Helping Helio launch its business

Business Challenge
Helio, Los Angeles, California is a $400 million MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) joint venture between Earthlink and South Korea Telecommunications. Helio contracted Innowave to provide project and program management for the planning, design, development, deployment, and training phases of its Oracle E-Business Suite Financial, Distribution, and Supply Chain Applications implementation. In addition, Innowave developed over 50 interfaces between Helio’s back office systems and its trading partners using XML and Web Services (BPEL). Innowave also helped establish new business operations to assist Helio in its early stages as a startup venture. As a startup, Helio's business model included integration with 3rd Party Logistics company. The business requirements also involved integration with a homegrown CRM Application as well as the Oracle E-Business Suite backend application including the Order Management, Inventory and Financials modules. Helio desired to establish a scalable, extensible platform to support additional trading partners.

Solution
While a conventional approach using PL/SQL or JAVA code or traditional EAI tools to develop integration logic could have be adopted, Helio preferred using a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based integration platform that leverages Oracle Fusion Middleware stack with Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). The integration requirements involved 50 unique integration scenarios to support Helios supply chain logistics that included standard processes such as Procure to Pay, Order to Cash, Reverse Logistics as well as Inventory Transactions. Innowave worked closely with the Helio team to architect and deliver the integration solution from concept to successful completion. The design involved identifying common processes that can be leveraged as reusable components by other high level processes. One of the unique aspects of this solution involves the ability to consume and post XML documents using HTTP. The solution incorporates controls to ensure all posted documents are successfully received. The final solution included over 25 BPEL processes that handled over 50 supply chain logistics integration requirements of Helio. Where conventional approach to integration of this magnitude typically would take approximately 2 person-weeks per interface (total of 100 weeks), from planning to execution, using Fusion Middle ware and BPEL drastically reduced the timeline and all interfaces were developed in 50 person-weeks. The deployment architecture included clustered application servers for load balancing and high availability of BPEL Process Manager.

Results
Helio was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to monitor and troubleshoot the interfaces when something went wrong. The notifications feature that is included in Oracle BPEL Process Manager brings greater agility, better decision-making, as well as reduced cost and risk in dealing with trading partners.