packaged. With each package we are able to identify the original cattle, the farmer who sold the cattle, the location address, etc. because we have implemented barcoding at each step of the process. This helped us achieve the tracking and traceability compliance of FDA. This is very important incase something goes wrong and authorities order for a recall. This company can then go all the way back to the origination and recall the entire lot. Thus increasing safety standards and meeting compliance regulations.
• #24: This modernization program involved not only migrating existing applications to new one but it also required us to automate some new business functionsWe saw that in the production floors they change people who work on different production lines and the general flow of that process based on the order they are processing. So we had to give them a customizable workflow engine that they can themselves manage and change the entities or the flow when needed without requiring any programming effort. This approach provides flexibility to the customer and we have used this with other customers as well. We have built generic frameworks which we call accelerators that help us develop the final versions of these engines faster. Like the workflow system or the messaging system.We developed a dashboard for each role type, the dashboard would have the TODO’s, Key performance indicators & reports to the floor managers and management of the companyUI: Kill floor is a bloody and messy place to put computer systems. We had put touch screen systems on the processing floors to allow supervisors to work with the system. Compunnel’s User Interface designers and architects spend a lot of time in defining the UI and the experience by closing profiling the user types and what users will be comfortable with. We look at the graphical interface, navigation & intuitive designIntegration: We had to integrate this system with there accounting systems & make sure that there is no manual entry required. Similarly integration had to be done with barcode systems and printers and with shipping & freight service providers so that there customers can track the shipment online.From Strategy to development, deployment & go live was achieved within 7 months time allowing business to make changes as we progress with the various development phases.We used a combination of waterfall and agile for different phases of the projects. Till the time of design, architecture & prototype we followed waterfall method and once were able to break down the modules and functions we moved to an agile model of development. This is a unique approach and brings best of both worlds.Today our customer has achieved a successful modernization program & is deploying this solution to other plants as well.So what goes into making a modernization program successful. Lets look at how we approach a modernization initiative to make it a success…
• #26: We see 5 key goals that needs to be achieved in any modernization program to term it as successful. I will share how we are achieving them. These were the same goals that our meat processing customer wanted to achieve and many of you will have very similar goals to achieve for your modernization initiatives.The first goal is faster time to market which means customers expect lower turnaround time and fast development & implementation of there systems. Customers want an agile development model wherein systems can be released in smaller modules & can evolve with iterations.We use Zend studio is an award winning IDE & it offers consistent PHP stack used across development, testing and production environments that allows our developers to create high quality code quickly with features like code syntaxing, formatting, in place code-refactoring, semantic analysis & code generation tools. It also uses existing libraries, code reuse to fasten the development time. Zend studio provides automated application packaging and deployment. Customers have experienced saving 40% of development time when developing on Zend Studio.Compunnel through is large resource pool of certified and talented PHP developers & architects is able to provide you with PHP team faster & as per project requirements we help you ramp up your development team without any delays.This helps us achieve the faster time to market goalThe 2nd goals is around Long term Sustenance:IT organizations tell me that before invest on any modernization initiative they want to make sure that they can manage & maintain the new system for long term. They want to make sure that they do not run the same risks as they do now with there legacy systems. Risk because of non availability of skilled resources; Risk because of proprietary and non standard hardware and software, risk of not knowing all aspects of there system & not having it documented… PHP made a great choice to de-risk the customer because PHP is a open source platform & Zend PHP provides an open architecture that does not lock in a proprietary hardware or software, it is interoperable and has a huge following of customers and developers across the globe. PHP Developers are easy to find and hire and more importantly your existing developers can easily be trained and certified. Its easy language to learn and work with. Compunnel’s modernization process ensures proper documentation of the systems and comprehensive training for users, administrators or train the trainer programs at the time of Go live to make sure that there is knowledge within the IT organization to manage & maintain the new systems internally and with the users to use the system properly.Additionally, Compunnel also offers a 24x7 support with helpdesk, phone support, email and chat support to its customer’s. Zend offers a 24X7 platform support which is critical for enterprise adoption.So you can see how Compunnel and Zend are positioned to offer you with solutions that provide you with long term sustainability
• #27: Current state to desired state:3rd goal is to transform the system or the application from its current state to the desired state. This is were our holistic approach to modernization comes to play. With our multi stage assessment & 4 point transformation program along with enterprise grade design & architecture expertise we are able to deliver a solid modernization plan that outlines the current state and the desired state and articulates how we will accomplish those goals. We achieve desired state with our competency, best practices & experience.The 4th goal is to achieve lower total cost of ownership. All factors mentioned earlier lead to a lower TCO specially reliability of the platform, development cost, support costs & ability to integrate with other systems. The 5th and final goal is for the new system to support future business needs. We are experiencing dynamic changes in the way we are engaging in business. Mobile has become a standard system of engagement, many enterprises are moving on cloud, innovation in the technology space is happening rapidly. What you need is a system that is designed to support new systems and tools… a system that follows a standard way of communication & integration with other systems, system that can scale up to you future business needs or business growth. That’s is the kind of system we design & deliver on Zend platforms. Our customer’s including this meat processing company have experienced significant advantages through our application modernization services.They are happy and so are we…
• #28: This brings be to the last slide our partnership with Zend which is very important for us. We have experienced success together and we want to reach out to all of you and share our story.Our partnership offer our customers exponential value from our solution design and development leadership with Zend’s platform leadership & support. This brings us to the end of this webinar.
• #29: I invite you to ask any questions we have 10 minutes left in this webinar for questions & answers.Please note that this presentation can be downloaded from our website: www.compunnel.com and for participants of this webinar we are offering 5 FREE white boarding session where our solution architects will be available to discuss your modernization or development programs. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.