SpringOne 2021
Session Title: Optimizing TAS Usage at Ford Motor Company
Speakers: Mathivanan Vairaperumal, Consulting Architect at Ford Motor Company; Todd Hall, Application Architect at Ford Motor Company
2. Welcome and Introduction
Todd Hall
Customer Success & Consulting Manager
Platform Enablement – Enterprise Connectivity
Mathi Vairaperumal
Consulting Architect
Dev Enablement - Enterprise Architecture
3. In this session, you'll learn how an experiment led to the launch
of a new product, the Cloud App Optimizer
This product allows teams at Ford to schedule downtime of
applications that do not need to be running 24x7 (DEV, QA,
Batch). The benefit to our teams is that they can easily reduce
the consumption and thus the billing associated with their use of
our Tanzu Application Service environments and associated
infrastructure
We will also cover how our Enablement organizations have
invested in creating tools, libraries, application accelerators, self-
service cloud provisioning tools etc., and how they've been key
in allowing other experiments and products to go from concept
to production at a pace we have never witnessed before!
Optimizing TAS Usage - Overview
4. Ford Journey with Pivotal/VMware: PCF/TAS History
The Cloud App Optimizer Product
Application Accelerators – Enablement & Automation in Action @ Ford
More Application Accelerator Success Stories
Road Map – What’s next @ Ford
Agenda
6. Founded in 1903 by Henry Ford
Headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan
Produced 4.187 million vehicles (2020)
under the Ford and Lincoln brands
186,000 Employees Globally
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Motor_Company
Ford Motor Company
7. Ford has been using PCF/TAS since 2016
• We have run PCF (TAS for VMs as its now known) on-premise and in public
cloud
• Currently, running 18 foundations across North America, China and India
• We have over 35K application instances running across these foundations
• PCF is primary/first option for hosting cloud native applications
History & Scale
8. Freedom to use technology, but guardrails are in place!
• We have Java (Spring & Liberty), JavaScript (Angular, React, NodeJS etc.),
Python, Static HTML etc.
• “Standard” Technology Stack consists of Java/Spring Boot for API/Microservices
layer and Angular for presentation layer (over 80% of apps)
• We have Enablement Organizations and our Infrastructure organization working
together in establishing the guardrails. Our enablement orgs also provide
DevSecOps automation, consulting, guides, code, and support to our product
teams
Technology Stacks
10. • A web-based tool that allows you to create
and maintain a schedule for starting and
stopping your application instances
• Cloud application hosting is billed on a
consumption basis.
• Teams that are co-located in a geographic
region can stop their applications during
nights and weekends
• Dev, QA, Experiments, POC Environments
not needed 24x7
Cloud App Optimizer – What & Why
11. • Since April 2021 launch, we
have seen steady growth –
1200 apps now using our tool
• A typical team can save
almost 50% of their
consumption costs
Metrics
• Internal Budget Dollars (Blue $) are saved for on-premise, but real dollars
(Green $) will be saved as we run more in public cloud
• Some of our more complex programs that have 10+ microservices and
maintain several non-production environments (DEV, QA, EDU,PRE-PROD)
have huge savings potential
12. • Ford reserves “Power Up” time for all IT Employees to focus on learning and
innovation
• Cloud App Optimizer Team began using this time
to take an idea, test the theory by creating
a P.O.C.
• Ford Application Accelerators, Automation, and the power of API were key
enablers in creating the Cloud Optimizer…more on that in a moment.
Innovation & APIs
13. • PCF/TAS (PaaS) is just one of the
Infrastructure in use @ Ford
• Containers & VMs are also widely used
@ Ford
• Optimizer Apps are being created now to
assist VM & Container customers to save
Blue & Green $
More Optimizers
15. • Developer portal for getting started with a
new project.
• Templates for various languages &
frameworks
• Workflow for onboarding to our API
Catalog
• Many templates include Pipelines for
CI/CD
• The Spring Boot/Java template will create
new project, add it to GitHub, build and
deploy it from Jenkins, deploy it to TAS.
New app running in less than 4 minutes!
/dev/central/station
16. • One-Stop Shop for requesting
Infrastructure in PCF / Containers /
DB / Storage / VMs / Public Cloud
Services etc.
• Vanity URLs for applications hosted
in PCF
• Getting subscriptions for Azure,
Projects in GCP
• Tekton Pipeline namespaces
• Getting SQL Server, PostgreSQL
DBs
• 120 day free-trial Infrastructure for
Innovation etc.
Ford Cloud Portal
18. • Purchasing Business Leadership wanted to
launch a Survey portal to assess the risk
associated with Supplier's readiness to restart
Ford Manufacturing Plants in the 2nd week of
May 2020
• Survey needs to gather data from Global Supplier
base of 3900+ for Ford Supplier Technical
Assistance(STA) Team to analyze the risk
associated with the individual suppliers in
restarting the Manufacturing plants
• Request came to EA leadership on April 5th 2020
and EA Dev Enablement Team and IT Purchasing
collaborated & launched the Survey into
Production on April 15th 2020
• Based on the risk assessment, Ford was able to
resume production in a staggered manner
starting 2nd week of May 2020!
COVID19 Global Supplier Survey
19. Error & Reprocessing Framework (ERF)
Source
Systems
Integration
Types
Integration Middleware Target System
REST/OData/SOAP API
Response
(Sync/Async)
Microservice 1
Integration Service Layer
S3 Upload/Download API request
Response
Response
Response
Integration Service API
POST/PUT Request
Re-Processing API Request
Response
JMS Listener
REST API Request Ford S3 Object Storage
Error & Reprocessing Framework
File
DB
Integration Service Layer Initiates Request
Error & Reprocessing Framework Initiates Request
FTP GET
Direct DB Call
ERF DB
Read / Write
Business Users
Microservice n
S3 Download API request
z/OS
Connect
EE
20. With service orchestration and business
transformation being performed in PCF/Java/ Spring
Boot layer , additional foundational capabilities were
identified for each of the interfaces:
• Tracking Transaction Record success/failure status
• Ability to re-trigger failed transactions
• Persist incoming payload for re-triggering
failed transactions
• Capability for Reporting and auditing transactions
Error & Reprocessing Framework (ERF)
21. • Dev Central Station (dcs)
• DevOps Command Center (dcc)
• Software Developer Ecosystem (SDE)
• API Hub
• Monitoring (Push Button Consumption)
• Hybrid Workplace Scheduler
Multiple Other Products