SOA at Merrill Lynch

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• SOA at Merrill Lynch
• Andy Brown
• Chief Technology Architect
• ML Co.

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SOA wins most overloaded acronym of 2005

• A Framework Architecture
• A Platform (e.g. IBM, Tibco)
• A Company (e.g. SOA Software)
• A way of thinking
• Abstraction, Interfaces, Implementations
• The next biggest thing!

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The Evolution of Interoperability
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
(Samuel Johnson)
We needSTP
BPM/SOA
XML SOAP
TCP/IP
Ethernet
Integrated Processes
Protocol Hell DECnet, SNA, PROFS, IPX, OSI,
TCP/IP, VINES
Cabling Hell Phones Cat 1 Cat 2 HyperChannel
Schema Hell FPML, FIXML,ISO15022ML, X4ML, MLML
SLA Hell ?
Interface Hell RPC, CORBA, DCOM, .Net, EJB, RMI,
MQ, RV, Vitria
STP Hell Transform, Derive, Conform, Enrich,
Message Brokers.
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As margins erode, Financial Services firms need
to optimize for process effectiveness and
operating efficiency.
Unique Product ID
Management Control Services
PARTY
PRODUCT
Bank
Product
Market Risk Management
TRADING SERVICES BLOTTER
Credit Risk Management
Unique Counter Party ID
TRANSACTION PROCESSING BOND MANAGER
Management Control
Credit Administration
Client Firm Measurement
Operational Risk Management
Unique Counter Party ID
CLEARING SETTLEMENT XTAS/Cash Mgr.
Treasury

• Just like retailers, financial firms share the
  need to measure, monitor and manage their
  performance and risks on an integrated, near
  real-time, global basis.

Unique Counter Party ID
Audit
BOOKS RECORDS FINMAN
Financial control
FINMAN
Unique Counter Party ID
Establishing standards such common client and
product IDs and enforcing their use is both a
competitive advantage and a long-term cost saving
Legal Regulatory Compliance
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What is our framework for SOA? Challenge Scope
Enterprise
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Legacy Systems A Common Issue

• There are 20,000 active CICS licenses at 14,000
  CICS customers.
• 90 of Fortune 500 customers use CICS.
• More than 30 million people in over 90 countries
  use CICS.
• An estimated 300,000 programmers develop CICS
  applications.
• Worldwide 30 billion transactions a day run on
  CICS, amounting to over 1 trillion dollars in
  volume.

• Enterprise Reality
• Many ML business processes run on the mainframe
• Costs are known and controlled
• The mainframe is stable and reliable

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Service Oriented Legacy Architecture (SOLA)aka
X4ML
HTTP/MQ SOLA Web Service
Merrill Lynch developed a product called X4ML
(now offered through SOA Software as SOLA) that
allows mainframe developers to easily produce Web
Services from their applications with no
programming. Complexity is eliminated, while
performance, scalability and reliability are
improved.

• Development and support costs are dramatically
  reduced.
• SOLA performance is exceptional.
• SOLA delivers very high throughput, scalability
  and reliability.
• Mission critical ML applications are built with
  SOLA.

What our X4ML Infrastructure looks like
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SOA Cost Savings at Merrill Lynch

• There are over 40 SOLA applications in production
  at ML
• We estimate that SOLA avoided significant cost
  and speeded up delivery
• We had estimated about 800K using traditional
  technology to build a system. But by embracing
  SOLA we did the project for 30K. John McKinley,
  former CTO, Merrill Lynch
• SOLA gives us a competitive advantage by allowing
  us to bring products to market quicker than our
  competitors.

X4ML saves money
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What are we doing with SOA Frameworks at
ML?Example GPC Integration Framework
New Processes/SOA Platform
Security
NewApps

• Older Applications adopt theIF over a period of
  time depending on their businessrequirements -
• Generally security frameworkis first and then
  adoption of specific orchestrated (common)
  business objects.
• Currently around 1000 apps are using the IF
  including internet facing apps such as Merrill
  Lynch Online

GPC Integration Framework
Partner Connectors
Orchestration
Back End Connectors
Legacy Processes
Legacy Apps
Legacy Data
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How does an SOA approach help ?

• Process Oriented
• Prototyping is extremely fast.
• Visual - Simple to get
• Creates a common language (process/data) for
  technology and business people.
• Incremental
• re-uses and orchestrates existing technology
  services and people creating ROA and speeding
  time to market.
• Standards based
• Previous iterations of standards did not
  interoperate effectively. Web Services have
  created the common syntax
• Secure
• Security can be enforced via policy, and can be
  added by the platform to legacy apps.

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We are using SOA Platforms to simplify, automate
and instrument business process.
REAL TIME PROCESS VISIBILITY
SOA provides an integrated architecture that
empowers us to deliver client focused solutions.
ACTIONABLE METRICS REAL DECISIONS
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What are the new problems?

• Capacity Management and SLAs
• Understanding dependencies (and constraints) on
  underlying services Process level capacity
  management.
• Getting Integration right
• Exposing the right services into catalogs and
  libraries. Integration can happen at any level
  from RPC upwards, so we need to advertise
  services we want people to use.
• Security and Privacy
• In a complex regulated environment ensuring that
  policy is enforced across the SOA becomes a level
  of complexity on top of process definitions and
  dependencies.
• Data
• Process integration requires that data issues be
  addressed. This requires that Semantics and
  Syntax are agreed at the process/sub-process
  level. This is a new dialog.
• Managing Implementations
• The SOA Platforms are very flexible, but without
  controls this can create poor implementations.
  Putting real architects to work inside
  implementation teams is essential.
• Skills Gap Business Process Modeling
  Re-engineering
• Finding / Training Business/Technology Hybrids
  who can talk business process and work with
  architects to define technology implementations.
  An uber Business Analyst

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Summary Key takeaways

• SOA is here to stay.
• SOA creates ROA via systematic reuse.
• SOA drives ROI via time to market.
• SOA requires Enterprise Architecture
• SOA requires retooling training

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• The End
• Andy Brown
• Chief Technology Architect