Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[khemara_qc]

Qualcomm Dials in SOAs(service-oriented architecture)
By Scot Petersen
November 22, 2004

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1728179,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594


In many fast-growing companies, with multiple technology platforms and myriad workers and customers needing access to data and applications, IT problems can mount quickly. Solving them takes innovation, perseverance and a plan for the future. In a word—integration.

That's what Steve Polaski, senior enterprise IT architect for Qualcomm Corp., faced three years ago when he started at the San Diego-based wireless communications company.

"It was a typical EAI [enterprise application integration] problem," said Polaski. "We had all different technologies, different business groups, units in Qualcomm, wanting to use different products to solve their particular problem."

Happily for Polaski and Qualcomm, the effort has paid dividends not only in terms of integration but also in creating the beginnings of an SOA (service-oriented architecture) framework.

"We got together a cross-functional organization team and made some decisions that we would use one technology that IT would support, one for messaging and integration ... in the long run keeping in mind this integration platform would allow us to create services to be consumed internally," Polaski said.

After looking at technology from IBM, BEA Systems Inc., SeeBeyond Technology Corp. and Sonic Software Corp., Qualcomm turned to TIBCO Software Inc.'s BusinessWorks stack to solve the integration problem, he said.

More than finding just an integration solution, however, Polaski was able to leverage the TIBCO software to build reusable code modules—the beginnings of the SOA.

For example, Qualcomm's mobile sales force downloads contact information from internal CRM (customer relationship management) systems. The problem is that different sales units have separate CRM systems, Polaski said. "We've built a service to get contact info for salespeople. That generic service is smart enough to know what CRM system to pull the information from and reply back to the mobile devices," he said.

While Qualcomm hasn't begun to quantify a return on investment for the TIBCO integration solution, Polaski said the benefits have been immediately tangible, such as saving time with faster deployments and reuse of the interfaces and service components.

"We now have parts of our business that operate much faster," Polaski said.