1. © 2014 IBM Corporation
2785: Blue Shield of CA Revolutionizes Its Portal
Environment on IBM PureApplication System
Fernando Acosta - BlueShield of California
Doug McCulloh – Perficient
Marc Haberkorn – IBM
Lauren Wendel – IBM
Speakers:

2. Please Note
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or withdrawal without notice at IBM’s sole discretion.
Information regarding potential future products is intended to outline our general
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The information mentioned regarding potential future products is not a
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functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion.
Performance is based on measurements and projections using standard IBM
benchmarks in a controlled environment. The actual throughput or performance
that any user will experience will vary depending upon many factors, including
considerations such as the amount of multiprogramming in the user’s job stream,
the I/O configuration, the storage configuration, and the workload processed.
Therefore, no assurance can be given that an individual user will achieve results
similar to those stated here.

4. Blue Shield of California, an independent member of the Blue Shield
Association, is a not-for-profit health plan dedicated to providing
Californians with access to high-quality health care at an
affordable price. With over 3 million members and 5,000
employees, they are one of the largest healthcare providers in CA.
Starting in 2014, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will fundamentally change the
healthcare insurance market. Motivated by the ACA requirements and participation in
"Covered California" Healthcare Insurance Exchange, Blue Shield of California
needed to create an exceptional web experience for their Members, Providers,
Producers and Employees. With Open Enrollment beginning in the Fall, their new
Member Portal needs to be ready by October 1st. Blue Shield anticipates much
higher activity on their website as a result of the Exchange given that California will
be one of, if not the, country's largest state-run Exchanges; and Blue Shield is a key
heath plan participant.
Blue Shield of California

5. Challenges
Blue Shield of California team’s Needs and/or Challenges:
•Had non-converged, standalone, legacy mid-range infrastructure
•Applications pattern & topologies were inconsistent in some cases non-existent.
•Manual provisioning of a new application environment – building a legacy environment –
took up to 4 months
• It is labor intensive, time consuming, and costly.
•Capacity/performance scaling requests took weeks
•Difficult to build an environment; too many pieces to put in place
•To stand up a new environment required staff from a number of different organizations in
IT, as patterns weren’t centralized
• It is labor intensive, time consuming, and costly.
•Procurement of separate WAS and DB2 software licensing added time to deploy, as well as
additional expense
•License tracking of IBM software presented challenges

6. Why Blue Shield of California Decided on PureApp
• End to end patterns that include infrastructure and software, including some shared services
• Consistent patterns, builds and time to build.
• Consistent method of customizations to an environment
Customizable patterns are an available option
• Able to spin up different environments for different purposes
• Well suited for agile development
• Shared services save on time to deploy/implement
• When we build a pattern now, it has the shared service automatically built into the pattern,
allowing us to have a consistent implementation of the services (monitoring, application
caching, OS patching)
• Following best practices application topology
• Virtual dynamic scaling capability is much easier
• Single pane of glass for entire platform
• Centralized logging features
• Cost savings due to shorter deployment times
• Fewer resources or handoffs to build
• Easier to do licensing, as are keeping track internally in the tool (unlimited application and database
(DB2) licensing)
6

7. Why Blue Shield of California Decided on PureApp
Time Savings thru avoided design, procurement, installation,
configuration activities
Simplicity beginning w/ ordering process, culminating in system
arriving ready to plug in
Portal Pattern delivering expertise reduced development timeline
Single support number delivers simplicity in obtaining help
Strategic solution enabling instantaneous adoption of cloud
principles for competitive advantage
7
A new vocabulary: Hours instead of weeks.

8. •A national IT & Business consulting
firm, with expert teams focused on
helping our clients implement
compelling, useful customer
experiences.
•
•Fast Facts:
•Founded 1997
•$400 MM+ in annualized revenues
•24 locations in North America
•Offshore in Europe, China and India
•2400 + employees
•80% of revenue from recurring
clients
•Served 450+ clients in past 12
months
8

9. Award Winning – Trusted IBM Premier Partner
IBM Premier BP for 17 years
•Industry Focused & Authorized:
• Healthcare, Financial Services & Retail
•IBM Capability Authorized
• Smarter Commerce, Business Analytics, ECM,
Healthcare IM Data Governance
Award Winning Solutions:
•2014 Innovation Pure and Simple Collaboration Solution
•2014 Exceptional Digital Experience Portal Partner of the year
•2013 System Integration Partner of the Year
•2012 Information Management Integration Excellence Award
•2012 Healthcare Integration Excellence Award
•2011 Business Analytics Achievement Award
•2011, 2008, 2006 WebSphere Portal Distinguished Partner
(sole North American recipient and first-ever three-time winner)

10. Blue Shield’s Solution
Consumerism of HealthCare
Trends and Market Reality
Needs for Creating a Unique Member Experience
Business Drivers
Perficient’s Connected Health Expertise
Ranked by HealthCare
Connected Health, Integrated Health & Health Analytics
Perficient’s Portal Expertise
850 Portal Deployments

11. BlueShield of California Solution
Member Portal Rebuild leveraging the WebSphere Portal Pattern
Modifications of the Pattern for BlueShield CA
WODM Pattern for Claims Processing – Best Practices
Creation - deployment of the Rules for Claims
Message Broker Patterns
DataPower Patterns (Virtual Systems)
Development of Custom Pattern for KONY Mobile Solutions
Pattern Version Deployment
Lifecycle Management
Script Packages for Patterns Customization
HADR (Highly Available Data Replication)
DB2 Hardening Scripting to BSC Standards

12. What should your cloud do
for you?

13. © 2013 IBM Corporation13
Why Do You Want to use Cloud?
1. Respond faster to customer requests: Be more agile!
2. Eliminate errors associated w/ manual work: Standardize!
3. Save time to do more of your TODO list: Be productive!
4. Save money: Save money!
5. Remove process/people bottlenecks: Automate everything!
1
2
3
4
5

14. © 2013 IBM Corporation14
What Should Your Cloud Do For You?
User logs in
• Who is this user?
• Only show resources user has
permission to see/use
User requests deployment
• Do we have enough SW licenses?
• Where should we put these VMs?
• Let’s create the VMs
1. Create storage LUNs
2. Use correct VLAN
3. Provision IP addresses
4. Create golden OS base
5. Install & configure middleware
6. Install & configure app
7. Manage elasticity
Your cloud should let you forget about everything except your application.
Administrator needs information
• How much resource is my App ABC dev
team using?
• How much money should I charge them?
• How much capacity will I need next month?
Administrator needs an HA/DR strategy
• Enable check-box enablement of storage
replication for active/passive DR
• Extend system management model across
multiple datacenters for active/active HA
• Allow on-prem management model to reach
seamlessly into public cloud

15. © 2013 IBM Corporation15
What Do Most “Clouds” Do?
User logs in
• Who is this user?
• Only show resources user has
permission to see/use
User requests deployment
• Do we have enough SW licenses?
• Where should we put these VMs?
• Let’s create the VMs
1. Create storage LUNs
2. Use correct VLAN
3. Provision IP addresses
4. Create golden OS base
5. Install & configure middleware
6. Install & configure app
7. Manage elasticity
They deliver “OS as a Service,” and rely on old-fashioned elbow grease for the rest
Administrator needs information
• How much resource is my App ABC dev
team using?
• How much money should I charge them?
• How much capacity will I need next month?
Administrator needs an HA/DR strategy
• Enable check-box enablement of storage
replication for active/passive DR
• Extend system management model across
multiple datacenters for active/active HA
• Allow on-prem management model to reach
seamlessly into public cloud

16. The Portal Pattern

17. 17
The Experience that we Deliver

18. 18
The Customer’s First Experience

19. Put another way
19

20. How Does the Portal Pattern Deliver All This Value?
Pre-Installed OS
Elastic
Best Practice
topologies
Pre-Installed/configured
middleware

21. Virtual System Image - Parts

22. Virtual System Pattern – Predefined patterns
Deploys in minutes

23. Virtual System Instance – virtual machines
vms may be treated
as BAU deployment
BUT, we recommend
“patternizing” any
changes

24. Portal Pattern Does ...
Drag-and-drop simplicity
for multiple deployment
types
Never install/manually
cluster Portal again
Customizable via script
packages
Portal Pattern Does
NOT
Security configuration
Application, Content,
page deployment
Application Data
HADR on DBs

25. The Results

26. In Summary
Hours vs. Weeks the New Normal
Dependable Pattern Deployment
Ensures Best Practices
Minimize Hand Offs
Partnering with Perficient & IBM A Success Story

27. Questions?

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29. Thank You

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Performance is based on measurements and projections using standard IBM benchmarks in a controlled environment. The actual throughput or performance that any user will
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configuration, and the workload processed. Therefore, no assurance can be given that an individual user will achieve results similar to those stated here.
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