Two Worlds into One: AB Suite and the Cloud

By Thangathen Ponnusamy, Global Product Manager – Agile Business Suite and Enterprise Application Environment, Unisys

Enterprises like yours are embarking on digital transformation journeys in order to address emerging business challenges, reach new markets, and deliver
exceptional value to internal and external stakeholders alike.

Inevitably, many clients tell us they’re leveraging the cloud as a key, strategic element in their push toward digital transformation. That’s because cloud infrastructures:

• Provide pay-as-you-go or consumption-based pricing models. This means there’s no need to purchase and manage an infrastructure that you may not use to its fullest. Rather, you
  simply pay for additional resources only when they’re needed.
• Make resources both scalable and elastic. This way, you’re free to increase or decrease resources as demand for a particular service fluctuates.
• Enable you to run the latest and greatest tools. The cloud eliminates the burden of managing software patches, setting up new hardware, implementing upgrades, and many other mundane IT management tasks. It all happens automatically, so you’re always running your business with the most up-to-date tools.
  

Although the cloud has become commonplace today, one fact about it remains: There is no one-size-fits-all cloud strategy. Every organization needs to adopt a version of the cloud that’s relevant to their business and IT needs. Fortunately, as an Agile Business Suite (AB Suite®) client, you have a number of ways to bring the development environment into the cloud.

Below, we’ll detail a few tactics to consider as you embark on your cloud journey.

AB Suite Developer in the Cloud

AB Suite Developer can be hosted in Microsoft® Azure®. As an Azure VM, AB Suite Developer gives you the flexibility of virtualization without the requirement to buy and maintain any physical hardware.

During testing and development, you can take advantage of a pre-configured image – a template that guides the creation of the VM – giving you a quick and easy way to create different operating system and application configurations. Your test and development personnel can then easily delete these VMs when they’re no longer needed.

Source Control and DevOps in the Cloud

AB Suite release 7.0 includes support for Azure DevOps Services, a cloud-based service that offers source control, build, and deploy capabilities. Meanwhile, Azure Repos – free, private Git repositories – supports Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC), which can also be used for AB Suite model code source control.

When using Azure DevOps Services, you can deploy AB Suite Developer on either a local or Azure VM. Your developers can use Azure Pipelines – a cloud service that automatically builds, test, and makes code available to others – to build and deploy their AB Suite applications.

Building or deploying an AB Suite application with Azure Pipelines requires at least one agent. Each pipeline agent hosts a build agent, and each requires a full install of AB Suite Developer and Microsoft SQL Server® software. The build agent can be installed on a local machine or an Azure VM.

The steps for using Azure DevOps Services are similar to Team Foundation Server, save for the way you create a Team Project and build definitions. For detailed steps on setting up Azure DevOps Services with AB Suite, please refer to the How to Set up Azure DevOps Services with AB Suite document.

And to see details about supported versions of Microsoft Visual Studio® and SQL Server with Azure DevOps Services, please check the AB Suite 7.0 Software Qualification and Support Matrix.

Integration Through Web Services

When it comes to connecting cloud-based and AB Suite applications, the key technique is to encapsulate the AB Suite application’s data and functions, then make them available as Web Services. Once this is done, you can integrate them with cloud-based applications.

With the AB Suite WebAppSupport Web Service Import Wizard, you can easily create an AB Suite class that encapsulates the Web Service functionality. AB Suite Business Integrator software offers another means of combining and exchanging data. With a set of powerful tools that enable your applications to interface and interact with external cloud systems and services, you’re able to quickly and seamlessly integrate your AB Suite applications with Web Services and a variety of cloud-based applications.

We encourage you to explore the above use cases as you progress your cloud and digital transformation journey. And should you need any help along the way, please feel to reach out to us ABSuite@Unisys.com or email me directly at Thangathen.Ponnusamy@Unisys.com.