Lifecell upgraded a management system

On May 18, 2017 the IBA Group company announced the project of migration of upgrade of the centralized control system by request of Lifecell telecom operator.

Project Tasks

The contractor was faced by a task to provide migration of a management system on the IBM Maximo 5.2 platform on the IBM Maximo 7.5 platform. By the time of the beginning of the project of upgrade, the vendor stopped support of the IBM Maximo 5.2 platform. It ceased to meet requirements of the customer regarding scalability, performance and security.

Advertizing lifecell, (2015)

The main objectives of the project for the lifecell command:

• in a management system about 100 developed applications with difficult business logic work.
• applications for migration are badly documented or not documented absolutely.
• separate parts of business logic are implemented in the form of PL/SQL procedures
• the management system on IBM Maximo is integrated with a large number of external systems, including SAP (exchange of transactions on the movement of materials), Oracle Identity Management (IdM), NetAct Planner (information on the websites and radio links), HP TeMIP (management of Trouble Tickets and information on accidents on network), the OSS systems of Nokia, Huawei and Ericsson.

By initial assessment, process of migration should be executed within one year. Within this period it was required to create applications and to develop operating. All applications should be available throughout all time of migration.

The project began a preparation stage. In December, 2014 IBA Group took part in the tender and won it.

Project Progress

The project on migration officially started in March, 2015. In line-up of the team of the project six developers, including two certified specialists in IBM Maximo, Oracle specialist, two business analyst, the QA specialist and the technical writer acted.

All groups of applications were translated to the platform entirely, once. Switching with IBM Maximo 5 to IBM Maximo 7 is carried out within one night. After migration of the first group of applications and before migration of the last, procedures of synchronization of data for ensuring their integrity between the IBM Maximo 5 and IBM Maximo 7 systems are configured.

For each application translated to the IBM Maximo 7 platform works are performed:

• The reverse engineering for preparation of technical specifications on transfer of the application on other platform is carried out. In technical specifications there was a description of architecture of the application, database objects, business logic, the user interface and all used handbook data
• The plan of migration and synchronization of data which described all data sources, subject to migration and synchronization between IBM Maximo 5 and IBM Maximo 7, including necessary data translations and schemes is prepared
• The user interface of the IBM Maximo 5 applications on the basis of JSP pages is transformed to the corresponding XML representations of applications for IBM Maximo 7, at the same time the identity of structure and a marking of pages was provided
• All business logic, including technical processes and Java customization, is adapted for the IBM Maximo 7 platform
• The most part are postponed by PL/SQL procedure in the form of IBM Maximo cranes
• Data are transferred and transformed according to the plan of migration
• Reports are transformed according to a data structure.

During the project automation tools are developed, it became a part of a development environment for IBM Maximo:

• Automated management of the IBM Maximo configuration for creation and updating of objects (MBO, domains, groups, etc.) on the basis of data of a repository
• The analysis of the IBM Maximo 5 applications for identification and the description of all data sources which are used by them
• Automatic conversion of visual forms of the IBM Maximo 5 applications to XML representations for IBM Maximo 7 with preserving of an initial marking.

Project Results

Project works are completed in December, 2016. The management system became stabler in work and conforms to requirements for security.

Nearly 2 years of joint persistent work of our commands on the project are complete, and now it is possible to tell with confidence that the project is implemented successfully. Konstantin Zhilin, head of the department of operation of telecommunication systems of layfsell LLC