Oliver G

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ASP Architectures for Web-based
Collaboration Reliability - Scalability -
Security - Usability

• Oliver Günther
• Institute of Information Systems
• Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

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Overview

• What is ASP?
• MMM (Middleware for Method Management)
  our original proposal for an ASP market
  infrastructure
• TeamToolz an ASP for marketing and advertising
• Challenges reliability scalability
  performance usability interoperability
  security
• Solutions three-tier architecture proxies
  XML - proprietary encoding techniques
• Demonstration of the TeamToolz production system
• Conclusions and future work

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Application Service Providers

• IDC a contractual service offering to deploy,
  host, manage, and rent access to an application
  from a centrally managed facility
• a.k.a. software renting/leasing a.k.a.
  application hosting a.k.a. hosted service
• No local installation, software is used via a Web
  browser
• But note user data is stored at ASP facility
• ASPs are clearly on the rise Humboldt study
  2001
• 90 of Neuer Markt companies are familiar with
  ASP
• 23 are using ASPs or have concrete plans to do so

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MMM - an Early ASP Architecture

• MMM Middleware for Method Management
• An electronic marketplace for scientific (in
  particular, statistical) software
• Developed 1994-1999 at Humboldt University
• Key features
• ASP approach (From Systems to Services)
• Method usage via Web browser
• Method management and communication via XML
• Pay-per-use
• Easy method check-in for providers

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The MMM Marketplace (1997)
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What is TeamToolz?

• TeamToolz is a web-based collaborative
  application that helps marketing departments
  manage
• people
• projects
• business information
• creative content
• associated with developing and launching
  marketing and advertising campaigns.
• TeamToolz is an Application Service Provider
  (ASP).

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The Problem Ad Campaigns Today
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The TeamToolz Solution

• Manage project workflow from start to finish
• Route and track deliverables
• Create audit trail
• Build best practices
• Manage digital brand assets
• Store and share files in one
• central location (ASP approach)
• Manage people and assign tasks
• Link all stakeholders, regardless
• of location and affiliation
• Provide role-based access to all
• project-related information
• Conduct virtual meetings (via WebEx)

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The Challenges (April 2000)

• Reliability how to get from 95 uptime to 99.99
  uptime on a 365/24/7 basis
• Scalability how to grow from 300 to 3,000,000
  seats
• Performance how to reduce response times from 5
  seconds to 1 second
• Interoperability how to integrate with existing
  system solutions (ERP, CRM, media buy, ...)
• Security how to approach the ASP-intrinsic
  problem of data residing outside the enterprise

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Reliability - the Easy Part

• How we increased uptime from 95 to 99.99 (on a
  365/24/7 basis) at a reasonable cost
• IT management streamlining the deployment
  schedule increased availability from 95 to 98
• OS switch switching from NT to Solaris and Linux
  increased availability from 98 to 99.5
• DB switch switching from SQL server to Oracle 8i
  increased availability from 99.5 to 99.9
• Uninterruptible power supply improving the UPS
  infrastructure took care of the remaining 0.09
• Remaining downtime 1 minute a week for scheduled
  maintenance (bug fixes, system upgrades)

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Scalability

• How to grow from 300 to 3,000,000 seats?
• Application server now uses multithreading
• Cold Fusion Server was ported from NT to Linux,
  where it uses Posix threads
• Each page request executes as a separate (kernel)
  thread (rather than as a separate CF process)
• Near-linear scaleup in the number of processors
  due to Linux Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP)
• Proxy server serves as cache for static content,
  in particular images (note that despite the
  dynamic nature of the pages, static information
  still dominates web traffic)

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Performance

• How we cut response times from 5 seconds to 1
  second
• Cache function of the proxy server helps here
  too screen buildup starts right away, while the
  application server and the database backend are
  still processing
• More generally speaking strict separation of
  presentation, application and database backend
  helps to increase parallelism between the various
  servers
• Stored database procedures allow more efficient
  database caching (query plans and partial
  results)
• Replaced some CF by Java modules in application
  layer
• Use of a digital asset management system - as
  opposed to an RDBMS or a simple file system

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Interoperability

• How to communicate with existing system solutions
  (e.g. ERP, CRM, media buy)?
• TeamToolz took a leading role in defining adXML,
  a collection of DTDs for marketing and
  advertising applications
• Models all relevant data exchange
• lt!ELEMENT Request (Advertiser?, Agency?,
  (InsertionOrder
• CancellationOrder ChangeOrder
  
• AssetDescription JobStart
• TrafficInstruction
  MediaAuthorization))gt
• Interfaces to related approaches such as WF-XML
  or XML/EDI

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Security - the Hard Part

• How to approach the ASP-intrinsic problem of data
  residing outside the enterprise
• Obvious measures
• SSL
• Only proxy server is visible from the outside
• IP filtering
• Double firewall
• One database instance per site
• Not so obvious data encoding schemes
• Sensitive information is encoded before transfer
  to ASP
• ASP stores and manipulates only encoded data
• ASP output has to be decoded before presentation

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Security (cont.)

• Problem No. 1 How to find Ts and Us for a
  given S
• Problem No. 2 How to do all this without the
  user noticing?

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Security (cont.)

• How to find Ts and Us for a given S
• Customization process to determine eligible Ss,
  Ts and Us (note that U is not always T-1)
• S budget management, T scaling, U T-1
• S calendaring, T linear transformations, U T-1
• Problem with timeshifts alerts
• events should only be moved to the past
• alerts need to be delayed

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System Architecture

HTTP
DMZ

Servlets




SQL
SQL
NFS
NFS



Relational Database (Oracle 8i)
Network Attached Storage


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Summary What TeamToolz Does

• TeamToolz streamlines the marketing process
• and complements existing ERP and CRM solutions
• Application for managing
• creative content
• workflow
• digital asset management
• people management
• Application Service Provider
• hosted service
• priced per seat per month

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Summary ASP Essentials

• Reliability 99.99 availability on a 365/24/7
  basis
• structured processes, stable system software,
  safe building, redundant hardware with failover
• Scalability and Performance how to handle
  millions of seats and keep response times below
  one second
• multithreading, proxy servers, load balancers
• Usability and Interoperability
• market research, focus groups, XML
• Security how to make users feel safe about their
  data
• proxy, SSL, firewalls, separate DB instances
• browser plug-ins for encoding and decoding