Overview
Tsunami Tsolutions based in Glastonbury, Connecticut provides system integration, custom software development, workflow design and enterprise application support for the aviation and defense industry. Since 2007, Tsunami Tsolutions has specialized in managing and delivering IFS Maintenix, a comprehensive software platform specifically designed for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Commercial and Military Operators, and Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MROs) markets built on WebLogic Server and Oracle Database.
During a meeting with Mike Falk, Director of Application Development and System Architecture at Tsunami Tsolutions, we discussed the current relationship with Oracle for the Aviation Maintenance Market. Mike Falk oversees Tsunami’s team of application developers, database administrators and middleware engineers. The team is responsible for building the current OCI integration and continues to support it as well as build out new capabilities and custom tools.
From a cloud perspective, Tsunami Tsolutions needed to support customers in aviation and defense who require high performance tools to stay competitive in a complex and changing industry. “We saw a need for a scalable and reliable platform to host industry leading aircraft maintenance and supply-chain management applications,” says Falk. “Oracle WebLogic Server for OCI allowed us to do this with a trusted partner that has a reputation for providing leading technology and support.”
WebLogic Server for OCI Environment
With an objective to be a leading aircraft maintenance and supply-chain management applications provider, Tsunami Tsolutions responded by using WebLogic Server for OCI to manage its environment. “We have a multi-region environment making use of multiple WebLogic application servers and Enterprise DB,” says, Falk. “A benefit of WebLogic is that we can easily add additional application servers for load balancing as we grow.”
More importantly, Tsunami Tsolutions needed to assess security gaps and minimize any risk to its infrastructure. “We use multiple regions for disaster recovery and takes advantage of fault tolerant features available in the Oracle Cloud. The primary is a redundant WebLogic Server for OCI application server architecture,” says Falk. “Traffic is routed by a load balancer to a set of Apache Web servers that perform traffic inspection prior to any requests reaching a set of WebLogic servers. The WebLogic application servers are used to run the main application and WebLogic Server is a significant component of our security model. The application’s database schema is run on Oracle Database Enterprise Edition in each region. We use Oracle Data Guard to provide data protection and disaster recovery support in our secondary region.”
The applications that Tsunami Tsolutions host is an ERP solution that manages engineering, maintenance, and supply-chain activities for airlines. “Many disciplines at our customers use and rely on the application,” says Falk. “The staff includes Airframe and Powerplant (A&P) mechanics, maintenance engineers, planners, and business staff. The system supplies regulatory reporting, safety critical maintenance and configuration information that is part of critical digital infrastructure for our customers.” Tsunami Tsolutions also sees potential opportunities to host applications for maintenance and repair organizations and aerospace manufacturing customers.
Results
Tsunami Tsolutions has been deploying their software on prem and on virtual machines for over a decade. “This experience allowed us to transition to the cloud relatively easily and sets the stage for us to provide even higher quality solutions to our customers at a better value,” says Falk. “Using WebLogic Server for OCI we can easily and quickly spin up environments to meet the quickly changing requirements of our development teams. Customer requests for environments for their own uses including training and integration testing are easily provisioned. Hosting mission critical applications and working with multiple airliners helped Tsunami Tsolutions develop a maintenance program that will lead customers to spend more time in the air than in the repair cycle. The beauty of OCI is it allows us to build what we need, when we need it.”
The product offerings are the foundation of Tsunami’s service business model in aviation and defense industry. “We strive to create the best aircraft maintenance solution in collaboration with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure,” says Falk. “The OCI platform’s comprehensive tools make it easy to build out new capabilities and perform health monitoring in a fraction of the time compared to if we did this ourselves. We benefit from Oracle’s experience in providing high up time, performant, flexible components that we can adapt and scale to our exact requirements.” This gave Tsunami Tsolutions a way to provide far better value to their customers than historically self-hosted approaches.
WebLogic Server for OCI provided the confidence for Mike Falk and the teams at Tsunami Tsolutions with access to 24×7 support. “Make sure to work with your Oracle reps to understand all options. There are an extensive array of offerings and it’s not always clear what choices offer the best value,” says Falk. “Our Oracle account representatives worked with us to make those choices clearer and helped us achieve our goals.”
About Tsunami Tsolutions
Since 2003, Tsunami Tsolutions has provided technology solutions to aerospace and defense companies of all sizes – from Fortune 100 OEMs and Operators to MROs and Start-Ups – to help them meet their business goals.