The application system consists of core applications developed by NETSOL, is use for contract management and wholesales for several years. It still base on Client/Server architecture which is considered a long-obsolete architecture as it has weakness in many areas including prone to attacks, difficult to upgrade and maintain, performance is highly dependent on network capacity. NETSOL has already released a new version which is Web-Based and will not future support for old client/server version.
There are supporting applications that are developed in-house team and bridge the gap where the core application cannot serve.
While having a in-house resource is a big advantage, it also raises a serious concern of sustainability.
(1) What would happen if the key resource leave the team of become unavailable,
(2) Could the development team be scaled up and improved in productivity as to cope with business growth and more requirements?
From the software packages and outsources, we will also face problem of sustainability risk such as withdrawal of support by the vendor, inability to support user requirements, and uncontrollable cost of additional licenses and maintenance costs, stability of the vendor. Conceptually, the right combination of software sourcing selection, development tools, best practice in managing SDLC, and smart resourcing is essential to ensure sustainability
As the system environment becomes increasingly complex and the pace of technological changes become faster, TLT in-house resource who very good at application development and support, lack of expertise and experience in many important areas including more advanced technology platforms, system and network design and maintenance, protection against security breach.
The current system infrastructure is at two locations. The production system is located at head office while the disaster recovery is located at Suntowers, both connected by high-speed network. Branches are linked up to the production system via WAN.
Due to rapidly growth since 2012 and the growth trend will continue in the next few years as well as direction of extend IT service to Toyota dealers to increase business efficiency, IT operation has already been concerned:-
- Upgrade and changes key components of the systems which termination and compulsory major upgrades. Recently, we have already been indicative cases of business disruptions and increase strain and weakness in the system. The future increment of volume based on growth may not exactly accurate. Any solutions and upgrade plan to be proposed and adopt should allow flexibility for adjustment to the real situation.
- The core application system (CAP/CMS) have serious areas which may impact to the business
* Unreasonable delays in new contract creation – the system is taking longer time in creating new contract due to larger transaction volume during month-end
* Batch processing of payment run longer time that usual after long holiday
* The day-end, month-end batch processing onsumes more and more time to finish its job which may be overrun to business operation hours.
* Failure of core application due to abnormal termination of the month-end batch
* System resources are fully utilized, performance degradation in all functions of the applications.
* Less up-to-date security fix found in GSD audit records
* Unable to use alternate backup due to have no complete backup set in document management (Documentum)
* Expansion of business coverage for Laos & Myanmar require major upgrades to current infrastructure.
* Larger network and internet capacity required by iPad application to take photo of customer application.