Overview



Overview

Country or Region: India

Industry: Product Engineering Services – Embedded Systems & Software

Customer Profile

EmSyS is a business unit of Larsen & Toubro dedicated to embedded systems and software. It offers services related to hardware and software / firmware development in diverse verticals.

Business Situation

EmSyS needed to update its legacy based system to take advantage of new tools and technologies while also making it affordable and easy to use. It had problems with scalability, stability and lacked the potential to grow with the company.

Solution

EmSyS deployed Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System 2008, providing the software development team with a comprehensive and easy-to-use application lifecycle management system.

Benefits

■ Provides a rich user interface

■ Builds an extensible platform

■ Increases developer productivity by 5-6 percent

■ Improves collaboration

■ Reduces development time by 6-8 percent

■ Improves software quality | | |“We saw Visual Studio® Team System 2008 as the ideal way to support our business needs. We communicate and collaborate more effectively, ensure quality throughout the development lifecycle, and have real-time visibility into project status.”

Rajan Koul, Group Head Delivery, EmSyS, Mysore, India | |

| | | |EmSyS is a business unit of of Larsen & Toubro offering design services solutions, which include |

| | | |hardware, embedded software, and application software to a wide range of embedded systems based |

| | | |products. As part of solution offerings, EmSyS helps migrate/ re-engineer Legacy Engineering |

| | | |Applications for its various customers. The legacy application to be reengineered in this case was |

| | | |not only difficult to manage but also not scalable. To address these problems, EmSyS implemented |

| | | |Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System 2008, an integrated application lifecycle management solution |

| | | |to migrate/ re-engineer the legacy platform to cutting edge platforms. By adopting the Microsoft |

| | | |platform, the developer productivity increased by 5 - 6 percent and also there was a significant |

| | | |reduction in time taken to write and manage application code. The new environment allowed EmSyS to |

| | | |optimize the systems and improve visibility of projects thereby increasing their overall efficiency, |

| | | |and improving software quality. |

| | | | |

| | | |[pic] |

| | | | |

Situation

EmSyS (Embedded Systems and Software), a business unit of 7 Billion $ engineering conglomerate Larsen & Toubro, has been offering embedded systems and software services to various Fortune 500 clients around the globe.

EmSyS has unique strengths in co-developing high-tech products for different vertical markets viz., automotive electronics, consumer electronics, control automation, industrial system, medical electronics, avionics and railway signaling. Headquartered in Mysore, India, the business unit has development centers in Mysore, Bangalore, and Mumbai.

The unit’s flexible approach provides cost, effective embedded solutions. It offers one stop solution, from design to dispatch for product designs involving:

■ Both hardware and firmware

■ Application software involving HMI, GUI etc.

■ Testing, verification and validation, and test automation

■ Rapid prototyping

“We help our customers worldwide to explore and leverage the state of the art technologies and achieve excellence in their business objectives without compromising on quality,” says Mahendra Joshi, Area Vice President, EmSyS, New Jersey.

The overseas offices of EmSyS are located in Unites States, Europe and Japan along with a network of business associates in various places.

Our customer had a legacy solution for data acquisition and analysis. The system had issues with scalability, usability and did not have a rich user interface.

Our customer needed a new look application with greater functionality, rich user interface, scalability etc within the shortest possible time. “We wanted developers to quickly create applications that deliver rich user experiences,” says Ramkumar, Senior Manager, EmSyS. “In addition, we wanted a solution that would enhance visibility into the project status and quality.”

With these challenges, EmSyS took the decision to implement a solution that would increase the productivity and predictability of its software development environment and also meet the performance demands more efficiently.

Solution

EmSyS started looking for ways to improve its application lifecycle management strategy and enhance the existing development environment. It carried out a comparative study of various potential solutions and finally decided to deploy Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System (VSTS) 2008, an integrated application lifecycle management solution comprising tools, processes, and guidance to help all team members improve their skills and work more effectively together.

“The new solution helped us to analyze and enhance our existing development processes,” says MRN Murthy, Project Manager, EmSyS, Mysore, India. “Visual Studio® Team System 2008 development platform brings the entire software development lifecycle together in one unified environment. We configure workflows and manage entire development cycle in one system.”

VSTS 2008 consists of a server and a suite of client products:

■ Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server is the collaboration server at the hub of the system. It enables everyone in the team to work more effectively and deliver better quality software. It combines project management, work item tracking, version control, reporting and business intelligence, build management, and process guidance into a unified team server.

■ Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite provides multi-disciplined team members with an integrated set of tools for architecture, design, development, database development and testing of applications. Team members can continuously collaborate and utilize a complete set of tools and guidance at every step of the application life cycle.

EmSyS selected Visual Studio® Team System 2008 as it offers all the features that are required to automate the processes during different phases of the software development cycle. It provides a central repository for data, and gives developers visibility of all aspects of the development life cycle. VSTS helps EmSyS to manage and track the progress and health of its software development projects and improves the predictability of software development.

Solution Overview

The application provides functionality of gathering and representing the graphical display of the measured data and events stored cyclically over several weeks in the measuring instruments. It helps to better manage application delivery, by providing an integrated platform with real time analysis of measurement data. This would also enable developers to make graphical representation/ visualization of the data.

The application has the ability to schedule for data uploads from an FTP or an HTTP server. Additionally, it also has the ability to store data into SQL Server 2005 Express edition.

Some other key features of the application are:

■ Supports multiple languages

■ Provides a tabular display of events/measurement

■ Displays device settings and notices

■ Saves the chart/graph for offline analysis

■ Provides protection from unauthorized software installation

Developed using the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, the application provides a break through user experience. Some of the features that the application is taking advantage of include:

■ Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) – offers developers support for 2D and 3D graphics, hardware accelerated effects, scalability to different form factors, interactive data visualization, and superior content readability.

■ Language-Integrated Query (XLINQ) – is a set of extensions to the C# and Visual Basic® languages and the .NET Framework 3.5 that enables developers to employ a consistent approach and write less code when querying and transforming object collections, Microsoft DataSet objects, XML data, and relational data from SQL Server based databases.

Usage of WPF results in a rich user interface. XLINQ, on the other hand, is more flexible, simple, and a faster programming model to read, write, manipulate, and traverse XML.

Logical Architecture

Microsoft's offerings for building composite smart clients include Composite UI Application Block (CAB) and the Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF). CAB is a framework for building both the extensible shell application and the modules that can be dynamically plugged into this shell. L&T used CAB as a meta-framework on top of which it has built its own frameworks.

The Foundational Module provides services and a layout to the shell and other modules. The Smart Client Development Package includes the Visual Studio templates for the Foundational Module. These templates unfold a new class library project for module implementation. The implementation class library contains a Module Controller and, a View with a presenter, i.e. the layout view.

The interface class library is used to store the service interfaces.

Open Standards based, OPC (OLE for Process Control), defines a structured means for accessing data. There are standard libraries available from various vendors, which provide “Class and Methods” to access the data. These libraries implemented as OPC clients allow for data to be acquired from the devices through the OPC server.

The Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) used for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications and simplifies creation of user interface for .NET Framework. As part of personalization, good amount of themes have been developed, which end users can make use of the same based on their preference.

The Report business module uses SQL Server Reporting for graphical and tabular reporting. This includes Adhoc report template generation.

“We saw Visual Studio® Team System 2008 as the ideal way to support our business needs, says Rajan Koul, Group Head Delivery, EmSyS. “We can now communicate and collaborate more effectively, ensure quality throughout the development lifecycle, and have real-time visibility into project status.”

Commenced in January 2008, the implementation was completed by December 2008. The modules implemented were, Device Topology, Data Acquisition, Data Analytics, Reports (both Canned and Adhoc), and Schedulers.

Visual Studio® Team System 2008 has helped EmSyS in building a better architecture. The solution provides a programming model and infrastructure that lets developers create scalable and secure connected applications.

Benefits

With Visual Studio® Team System 2008, EmSyS now has a scalable and secure programming model. This helps in increasing productivity, better managing the application lifecycle, and increasing software quality.

Provides a Rich User Interface

EmSyS found that using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) helped its designers and developers to easily build a sophisticated user interface. WPF provides developers with a unified programming model for building smart-client user experiences that incorporate 2-D and 3-D user interfaces, media, and documents.

“WPF has completely changed the user experience, because it helps to create more intuitive interfaces,” says MRN Murthy, Project Manager, EmSyS. “It provides all the ingredients for creating the most compelling, immersive experiences – seamless integration of video, user interface controls, high-quality text, and graphics. This incredibly rich platform has enabled us in graphical representation/visualization of the data.”

Builds an Extensible Platform

Visual Studio® Team System 2008 is a rich and extensible platform for creating and customizing software development lifecycle tools and methodology processes. It provides the methodology templates to define the process that individual projects will follow. It includes a flexible tool set that works with both agile and more traditional processes.

The extensibility and customization of VSTS 2008, provides an integrated and productive software development experience.

Increases Developer Productivity by 5-6 Percent

With Visual Studio® Team System 2008, developers are more productive and are able to solve complex business problems faster and with less effort. “New features such as XLINQ, language enhancements and easy posting of project status reports are making individual developers at least 5-6 percent more productive,” says Ramkumar, Senior Manager, EmSyS. “The increased productivity enables us to keep up with the needs of our business.”

Improves Collaboration

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server is an extensible team collaboration server that enables all members of the team to effortlessly manage and track the progress and health of projects.

“A central repository for all project data enables developers to collaborate much more effectively,” says N Narasimha Murthy, Network Manager, EmSyS. “It helps to keep everyone informed of project status.”

Reduces Development Time by 6-8 Percent

The visual-design tools and the enhanced Web-development tools included with Visual Studio® Team System 2008 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 all contribute to a faster development process. Developers spend less time on routine coding tasks and more time building solutions and features that make employees more productive.

Improves Software Quality

Software quality has improved because the new development environment helps team members to detect potential errors earlier in the project life cycle. The integrated and extensive Unit Testing capabilities like Code Coverage, Code metrics, Code Analyzer, Code profiling with seamless reporting in conjunction with Team Foundation Server guarantees quality throughout the software development lifecycle and ensures that all steps in the workflow are followed and completed correctly.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the world's most popular development environment for designing, developing, and testing next generation Windows®-based solutions and Web applications and services. By improving the development experience for Windows, the Web, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office, Visual Studio 2008 helps organizations deliver a variety of solutions more productively than ever before. Visual Studio Team System expands the product line with new software tools that enable greater communication and collaboration throughout the development life cycle. Interaction between developers and designers is enhanced with Visual Studio 2008 and the Microsoft Expression® Suite. With Visual Studio 2008, businesses can deliver modern service-oriented solutions more efficiently.

For more information about Visual Studio 2008, go to:

msdn.vstudio

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| |Software and Services

■ Developer Tools

− Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

− Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008

− Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2008

− Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0

■ Microsoft Office System

− Microsoft Office 2007

■ Windows Server System

− Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008 

− Microsoft Windows XP, 2003, 2008, and Vista

|Hardware

■ Processor 2 GHz D’Core, 100 GB Hard Disk, 2 GB RAM

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Fast Facts | |Size of the Software Development Team |10 people | |Time to Complete |8 months | |Developer Tools |Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 | |Programming Model |Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 | |

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published March 2009 | | |

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:

For more information about EmSyS products and services, call 91 - 821 - 2405000 or visit the Web site at:

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“New features such as XLINQ, language enhancements and easy posting of project status reports are making individual developers at least 5-6 percent more productive. The increased productivity enables us to keep up with the needs of our business.”

Ramkumar, Senior Manager, EmSyS, Mysore, India | |

Smart Client Architecture

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