September 25, 2000

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Editor: Karyl Scott (kscott@cmp.com)

The Software Factory
Application service provider USinternetworking Inc. has applied Henry Ford's notion of the assembly line to the field of system management, automating the configuration of servers and software. This innovative approach to building systems should cut costs and errors out of the process.

USinternetworking provides E-commerce and enterprise application services to 200 companies. Its iMAP portfolio of applications includes apps from Ariba, BroadVision, Lawson Software, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and Siebel Systems. USinternetworking delivers applications to customers for a fixed monthly subscription fee.

The company was feeling increasing pressure to keep costs in line with its business model and reduce the time and manpower needed to configure application services for customers.

"As our business grew, we faced some unanticipated pressures," says Kerry Bailey, USinternetworking's VP of client services.

Before the implementation of this novel type of system automation, it took USinternetworking engineers 120 hours to install and configure PeopleSoft applications for a single customer. Now it takes four hours--with little or no human intervention.

Not only has USinternetworking cut the time needed for configuration, but it's also greatly reduced errors and system downtime. "We no longer have to build these systems from scratch," Bailey says. "We have documented, repeatable processes that let us get customers up and running in a fraction of the time it used to."

This development should help contribute to profitability and, in turn, raise USinternetworking's profile with Wall Street investors. USinternetworking's stock has declined in recent months because of investor concerns about profitability.

USinternetworking's productivity breakthrough comes largely as the result of a new software platform it installed from Kintana Inc. The ASP implemented Kintana's suite of workflow and automation tools to automate the various processes involved in installing software over a network and configuring the system to specific customer requirements. The software also provides best practices that can be repeated and customized.

"The Kintana software lets users simplify the iterative processes that are subject to constant modifications so common in IT departments and with online service providers," says Alex Lobba, Kintana's marketing VP. "We also standardize best practices so they're repeatable and consistent."

Kintana hopes to capitalize on three of the sore spots IT and engineering departments face today: speeding deployments, minimizing complexity, and reducing the manpower needed to configure systems. Kintana predicts that large companies will cut the time required to deploy complex systems by a factor of 20.

Kintana's software helped USinternetworking scale while also improving the quality of service delivered to customers. The suite of products includes Kintana Create, a customizable application that lets users tie business requirements to application changes, and Kintana Deliver, a workflow-driven app that lets engineers automate the complex application-deployment process. Also available is a collection of Accelerators that provide subject-matter expertise and best practices for specific applications such as SAP R/3 and PeopleSoft.

From the time a customer's order comes in, USinternetworking can collect the customer's requirements, store them in the system, and from there generate the technical system requirements and automate the build-out process--all with very little human intervention. The build-out process includes configuring the server and installing the operating system and applications.

"Our engineers are freed from the more mundane software installation tasks and can focus on the more creative aspects of the job--such as customizing the system for particular customer needs," Bailey says.

USinternetworking has also cut testing requirements both in terms of staffing and the number of quality-assurance tests required. The testing phase has been cut from five steps to one. "We used to have testers testing other testers' tests," Bailey says. "We were in an endless chain of hiring more personnel to conduct tests." That's now a thing of the past, and those personnel dollars can be applied elsewhere in the company.

The implementation has been great for morale, too. "Now our operations team has confidence in what's being built," Bailey says. "We can be more forward-looking and not as reactive as we used to be."

Photo courtesy of Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

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