Peer-to-Peer

From Linux to .NET

Net4India migrated its e-commerce portal from Linux to Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and the database from MySQL to SQL Server 2005, for higher scalability and reliability, says Nivedan Prakash

Net4India is a pan-Indian IP communications service provider that offers Internet-based services such as domain registration, Web hosting, data center operations, business e-mail solutions, Internet telephony and Internet access services. In August 2007, the company migrated its data and application to Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and SQL Server 2005.

Net4India had built its portal on open standards i.e. Linux as the operating system and MySQL as the database. One of the application modules tracks the VoIP usage of each customer. The application queries a customer’s records and displays it to the customer.

There were three key issues with this solution. First, each record had over eight fields for each call of a duration of one minute. Each month the company clocked close to 10 million minutes and had to keep records for six months.

Secondly, from a development and maintenance perspective, the updates on Perl and CGI were infrequent. This meant that the team internally had to develop any updates that it felt were necessary for the application.

The third and final issue was the high cost of manpower. Since there is scarcity of skilled manpower on Linux and open source technologies, the associated costs were higher.

The company, however, found that Linux and MySQL based billing solution could not cope with its growth and it required a scalable and reliable solution to manage its operations.

The solution

Net4India decided to migrate its e-commerce portal which was running on Linux to Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and the database from MySQL to SQL Server 2005.

The need was to reduce the investment by making a single application portal that will handle all services, including domain registration, hosting, business email, VoIP services billing, provisioning and report of the services. The company also wanted to invest in a solution that would provide a reliable technology platform for high usage data center environment.

Desi S Valli, Executive Director and COO, Net4India, said, “Customers are looking for millisecond response time which the Linux and MySQL were unable to cope with. This has been achieved by the new application running on SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0.”

Implementation process

The application was built using Visual C# and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0, a part of Windows Vista to improve the user experience. It uses Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Communications Foundation.

The solution was designed keeping in mind enhancement of the user experience, catalog management and back-end integration for service delivery. The key focus areas included user experience, performance, extensibility, object model, best practices, and integration.

Data was migrated from MySQL into SQL Server 2005. The company prepared migration scripts to transform data from the old-world system to the new-world system, while ensuring business continuity and data integrity.

The migration process included extracting data from the old database, repairing inconsistent or invalid records, removing duplicates, transforming the old data to conform to new application data requirements, translating source values to new data based on translation tables, loading the data into the new database, validating the data against business rules, and verifying the data for accuracy. And once the old data was migrated into the new application, automatic integrity checks were performed along with random manual checks. Some customers were also invited to do the checks to ensure the integrity. This ensured a smooth transition to the new environment.

“The application has been deployed across two locations to provide redundancy. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 64-bit Enterprise Edition has been integrated with ADO.NET to provide real time synchronous back up at Noida facility. We have invested around Rs 2.5 crore in this project,” added Valli.

During the implementation process, the company did not experience any specific challenges as it received support from Microsoft and the deployment was done by the Net4India’s competent in-house team of professionals.

Key benefits

With the implementation of the new solution, the company is experiencing the benefit of lower TCO (Total Cost of Operations), along with a better user experience and customer satisfaction.

Valli commented, “The .NET solution makes it easier for us to use Web services and other integration technologies to facilitate closer communications and transactions with customers and business partners.”

The customers are the real beneficiaries of the improvements that this Microsoft Windows-based architecture provides, as they can manage their accounts quickly and efficiently through one interface on the Web and experience new services from our product lines.

The Net4India team has also been able to build open and expandable software architecture for its e-commerce portal. The application is secure, robust, scalable and easy to use. “The .NET Framework 3.0 has built in features that offer a rapid development environment. The Windows Workflow Foundation integration with Microsoft technology saves time and money,” said Valli.

“With SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0, our system is more reliable and we spend less time to maintain it. Thus we do a better job of maintenance, which heads off problems before they occur,” concludes Valli.

nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com