Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization Michael Silva Business & IT Consultant Copyright 1998 by Corporate Information Partners

Introduction

• • • •

Overview Financial Executive Pains The IT Dilemma Financial Reporting and Consolidation Applications • Thin Clients • Microsoft Windows Terminal Server™ • Citrix Metaframe™ Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Introduction (cont)

• • • • • • • • Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Total Cost of Ownership ICA® Defined Publishing Applications Web-enabling Applications CFO Vision™ Considerations Quaker Chemical Case A Swiss Manufacturing Company Case The ASP Model and Conclusions

Finance Pains

• Reporting Problems • Month-end close too long • Mergers and Acquisitions • Complex and multiple ERP systems

• Data Problems • • • • Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Spreadsheet solutions error prone Coherency Integrity Portability

IT Dilemma

• Data Problems • Multiple sources, locations • Lack of tools

• Current BI Applications • Poor fit for the Finance function • Integration Issues • Application Deployment and Support

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

FRC Applications

• • • •

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Financial Reporting and Consolidation 17 Vendors in the market 0 are shipping full web-enabled apps None are geared towards geographically dispersed organizations

Thin Clients

• What is a thin client? • • • •

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Networked to a server Programs originate on server Programs execute on server Display is on client

MS Windows TSE™

• Windows NT Terminal Server Edition • Microsoft’s answer to thin client computing • Allows any Windows client to run 32 bit apps on the server • Supposed to lower TCO

• Limitations • Non-Windows clients can’t access server • Not scalable • Limited Management Tools

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Citrix Metaframe™

• Founded in 1989 by Ed Iacobucci • Former IBM Executive for OS/2 • Wanted to make server based computing for Intel plaform • Formed Citrix when IBM rejected his plans

• $403 M in revenue FY99 • 100% of Fortune 100 • 3.5 M current licensed users

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Citrix Metaframe™ (cont)

• Citrix Metaframe Components • Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) • Metaframe Management Tools • Client Desktop Integration

• Load Balancing and Scalability • Heterogeneous Computing • Management

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Total Cost of Ownership

• Hard Costs • Hardware • Software Licenses • Installation Effort

• Soft Costs • Hardware Maintenance • Application Support • Help Desk Support

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

ICA®

• 200 different client type devices (25?) • Digital Independence • Three part server application technology • Metaframe Server • Presentation Services Protocol • ICA Client

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Publishing Applications

• Not a desktop replacement • Simplifies User Interface • Control over applications deployed • User and Group Security

• Available via ICA Master Browser • Not the same as NT Browser • Similar in that it needs gateway services when routers are in the network

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Web-enablement

• Publishing Apps on the Web • • • •

The Metaframe Server The Web Server The Web Page The ICA Client

• Lowering TCO • Simplified Environment • Easier Management and Support

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

CFO Vision Considerations • Not intended for multi-user clients • Definitely multi-user server

• Configuration Changes • Autoexec.sas • Config.sas

• Optimizing Graphics • Removing the splash screen • Other graphics

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Quaker Chemical Case

• Distributed Geographic Environment • 21 locations • All will be using CFO Vision • Some have slow connections

• Propsosed EVAS Solution • Enterprise-wide Virtual Application Suite • Citrix Metaframe Server Farm

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

EVAS

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

QuakerOne™ Portal

Citrix Metaframe™ (cont)

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

A Swiss Case

• Swiss Manufacturing Company • Geographically Dispersed • Lack of IT staff

• Outsourced CFO Vision to an ASP • Dedicated hardware • VPN Access via Internet • Monthly fees vs. dedicated staff

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

ASP Model?

• SAS Licensing model for ASPs? • Leasing applications from third parties • Increase market share by accessing first time customers • Move maintenance to the hands of the experts • Bypass IT departments

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Conclusions

• FRC Vendors need to address TCO • Citrix Metaframe Implementation as viable alternative in geographically dispersed environments • Web-enablement not the only factor in choosing an FRC vendor

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Questions?

Copyright 2000 by Michael G. Silva

Thank You

Mike Silva email: [email protected]

Copyright 1998 by Corporate Information Partners

Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization Introduction Many organizations today are faced with a multifaceted challenge in business and financial reporting and management. These challenges present themselves in that organizations are becoming more distributed by nature due to mergers and acquisitions and Information Technology presents more complexity and choices in ERP solutions. This dual pronged atmosphere causes executives, managers and financial staff members pain but also the IT department and business users who rely on this information for decision making suffer as well. A difficult life for financial executives? Financial groups in many organizations struggle to bring together the various informational sources from far-flung subsidiaries and create meaningful reports when they are needed and where they are needed. Why is there such a high level of frustration in this area? Finance executives are used to having the prestigious position of providing strategic input in a myriad of business decisions. Formerly, it was sometimes easier to force IT decisions concerning financial management operational software. However, nowadays with so many cross-border mergers, it is nearly impossible to predict or determine what type of software will be in use at a merged or acquired company. Even organic growth organizations have a hard time forcing subsidiaries to use operational software packages not designed for the line of business they are engaged in, or do not fit the regional requirements. Moreover, the average month end close for US companies is 8-15 days and the average 1 for UK companies is 10-20 days . Obviously, the turnaround time for delivering financial information to executives and strategic decision makers is clearly lagging behind the demand for this information. On top of all this is the demand for data coherency, integrity and portability. As the

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Salt, Deborah, PriceWaterhouseCoopers Report, Consolidation Solutions 1999

New Economy moves ever faster, this problem can only intensify. The IT Dilemma To further exacerbate the problem, many IT departments are struggling with various data sources, which are extracted from the existing ERP systems. Often, these processes are convoluted and are based on text file extraction into Microsoft Excel or similar spreadsheet packages. Price Waterhouse Coopers completed a study showing that 90% of all financial data stored in spreadsheets has major errors. This fact alone is enough for not only the IT department but also the entire organization to take heed in using this information for anything even remotely strategic. Furthermore, IT professionals responsible for Financial Reporting and Consolidation (FRC) packages are finding that the promise of true thin client applications are still not in the market place. Although some report writers have developed web-based solutions, it should be noted that FRC applications are far more complex then most business oriented report writing. These applications need to take into consideration the five types of financial reports: ! ! ! ! !

Listing Document Statement Consolidation Analytical

Simple table listings and documents can be easily accommodated by the usual Report Writer vendors. These types contain simple listing of numbers and perhaps special fonts for certain applications. However, statements, consolidation and Analytical reports require financial intelligence not usually found in these applications. These reports are much more complex and require formatting, formula creation, matrix listing, balance sheet and income statement intelligence and the ability to view data in a 2 multidimensional format .

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McKie, Stewart, The New Paradigm for Report Writers, Business Finance Magazine, October 1998

©2000 - Michael G. Silva Von-der-Tann-Str. 21! D-69126 Heidelberg ! Germany Tel. +49 (6221) 316745 ! Fax: +49 (6221) 316746 ! Email: [email protected]

Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization Traditionally IT departments have been quite satisfied providing the first two types of reports to standard business users. In general, these users have been quite happy with the solutions. However, as the move to introduce the products into the financial group, they find out quite quickly that these products do not have the capabilities needed for the latter three types of reports. Fat FRC Applications There are currently 17 listed vendors of FRC application vendors in the Business Finance Magazine list of financial consolidation and reporting packages. All of these vendors have struggled with bringing true thin client applications to market due to the limitations of current technologies such as HTML, Java, JavaScript and ActiveX. Naturally, this is changing as new releases of developer’s toolkits arrive giving the vendors the needed development packages for creating these applications. The following major FRC vendors are shipping or planning to ship web enabled FRC applications:

arises, how does a distributed organization ensure maximum benefit from implementing a fat financial reporting and consolidation package. What is a Thin Client? Information Technology is probably one industry where there are sometimes more opinions than options. The definition of thin client is one that has been debated for a while now. By definition, it is actually a hardware device which was introduced several years ago called a Network Computer. Its state is stored on the server and the client merely loads it on the desktop. It should also be noted that X Windows and ICA clients fall into the thin client category as well, although all of the processing takes place on the server and only the graphics are sent back to the client. Figure 1 depicts thin and thick clients.

Hyperion Systems – cobbled together solution combining Arbor Essbase products and Hyperion Enterprise with Spiderman to create a pseudo web enabled application. Cognos – Again Cognos has the ability to use PowerPlay for the web with Cognos Financials although it is not advertised as so. Comshare – Strictly a Microsoft Windows application with no mention of web enablement. Longview Solutions - Kahlix for consolidation and reporting is also a Microsoft Windows based application but can work with static HTML files. SAS Institute – CFO Vision in it’s present release also does not provide a dynamic web enabled client but does have static web reporting and an experimental OLAP viewer called Open Olap. As shown above, all of the major vendors are shipping fat clients. The question now

The confusion begins when certain software vendors claim thin client ability when in fact, in most cases, it is not the software vendor who has developed anything to do with thin clients. Ensuring n-tier client/server based computing and thin clients are two separate issues. The vendors mentioned in this paper are concentrating on n-tier client/server applications which can be accessed by thin clients, PCs, and as the title of this paper suggests, ICA clients. Microsoft Windows Terminal Server Windows Terminal Server is Microsoft’s answer to the thin client computing trend. It allows any Windows client to access 32 bit

©2000 - Michael G. Silva Von-der-Tann-Str. 21! D-69126 Heidelberg ! Germany Tel. +49 (6221) 316745 ! Fax: +49 (6221) 316746 ! Email: [email protected]

Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization applications running on an NT 4.0 server. Windows Terminal Server Edition (TSE) main design goal is to lower the total cost of ownership of desktop computers. It is debatable as to whether there is a blanket reduction in total cost of ownership. However, there is certainly a reduction in ownership costs for line of business applications and geographically dispersed applications such as FRC packages and particularly for CFO Vision from SAS Institute. Unfortunately, TSE is limited in its technical ability to allow non-Windows clients to access the server. In addition, there are scalability issues, and lack of management and configuration tools. Citrix Metaframe adds to the TSE model to provide these services and more. Citrix Metaframe Citrix Systems was founded by Edward Iacobucci in 1989. Iacobucci was a former IBM executive responsible for OS/2 development. He came up with the idea of server based computing from the mainframe world and wanted to move it to the OS/2 platform. However, IBM management did not believe that a market existed for server based computing on the Intel platform so he formed his own company to do just that. Citrix Metaframe contains several components, which make it unique. ! ! !

key

Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) Metaframe Management Tools Client Desktop Integration

Although TSE provides complete multi-user functionality on its own, the three shortcomings mentioned in the previous section hinder its adoption as an enterprisewide solution. Firstly, Metaframe provides scalability through load balancing. TSE claims that administrators can run up to a 100 users on a single server. In actuality, many administrators would be reluctant to do this because it provides no fault tolerance or redundancy. A single hardware failure would result in lost user productivity.

Currently, TSE requires that administrators install a second server separately and duplicate the functionality resulting in twice the management and twice the cost. Secondly, TSE lacks support for heterogeneous computing environments. As mentioned previously, organizations are finding that through mergers and acquisitions the IT environment inherited is not always compatible with the one of the head office. This should not cause delay in getting key financial data to managers and executives simply because the environments are different. Lastly, TSE is lacking management tools for configuring and controlling server application farms. Metaframe provides tools for managing groups of servers and published applications for sets of users. These tools assist immensely in deploying enterprise applications in large organizations. Total Cost of Ownership In determining TCO for a thin-client computing project such as with CFO Vision and Citrix Metaframe, one has to calculate two types of costs. The first one is the hard costs associated with the project. These are straightforward and pertain to the purchase price of the hardware and software needed to complete the project. In addition, the organization may not need to purchase new desktop computers, thus further reducing hard costs in the project. Second, the soft costs must be calculated. Often, organizations make the critical mistake of only calculating hard costs to determine the TCO of a project. However, the soft costs can far outstrip hard costs, especially in high cost labor countries. These costs are associated with the hardware maintenance, application support and end-user support. TSE and Metaframe reduce soft costs by treating hardware maintenance costs similar to desktop maintenance costs. The server farm is like a desktop in that if one fails it is

©2000 - Michael G. Silva Von-der-Tann-Str. 21! D-69126 Heidelberg ! Germany Tel. +49 (6221) 316745 ! Fax: +49 (6221) 316746 ! Email: [email protected]

Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization replaced with a duplicate just as a desktop computer would be replaced. Users of a server farm see no reduction in application up time thus costs are lowered.

ICA protocol on top of another protocol such as TCP/IP, IPX or NetBEUI. This includes screen displays, sound, and client drive mappings.

Application support costs are reduced by reducing the time it takes to deploy and support new applications. Administrators can make new applications available to every user more quickly and now have only one instance of the application to maintain. Testing and evaluation time is increased, as multiple hardware/software platforms need not be tested.

Presentation Services Protocol - The ICA protocol bundles and transports information such as keystrokes, mouse actions and screen updates to the ICA client and also receives and processes information that the clients have sent back.

®

ICA Defined ICA is an acronym for Citrix’s Independent Computing Architecture, a three-part application server technology that separates an application’s logic from its user interface and allows 100% application execution on the server. Moreover, ICA is becoming a standard in the thin client industry. "Over 130 companies have licensed ICA and are using it to deliver a broad suite of application services to more than 200 different types of client devices, and this is a testament to the on-going acceptance of our enabling technology. With 24 million users, ICA has surpassed the user count of the most popular online information services, reinforcing Citrix's leadership position in application server 3 markets" . This opens a completely new application scenario enabling not only Windows based clients to access services on Metaframe servers but also other devices not originally intended for accessing FRC applications such as mobile devices, handheld devices and television sets. Three components environment:

make

up

the

ICA

Metaframe Server – All information received or sent by the Metaframe server uses the

ICA Client – The client receives the ICA information, translating it into the application interface, which is displayed to the user on his or her screen. It also takes actions performed by the user and send it back to the Metaframe server for processing. The interface is presented to the user while 100% of the processing takes place on the server. Publishing Applications This is a method of application deployment, where the user does not get a replacement for his or her current desktop. Instead, the user receives only the application in a window on the desktop itself either via an ICA client or within a web browser. Publishing applications play a main role in load balancing and web-enabling applications. These applications are located by clients through the ICA Master Browser. It should be noted that this is different from a Windows NT Master Browser and is independent of that service. However, it is similar in that it does not work across routers unless an ICA gateway is installed on one of the Metaframe servers located on one side of the router. The ICA Master Browser is then responsible for determining which server will serve up the application to the ICA client. Web-enabling Applications Citrix Metaframe provides administrators with the ability to make applications available to users with a web browser. Metaframe web computing is made up of four components:

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Iacobucci, Edward, President & CEO Citrix Systems, April 2000

©2000 - Michael G. Silva Von-der-Tann-Str. 21! D-69126 Heidelberg ! Germany Tel. +49 (6221) 316745 ! Fax: +49 (6221) 316746 ! Email: [email protected]

Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization The Metaframe Server – One or more Metaframe servers publish the application that will be accessed via the web browser. The Metaframe server views connections from web clients no differently than those which connect via the Citrix ICA client and no special configuration is required. However, if users are located on the Internet then special permissions should be incorporated to prevent authorized access. The Web Server – The web server software can run on either the Metaframe server or a separate server such as used for a corporate Intranet. This author believes that administrators should limit the load on the Metaframe server and use a separate server for web services. In some cases, administrators have to register the ICA file type as a MIME type so that the application can be launched. In some rare cases, web servers prevent Java from running on a separate machine. The Web Page – The web page contains all of the necessary information to launch the application. It consists of two components: the HTML file containing the required tags and the associated ICA file containing the connection information. Citrix provides an ALE wizard for automating this process or it can be created manually using HTML editors and the ICA client for creating the ICA file. The ICA Web client – There are a number of clients called ICA Web clients. There is a general Windows web client which works with any Windows based web browser that supports MIME. Citrix also provides an ActiveX control for Internet Explorer and a Netscape Navigator Plug-in. There is also a Java web client that will work with any web browser that supports Java Virtual Machine (JVM) 1.1 or higher.

or her own configuration files. In a Citrix Metaframe environment, all users share the same image of the application and theoretically, they should have a common configuration file. The whole idea of reduced TCO requires that it become easier to maintain. CFO Vision’s present method of application configuration does not provide this natively. However, the flexibility of the SAS System allows a CFO Vision consultant to overcome this limitation by dynamically building a configuration for each user. The autoexec.sas file in CFO Vision contains client specific configuration parameters. For example, each CFO Vision client must have a local storage area separate from other clients for storing individual templates and data called a local finroot. In order to ensure that each client has its own local finroot, the following lines must be added to the autoexec.sas: %Let finroot = %SYSGET(HOMEDIR)\LOC_FROOT; Where HOMEDIR is the Windows NT environment variable specifying where a user has his or her private directory on the NT network and LOC_FROOT can be any directory name to be created in the HOMEDIR location. The SYSGET macro is a standard SAS System macro variable to returning operating system environment variables. In addition, changes to the config.sas can help optimize CFO Vision over slow network connections. Unfortunately, CFO Vision has embedded bit maps files (.bmp), which are very inefficient over slow connections. The main splash screen can be disabled but any imbedded bit maps are hard coded into the product. The following changes should be made to the config.sas:

CFO Vision Considerations There are several configuration changes, which must be considered when implementing CFO Vision in a Citrix Metaframe environment. Firstly, CFO Vision was designed that each user would have a copy of the client software on his or her desktop and each client would also have his

/* location of the CFO Vision Splash Screen */ /* -splashloc !sasroot\p1win.bmp */ -nosplash

©2000 - Michael G. Silva Von-der-Tann-Str. 21! D-69126 Heidelberg ! Germany Tel. +49 (6221) 316745 ! Fax: +49 (6221) 316746 ! Email: [email protected]

Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization -nosplash is a standard config.sas parameter for disabling the splash screen in SAS 6.12.

Figure 2 EVAS

Experiments with changing the p1win.bmp file in the CFO Vision application directory did not work because the name is hard coded into the application as well as the bit map itself. Quaker Chemical – A case study Quaker Chemicals may be what some call the “Old Economy”. However, it is actually the New Old Economy. The Old Economy implies traditional organizations based on manufacturing and other technologies, which although advanced are not solely based on Information Technology or the New Economy. Why is it then the New Old Economy? It is called this because it is a profit-based business dependent on core values that have made a company successful for many years unlike the New Economy companies, which rarely show any profit. Moreover, these New Old Economy companies use Information Technology to enhance business practices and relationships with shareholders, customers and employees. Therefore, Quaker Chemicals is a New Old Economy organization as the use of Information Technology is seen as a major enhancement to continued profits and shareholder value. This author made a proposal to Bubba Tyler, CIO of Quaker Chemicals called EVAS or Enterprise-wide Virtual Application Suite. EVAS uses the techniques outlined earlier in this paper to create a server farm for the application delivery of business intelligence packages such as CFO Vision, CFO Vision for Budgeting and Corporate Information Partners ODD Loader package. EVAS is scalable solution which allows Quaker Chemical to achieve a lower cost of ownership for CFO Vision as well as improved support and availability for the users of the system. The following diagram depicts the EVAS model.

The next step in the project was to provide access to users located outside of the primary headquarters in Conshohocken Pennsylvania USA. Quaker Chemicals has a geographically dispersed environment with subsidiaries in every part of the world. Some of it’s larger offices are connected via a Frame Relay network to the US but some other offices located in the Indian Subcontinent and South America are connected via a Virtual Private Network from AT&T. Therefore, the connection speed varies from 28.8 Kilobytes per second to 2 Megabytes per second (shared) for frame relay. Unfortunately, client/server applications such as CFO Vision are not accommodating of slow telecommunication lines. This is true for all FRC applications. The only solution is to use an client independent architecture such as the one found with Citrix Metaframe. It should be noted that the backend server components must be Windows NT for CFO Vision as the client application is Windows only. However, the CFO Vision server can be a Unix server. To achieve the goal of a centralilzed FRC system in a geographically dispersed environment, one must also consider the end-user and their requirements. Often, FRC applications are used a few day a month and then forgotten until the next month. Therefore, it should be as easy to use as possible with a place where instructions and news can be placed before the user runs the application. The best approach to achieve this goal is to use Citrix Metaframe application web-enablement and

©2000 - Michael G. Silva Von-der-Tann-Str. 21! D-69126 Heidelberg ! Germany Tel. +49 (6221) 316745 ! Fax: +49 (6221) 316746 ! Email: [email protected]

Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization create an html page for launching the application.

breach of contract because the software is simply being housed somewhere else.

Below is a screen shot of the main Financial Applications page one the QuakerOne Information Portal.

However, the industry is moving towards leasing out applications that are physically stored and managed by third parties. The question is, will SAS Institute accommodate this trend? Conclusions

A Swiss Manufacturing Company – A case study It should also be noted that even companies who have geographically dispersed entities are also driven to this model for other cost saving reasons. In the example of a Swiss manufacturing company, not only were they motivated by the benefits of bringing together international subsidiaries, they also saw cost savings by outsourcing the entire FRC infrastructure.

FRC vendors need to address the total cost of ownership of these applications in a geographically dispersed environment. Although some have come up with clever method of replicating data across slow networks, many organizations want a centralized method of collecting, cleaning, consolidating and reporting on enterprise financial data. Citrix Metaframe offers and excellent way to provide this functionality independent of the FRC package in use. This is a critical choice to make as not all FRC packages are created equal. Who would want an FRC application that is webenabled but only has four dimensions?

They were able to obtain this by enlisting the help of an Application Service Provider in Switzerland. This ASP offered to host the hardware necessary for an FRC infrastructure. This included a CFO Vision server and a Citrix Metaframe server. Moreover, the ASP provided VPN service to their client allowing them to utilize their existing Internet connection thus further reducing both hard and soft costs. The ASP Model – a viable alternative? Now the thorny issue of licensing pops up. SAS Institute does not have an ASP model in their licensing contracts. It is an individual horse trade with the local European offices to get this sort of pricing. In the example of the Swiss company above, the server is used exclusively by the ASP’s client and no other. Therefore, there is no technical ©2000 - Michael G. Silva Von-der-Tann-Str. 21! D-69126 Heidelberg ! Germany Tel. +49 (6221) 316745 ! Fax: +49 (6221) 316746 ! Email: [email protected]