IBM: Mainframe to help people service cloud landing

The ultimate goal of e-government is to achieve a "seamless connection" between the government, citizens and the industry. Therefore, the government into the cloud zone is an inevitable trend, because cloud computing can help reduce the cost of government affairs, promote the transformation of governmental functions, and improve the quality of service, so as to achieve the benefits of convenience, and bring about the effect of energy saving and emission reduction.

For this reason, the "livelihood Services Cloud" has also been born. August 23, 2011, IBM joined hands with strategic partners easy to announce the "People's Livelihood Services Cloud" project officially landed in Fujian, involved in the field mainly including based on the IBM Els Cloud platform to achieve large-scale health care, social Security, labor and employment and other core business, as well as three agricultural services, rural finance, E-commerce and other industries to apply to the ground.

What is the service cloud of the people's livelihood

What is the service cloud of the people's livelihood?

Zhan Haitao, general manager of the Marketing development Department of Yi Lian, said that the people's Livelihood Service cloud is not a separate website for people's livelihood, or a separate system. It is the integration of multiple application products, multiple networks integrated integrated system, in the cloud platform, the first involves everyone to use authentication vouchers, and financial payment of the security card.

Job seekers use the self-service terminal at the street office to find work at the "doorstep"

The self-service terminal of the hospital provides the patient with registration, appointment, payment and other services

"Now can see the Social Security card is actually the third generation product, the first generation is the magnetic stripe card, the second generation is the CPU card, the third generation embodies three aspects characteristic: First has the financial function, second in the Labor Department all business can do." The third is that it can be settled across departments, these interfaces are left in the CPU, including two operating systems, "Zhan Haitao said," Fujian province already has 20 million cards have been completed, sent to the people in the hands of a succession of nearly 10 million. We are now a Social security card is a very large project, such a model is accepted by the Human Resources Social Security Department and the People's Bank, and has issued a paper to make the technical specifications as the people's Bank and human resources Social Security technical standards, this is the earliest we put forward this concept in China. ”

Because of these two foundations, one is the basic user of social security, plus the Social Security card which has the function of identity authentication and financial payment, so it has a very good foundation to start the service cloud of people's livelihood now.

"Under such circumstances, our platform data is also more time-sensitive." The first is the entire network platform, the data platform, plus everyone's identity, and financial payments are all there. The rest of us is on this basis, the introduction of IBM mainframe technology, the introduction of cloud technology, in this development. Part of the government has already had the livelihood of the project, in addition, the development of common people, enterprises need business functions, put it on the entire cloud platform, so that the use of such a cloud of people, to enjoy the service inside. In fact, the whole development is logical, including the use of Els cloud computing platform, is a natural process. ”

Why use IBM mainframe (System Z ELS)?

In China, due to the lack of overall consideration of the early e-government construction, the phenomenon of individual and repeated construction is serious, the application system of each department is not unified among the key elements such as operating system environment, application software and data storage mode, and there are many problems such as inconsistent data, inaccurate, incomplete and repetitive entry among various departments.

Data consolidation is one of the strengths of IBM's mainframe. "In terms of products, four large machines are sufficient to meet the entire ICBC transaction volume, so its application to the Social Security project is no problem," said Schdone, general manager of mainframe products at IBM Systems and Technology Division, the mainframe's understanding of scalability and X86 platform is quite different. "If you want hundreds of servers in the future, as long as four units can be integrated, then in the management and green energy saving, the cost will be a lot of money." ”

In addition, one of the advantages of mainframe is virtualization, in the cloud-building environment, you may want to create another virtual machine/virtual environment at any time.

"Virtualization deployments on mainframes are second-level, directives may require only one replication and therefore have good resilient deployment performance, Schdone said, this cloud delivery approach can meet the need for future business expansion of the audience, that is, without changing the existing system architecture can adapt to the" big service "expansion of the volume of business; Els Infrastructure cloud has great scalability and ease of management, and can effectively improve application deployment speed, simplify architecture complexity, and save room space and energy consumption.

Security is another issue, IBM mainframe design idea is 6 9, that is 99.9999%, which means that the annual downtime can not exceed 5 minutes, the need for continuous uninterrupted availability.

"Security is always in the first place, in the cloud's emerging computing model, data integrity, security is very important, this is the most important core performance of the embodiment." No security, no application is enough to be called e-government or government projects. ”

Data migration issues

It is understood that at present in Fujian all Social security card related applications are provided by the Yi Lian, so in the integration of the database, is only the integration of technical products, there is no multiple partners business integration problems.

Fujian Province before the health care mainframe are used to deploy the small machine, and according to the population of each city, host performance is not the same, but mostly IBM-oriented. In addition, in 2006, Fujian has built the only one in the whole country can be in real-time credit card clearing the network system, the system is mainly by minicomputer to build, all the settlement centers are used, therefore, in the data from the minicomputer to the mainframe, did not face too complex technical problems.

"DB2 9 solve structural and unstructured problems" in Fujian province's livelihood Services cloud data, in addition to the traditional relational and some of the relational data, such as bills, although the amount of data is not large (probably only accounted for 5%), but how to unify management is a problem, for this, IBM's solution is DB2 9, this is a relational database, and solves the unified management problem of both the structured and the unstructured.

The difficulty lies in the integration of government functions

"In fact, the biggest challenge lies not in technology, but in the integration of government functions," said Huang Wenzan, vice president of the Information Technology Co., Ltd., which integrates the functions of many departments.

In fact, resource integration has always been one of the core issues of e-government research, regardless of vertical or horizontal departments between the communication and integration, can not be separated from the construction and support of data center, and information acquisition, aggregation and derivation is the difficult point of data center construction.

"To Fujian's card, the plan is the development and Reform Commission, the main card is the Human resources Social Security Department, in the hospital and the Department of Health, and the card is the capital of the bank." There are six banks in Fujian province, each city is different from each other, and each bank has its own provincial and municipal banks. ”

Huang Wenzan said that a card like this would have to deal with at least 6-7 government departments, because there is capital, there is a management card, there is a policy, there is finance, here involved in the collection of funds, this must be financially, and finally a public security, photos if from the second generation of public security collection, the difficulty is reduced, And the second generation of identity card and this card more matching, must coordinate the public security hall, so that they are willing to take the second generation of photos to get here.

"Coordinating 7-8 government departments is the biggest challenge we have ever faced." And if it is the service cloud, the situation is more complex. ”

It is understood that in the implementation of the entire service cloud, the government departments from the Top-down policy has played a significant role. "It's not what we want to do, it's what the government wants." Without the Top-down implementation of government departments, the entire platform may be difficult to implement. ”

Next, the pattern is replicated across the country

"The Social security platform will have a national unified platform in the future," said Fanyu, IBM Global vice-president and general manager of the Greater China region Government and Public Affairs Department, that the "duplication" is not only to replicate in the provinces, but also to be like several big commercial banks, the whole country to achieve reunification.

"20 years ago, the bank information is done from the city first, first in the cities through the deposit of withdrawal, and then in the province of the withdrawal, now realize the national withdrawal, behind this is a very complex information platform." "" In IBM's view, the replication of this model should not be limited to the Labor security Department, can be extended to the tax, medical and other fields, in the future of the government's main public service platform, this logic, this innovative idea is also absolutely can be replicated. ”

"IBM's point of view is to be able to replicate, difficult, not anxious, still have to homeopathy." Our business system has been replicated several provinces, such as the province's new agricultural security, the province's Gold insurance project has been done. Social Security card replication has also been successful in Shanxi, the following will see such a successful example, I believe. When one thing goes forward, doing things is a matter of time, can not worry. ”

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)