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Dynamic Business Modeling

The MetraNet® differentiates from other enterprise applications on how allowing a business processes to be defined and redefined outside of pre-compiled code (black box) or via development within an IDE centric framework.

	“Black Box” Pre-Defined Business Modeling	Development Platform Approach	MetraNet® Dynamic Business Modeling
Business Model	Pre-defined, supplemented by adding Products within Suite.	Implicit to base classes	Business Extensions Explicitly defined in Metadata Extendible in Metadata
Business Process	Pre-defined, supplemented by upgrades, customization or pre/post processors	Created in Project by applying base classes to target business process. Once completed relatively “black box”.	Business Process Adaptors, Pipelines, Activities Explicitly defined in Metadata Extendible in Metadata
Business Entities	Pre-defined, but extendible	Project defined Class based on base classes.	Product Views Account Views Subscriptions Explicitly defined in Metadata Extendible in Metadata Re-configurable
Business Services	Pre-defined, but configurable via parameterization or rules	Exposure of classes.	Services Explicitly defined in Metadata Extendible in Metadata Re-configurable.
Business Reference Data	Pre-defined	Project defined directly in SQL or XML.	Parameter Tables Explicitly defined in Metadata Extendible in Metadata Re-configurable.
Underlying Data Model	Hardwired but sometimes extendible	Built off of Object Relational Mappings. Flexible at project initiation but immutible once project classes are defined.	Hierarchy Attributes Explicitly defined in Metadata Extendible in Metadata Re-configurable.
Processing Architecture	Compiled executables with embedded business logic.	Interpreted code with embedded business logic.	Pipeline Server Web Server Business Process Server Data Flow Server Component based with processing logic defined in Metadata and processing performed by high throughput distributed (n, n+1) application servers.
Integration	Published immutable API	Exposed Classes	MetraConnect SDK for C++, Java, RDBMS Web services XML over HTTP API’s are defined according to the services defined in the configurable business model. API’s are often designed to adapt to external systems and data models.

Modules

At a high level, MetraTech has five points of interaction with the enterprise, enterprise customers and enterprise partners.

	Scope	Major Roles	Analogy in Black Box Solutions
MetraConfig™	Tools to manage the definition of Meta-data that it turns drives the configuration: 1. Business Models 2. Business Processes 3. Business Services 4. Business Service Execution 5. Business Dynamic Data 6. Business Parameterization.	Business Analyst and/or IT Demand Management	There is NO corresponding functional component in 1990 architected enterprise systems. Models, Processes, Services, Execution, Data and Parameterization are pre-defined and intrinsic to the core software.
MetraOffer™	Tools to manage the configuration of Business Parameters defined in MetraConfig.	Marketing Managers for Commercial Parameterization Financial Managers for Reporting Parameterization Customer Care for User Interaction Configuration Etc.	This is typically the “Configurator”, “Product Catalog” where the reference tables are, unlike MetraNet®, fixed.
MetraControl™	Tools to manage, audit and report the scheduling of automated business processes.	Billing Operations Financial Operations Customer Care Operations	Typically referred as “Dashboard” or “Operations Centers”. These tools typically lack conditional processing or “soft” closes.
MetraCare™ and MetraView™	Tools to provide automated interfaces to business processes managed outside of MetraNet®.	External Business to Business Interfaces (Subscription and Goods Requests, Customer Acquisition, Reconciliation Data, etc.) Network to Business Interfaces (UDR’s, Authorizations, etc.) Supplier to Business Interfaces (Vouchers, Inventory Movements, etc.)	Typically referred to as API. Each API corresponds to fixed elements in the data model and/or fixed service definitions.

All automation of business models, business processes and business services are managed in MetraCore™. At a high level all management is built on a component based architecture.

Scope

Major Roles

Analogy in Black Box Solutions

MetraCore™

MetraCore™ is built on a Component Based Architecture with three major application servers:

Pipeline (serves all business services)
Process (serves all business processors)
Data (persistence Oracle or MS-SQL)

Application and Database support.

Typically BSS products do not separate the servers from the business logic so there is no direct analogy. In fact, in many cases the business logic, business services servers, business process servers and data layer are tightly coupled as black box “modules”.

Operability

MetraTech has designed MetraNet® to meet or exceed the standard reliability and operability KPI for BSS application. We have sold solutions over the past 7 years to over 32 customers worldwide applying state of the art code control, testing, release management, support and issue resolution procedures and processes.

Technologically MetraNet® differentiates in the following ways:

Attribute	Mechanism
Scalability	All MetraCore™ Application servers are distributable allowing linear scalability and redundancy.
Operationally Tolerant	All services and processes are re-processing capable as MetraNet® persists all external and internal events. Invoices, acquisitions etc. can all be re-run from MetraControl™
Operational Cost	MetraNet® supports a conditional process scheduling as well as hands-off / always-on processes. All services and processes have full and transparent audit trails
Operational Ease	MetraNet® believes that even the most automated applications require non-programmatic validation so we support both “soft” and “hard” closes.
Systems Administration	MetraNet® is built on .net components and benefits from the extensive tools for system administration provided in Microsoft servers.
Database Administration	MetraNet® uses Oracle and MS-SQL for their strengths: reliable persistence, relational integrity, speed and throughput and data repository. Data and process are kept at arms length to avoid the issues with database resident business logic typically seen in older generation products. Large event stores may be partitioned to further parallelize persistence throughput as well as facilitate archiving.
Application Administration	MetraControl™ provides all process scheduling, monitoring and auditing. Audit trails are configurable. This is provided via a web based secure GUI The separation of processing from business logic facilitates upgrades that minimizes any re-factoring of localized developments.
Application Enhancement	MetraNet® is component based and fully open to adaption or change to system users. All localizations are encapsulated in XML and separately “shelved”. Metranet® makes full use of XML and name-spaces to organize deployment.

MetraNet® within Modern Service Oriented Architectures

MetraNet® plays the role of an application with a SOA: it exposes application services to the enterprise service bus (and its network analogy the Service Delivery Platform). These in turn orchestrate and create composite services to expose to other actors in the overall business process.

As an application MetraNet® is responsible for data persistence, transactionality, internal service logic, inter-service dependencies (where services cannot be loosely coupled and orchestration centric work flows provides an inadequately rich processing model) and above all non-service or event based processing (i.e. periodic processes such as invoicing, G/L reconciliation, bulk ordering, etc.).

The key differentiator between MetraNet® and black box billers within an SOA are:

MetraNet® allows users to define new processes and new services that are exposed to the ESB and SDP with same level of performance, persistence and reliability as out of the box services.
MetraNet® services are natively defined as XML over HTTP and are may be exposed as web services. There is no need for a 3rd party wrapper to recast programmatic API’s into services.

Performance

The MetraNet® system has been benchmarked processing up to 16,880 events per second (60 million CDRs per hour) in a typical GSM residential scenario with Hewlett Packard at their European Performance Center in Boeblingen, Germany.

MetraNet® can be implemented within a commodity-hardware environment using Intel-based machines and deployed within an Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server database environment.

Integration Options

MetraNet® is designed to be integrated within the BSS environment using XML. Our APIs are fully published. New APIs are designed and published automatically when new services are created by operators or integrators within the application. MetraConnect provides integration tools based on Java, C++, database library and C#.