Transcript Yaffe Center Web Workshop B2B Panel September 20, 2002

Yaffe Center Web Workshop
B2B Panel - Top 10 Tips/Learnings
September 20, 2002
Melody Alfather
Pfizer Global Research &
Development
About Pfizer
• Pfizer is a large, global pharmaceutical company
with divisions including finance/marketing,
manufacturing, central IT, and research &
development (r&d).
• Within Pfizer Global R&D, there are departments
including research (covering discovery, initial
development, safety, and efficacy of drugs),
development (covering clinical trials, additional
safety & efficacy of drugs), and enterprise
(covering enterprise-wide business applications
for r&d). Each department has a central r&D
informatics (IT) group working with it closely.
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Pfizer Global Research &
Development
• 4 main sites for r&d division: Ann Arbor, MI;
Groton, CT; Sandwich, UK; La Jolla, CA.
• Many additional smaller sites in r&d including
those in Japan, Germany, Canada, and France.
• Strategic technologies in use currently: J2EE
(WebLogic application server), IDE (JBuilder),
source code control (ClearCase), UML modeling
(Rose), unit testing (JUnit), data modeling
(ERWin), business process modeling/integration
(WebLogic Integration Suite), data warehousing
mapping (Informatica), etc.
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About Panelist
• Melody Alfather - Associate Director of
Technology Planning & Architecture - Ann Arbor
Labs, Research Informatics
• Been with Pfizer for 3 years; before that
University of MI’s Web Services; HCIA; GRI;
EDS.
• Tech Planning & Architecture team is responsible
for promoting best practices, fostering developer
knowledge-sharing, suggesting application
architecture, developing ‘enterprise’ architecture,
etc.
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B2B - Top 10 Tips/Learnings Intro
• Pfizer Global Research & Development doesn’t do
much B2B due to the nature of our business research. Pfizer Corporate uses B2B for
procurement - Ariba to OfficeMax, etc.
• Pfizer R&D does do much global business web
development, however, due to the nature of our
business - global research & development within
large, diverse pharmaceutical company. Largely
secure intranet development, though we accept
information from outside vendors into safe zones.
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Tips/Learnings
1) Keep things simple & easy to use - lots of web
applications applications in R&D. Externally
served web sites usually hosted externally.
2) Functional, but ugly is fine for corporate intranet
- heavily used in large global companies.
3) Consider locale differences for all apps - time
zones, date & time formats, cultural differences,
etc.
4) Global deployment adds complexity - applications
become 7x24 due to time zone differences;
central vs. distributed deployment varies based
on requirements & environments.
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Tips/Learnings
5) Enterprise Architecture should be standardized for
scalability/flexibility/re-use/maintenance/etc.
6) Technology should be used (correctly) to aid in
development, deployment, and maintenance not just for technology’s sake.
7) Use application servers for web applications!
They give you many good things & provide for
many apps on a server, something not very
common in corporations, especially in
win2000/nt world.
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Tips/Learnings
8) Use frameworks (like J2EE), standardized builds
(like ant), patterns (like MVC, MDA, auditing,
etc.) - they promote best practices & re-use &
reduce software maintenance costs.
9) Expect new versions of IDEs & application
servers - 2 per year - customer & IT plan for
upgrades/maintenance decisions/schedules.
10) Use automated unit testing - much of Pfizer’s
environment is regulated by FDA & other
organizations - many applications need to be
validated from IT, regulatory, and user perspective
- automated testing saves resources & time.
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