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Customer: Florida Power & Light
Application: Core Information Architecture for all Systems 10,000 users
Reference: Cover Story: Florida Power & Light Powers Information Systems with DOC,
by Bob Shafron; Distributed Object Computing Magazine, October 1997
Business: FPL is facing increasing competition within its traditional marketing
for ways to lower costs while improving customer focus, service quality and
responsiveness. The Information Management business unit at FPL began the search
for an information architecture that would support streamlined processes,
deliver information across the company in real-time, and be flexible enough
to change with the business. FPL had to bridge quite a gap between the
enterprise systems they envisioned and the systems that they had. Legacy
infrastructure components include:
PowerBuilder, Lotus Notes, Smalltalk, Visual Basic, C, C++, COBOL, HTML, Java
on Windows, UNIX, OS/2, MVS, NetWare with Oracle, Sybase, Gemstone, Informix,
Access, SQL Anywhere, FoxPro, DB2, ISAM, VSAM, IMS over TCP/IP, IPX, SNA LU6.2.
Solution: FPL began to implement a services-based architecture by building a
Distributed Object Framework (DOF), a system of classes that define how
system objects interact within FPL's business domain. Enablers were written
to provide object-like interfaces for PowerBuilder, Sybase, DB2 and Lotus Notes.
Mainframe application DOF interfaces were written in COBOL. For object
applications, interfaces written using PROMIA CORBA components, and for
other applications we wrote interfaces in C and C++. It became clear that
CORBA was ahead of schedule in providing services such as object-based
transaction control, object lifecycle management and object naming, so we
concentrated or efforts on CORBA. After the CORBA-based Distributed Object
Framework was completed, a contract accounting system was developed in less
than three months. PROMIA engineers worked closely with Mr. Shafron and his
team to assure success. The FP&L DOC has been in production status since 1997,
with applications continuously rolling out since then.
Statements: FP&L has gotten better support from DNS (now PROMIA) than from any
other software company; The DNS (now PROMIA) ORBs are so fast that they are
able to overrun our mainframes.
--Bob Shafron, Florida Power & Light
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