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Bluedog to the rescue

INTEGRATOR AND SOFTWARE DEVELOPER BLUEDOG HELPS THE FTC STREAMLINE ITS IT SYSTEMS
he federal trade commissions long list of responsibilities includes handling consumer fraud complaints, the National Do Not Call Registry for marketers and identity theft cases. Until recently, the commissions IT systems handled these different types of complaints separately without communicating with one another. But that all changed when Bluedog, a systems integrator and software developer based in Dublin, Ireland, helped bring to fruition an SOA (serviceoriented architecture) that modernized the FTCs CIS (consumer information system). The $1.2 million upgrade involved bringing open standards and a Web-based architecture to the core system.

By Lynn Haber
With a reputation as a problem solver, Bluedog got involved in the project after it was already under way. We were called in to jump-start the SOA project that had been in the hands of another systems integrator but was going poorly, said Tom Termini, managing director at Bluedogs U.S. subsidiary, in Silver Spring, Md. We got the remainder of the budget and 90 percent of the work. The project, however, was no walk in the park, Termini conceded. The budget was adequate, but there were serious time constraints and many disparate pieces of technology to link together. Bluedog dedicated most of its U.S.-based staff to make it all work, Termini said. The engagement began [CONTINUED ON PAGE 14]
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and seven regional offices. another government project. At the time, A core enterprise application within we were working on an enterprise portal in August 2005 and concluded in June 2006 with the deployment of a dozen Web the FTC, the CIS drives the business project for the Department of Justice, services and six management portlets, processes for the group that handles con- Termini said. Back then, I had a brief sumer fraud complaints, the National Do meeting with the CIO at the FTC, who according to Termini. Before the SOA upgrade, the CIS was Not Call Registry and the identity theft was concerned about how long their SOA an Oracle client/server application that complaint process. Whether a consumer project was taking. It was after this meeting that what had been in place for at least 10 years. An is registering a business or a fraud comSOA employs functions, or services, that plaint, or law enforcement officers are Termini calls a low-key strategy came in interact with one another when called on querying the system, all inquiries go back handy. Bluedog, he said, gets the word out to execute certain processes. Each service to the CIS. However, the various systems quietly to CIOs that the company specializes in problem solving, an approach that has an interface, and each interaction is werent tied together. The thinking behind crafting a new, Termini said has proved effective. independent. It certainly worked with the FTC. By the The client/server application the FTC SOA-based enterprise model was to was using no longer could handle the accommodate more commissions growing workload as the users and facilitate number of users accessing it grew rapidly. c o n s u m e r a c c e s s By migrating to an SOA environment, to the FTCs comThe problem A decade-old client/server application no the FTC gained scalability to deploy more plaint processes via longer could handle the rapidly growing number of users users at its call centers or on the Web, the Web. Players at accessing the FTCs CIS as well as easier data management, the the FTC also knew it The solution The FTC decided to upgrade the system with ability to make system access available was time to update an SOA to other agencies and future cost savings via the use of The result The FTC gained scalability to deploy to reusable standards-based more users, easier data management and the ability to components. enable other agencies to access the system We looked at moving Budget $1.2 million from a client/server-based Duration 10 months, August 2005 to June 2006 architecture to SOA and worked with a couple of integrators to figure out what would work best for us, said summer of 2005, Bluedog FTC CIO Stephen Warren in was engaged with the CIS Washington. The first conupgrade. tractor helped us figure out What Bluedog brought The FTCs systems that handle where we should go and how identity theft, consumer fraud to the table was experito restructure our architec- complaints and the National ence providing Web-based ture going forward. Bluedog Do Not Call Registry did not solutions quickly and put the pieces together and communicate. That changed cost-effectively. In busishowed us that SOA technol- once Bluedog updated the ness since 1998, Bluedog agencys technology. ogy worked. has 12 full-time developers in the United States and 20 employees at its Getting with the times the ftc was created in 1914 to prevent the commissions technology, according headquarters in Dublin. The company builds J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise unfair methods of competition in com- to Termini. The client/server architecture wasnt Edition) Web services, portlets and Web merce. The government agency has a long tradition of maintaining a competitive supporting the number of users that applications for government agencies, marketplace for both consumers and busi- needed to access the FTC services, Ter- nongovernmental organizations and comnesses. Over the years, Congress passed mini said. The FTC has 200 call center mercial businesses. Bluedog quickly outlined its approach additional laws giving the agency greater users and 300 internal FTC users to handle authority to police anti-competitive prac- consumer fraud complaints, the National to the FTC project: to promote a design Do Not Call Registry and identity theft based on a coherent platform from which tices. The FTCs work is performed by the cases. The agency receives 3,000 to 5,000 to build composite applications. Within 30 days, or by the beginning bureaus of Consumer Protection, Com- complaints daily on the Web. Bluedog got its foot in the door at the of November 2005, Bluedog put together petition and Economics. That work is aided by the Office of General Counsel FTC about two years ago while working on a proof of concept by building a labo-

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ratory production envia bunch of infrastruc- a small integrator who focuses only on ronment to demonstrate ture products that had the number of projects we can handle, to the FTC how it would already been purchased he said. For the FTC project, Bluedog achieve its objective. In for the project. The main committed about 80 percent of its U.S. addition to emulating the products included Sonic staff. In addition, Termini said, the comSun Microsystems Solaris Softwares Actional XML pany is highly specialized and tight-knit, equipment that was in use Security Gateway and ESB with staff having worked together since at the FTC, the integrator (Enterprise Service Bus), 1998. By June 2006, Bluedog had completed introduced Linux applicaM2M Holdings Onyx Softtion services. ware, Ilogs JRules, Apple its mission, introducing an SOA plugWe learned a lot of Computers WebObjects and-play architecture combined with Unix things about SOA technoland Plumtrees Corporate and J2EE. Ease of component integration enabled the FTC to swap services and ogy and what it brings to Warren: The FTC is considering Portal 5.0. bear, said Warren. At first, Bluedog wasnt connect and use them easily. In addition, software as a service. Getting a green light to sure it was given the right the SOA was scalable and redundant and continue its work meant that Bluedog had set of tools to do its job. We didnt want made use of open standards. In the time since Bluedog completed to win over other IT contractors used by the to have to shoehorn these products to FTCin particular, database administrators make the project work, said Termini. its project, Warren said the FTC has who needed reassurance that moving to But having had previous experience taken what it learned from its first SOA services-based architecture wasnt going to working with Sonic, Actional and Ilog, project to make decisions on future IT cost them their jobs. the integrator knew the solutions were needs. One of those decisions is based on There was a lot of friendly conflict, enterprise-class and fit the bill for the the good results of the CIS project. We asked ourselves where to go with SOA but, at the end of the day, there werent FTC job. any problems, said Termini, adding that Another challenge was winning over technically, Warren said. The answer the DBAs were allowed to focus on what internal users with the proof-of-concept the FTC came up with, he added, is to buy SOA as a service rather than build they did best, and Bluedogs work was to demo. focus on processes. And, while Termini said the budget it in-house. The FTC also reacted positively to an proved adequate, the projects time frame SOA demonstration using the National was tight. But thats our advantage as Lynn Haber is a freelance writer in Norwell, Do Not Call Registry. The demo showed Mass. She can be reached at how telemarketerswho, up to that point, lthaber@comcast.net. had to download the registry nightly to stay up-to-date on Headquarters Silver Spring, Md., entriescould simply log on and Dublin, Ireland using the proposed new sysNumber of employees 12 full-time tem, submit a telephone in the United States, 20 in Dublin number query and get an Years in business 8 answer in real time. Yearly revenue $12.2 million in The team then dove 2005; estimated $18 million in 2006 in with a pilot projWeb site bluedog.net ect. According to Bluedog, the team consisted of 11 people: eight of its employees and three FTC representatives.

Bluedog

Making headway
although bluedog rallied to meet the two milestones of the projectthe infrastructure build-out, completed in February 2006, and the development of a dozen Web services, which were rolled out in 30-day incrementsthe company faced a number of challenges along the way. For starters, the FTC handed Bluedog notes, high-level requirements and
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