We Are IT | Middleware

The ITS Middleware team supports several key FSU technologies, including the F5 application that hosts university enterprise systems and CAS, which powers the main FSU sign in page for myFSU Portal, Canvas and dozens of other university applications. In the years to come, the team sees themselves continuing to bridge the gap between the hardware and application developers, transitioning more of their work to containers and the cloud and perhaps inventing a real-life version of J.A.R.V.I.S. to automate system maintenance at FSU. Just maybe…

Who makes up the team and what role do they perform?

Middleware’s main role is bridging the gap between the ITS hardware infrastructure team and the application developers. We do this through the support of several application technologies. We operate the F5 application delivery controller that provides the frontend for many of our enterprise applications. The F5 provides Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) offloading and bridging, load balancing and web application firewall protection. We are also able to create custom iRules, or scripts, to supplement the functionality of a backend host or application. Using iRules, we can redirect traffic based on the application layer and not just the physical layer. As an example, incoming traffic to a specific URL can be custom routed to any other domain or URL.

The team also manages several different web application servers that host Java and Coldfusion applications for the ITS Application Development Services team. One of the services we support is the Java web infrastructure used for the myFSU Portal. The developers created a Java application that feeds the myFSU Portal with the page content and user-specific information collected from FSU information systems. We help make sure it runs optimally, even under high traffic during drop/add for students. Another service we support is a custom Java application server for many other services used by myFSU Portal and the FSU community.

Our team also supports CAS, the main login page everyone uses to gain access to myFSU Portal and Canvas. The CAS servers are used to provide user authentication to over 200 applications. Middleware works closely with the ITS Identity Management team to support this service.

Middleware also supports the Automic automation platform infrastructure, which is used to automate many of the PeopleSoft functions related to students, faculty and staff, such as financials and student loans. We work closely with the Automic functional team on upgrades and resolving challenges that come up in operations.

Middleware also manages the support infrastructure that the developers need for their development environment. This includes services like Jenkins for code deployments, a Git repository for code versioning and a code artifact repository. We also can do load testing using the Oracle Application Testing Suite.

Who makes up the team and what role do they perform?

The team consists of Olivier Begon, Rez Haque, Nicholas Voran and Clyde Bumgardner. Everyone on the team is capable of servicing the technologies we support, but we do have subject matter experts.

Olivier is our CAS expert. He has a background in development and was instrumental in upgrading the developer’s support infrastructure. He is currently working on our technologies related to the adoption of containers for all our applications and was successfully able to upgrade our CAS system to use containers.

Rez Haque is our F5 and Automic expert. He manages the upgrades and operations of both platforms. He is also currently working with containers and driving the implementation of an ITS container registry service.

Nicholas Voran is the team’s architect. He plays a key role in finding solutions to problems and opportunities to innovate. He is currently working on our container and cloud strategies.

Clyde Bumgardner is our web application firewall and application server expert. He oversees the security of our applications through the development and tuning of security system policies. He also oversees the success of our vulnerability management program during quarterly operating system updates. The ColdFusion service is currently one of his projects to containerize.

What are your team’s current projects?

The team is currently working on integrating container technology and migrating our applications to containers. A container is like a virtual machine but at the application layer. It is a package of software that contains all the necessary elements for the application to run and can be easily moved from host to host or from on premises to the cloud. Containers also simplify the patching of application vulnerabilities and reduce the overhead needed for maintenance.

A new project we will be starting soon is the migration of CAS to the cloud. The team has been performing proof of concept work in Amazon Web Services and has a working model.

What is the most rewarding project this year?

The team has really enjoyed working on containers. They have provided an opportunity for the team to learn how to architect new solutions and overcome challenges in getting a container version of the application to work. Containers have also provided more opportunities to collaborate with the ITS Linux and Research Computing Center teams to establish a container registry for ITS and further develop our container skills. Containers have also allowed us to work more effectively in the cloud, since application technologies are now heavily adopting containers.

What is your favorite part of working in ITS?

The team appreciates the transparency in the culture for recognizing people and teams for their accomplishments. This is not common in other organizations, and it is much appreciated.

What is the biggest challenge your team is facing?

The biggest challenge the team faces is being able to manage the time between the work required to maintain daily operations and the time that is necessary to innovate to continue to grow and progress the organization. Many other teams also face this challenge, and we have been trying to share some of the research we have done by scheduling meetings with other teams to help facilitate knowledge sharing.

If your team was to invent one piece of technology as a team what would it be?

We would invent a non-evil artificial intelligence (AI). Friendlier than SkyNet in Terminator and probably more comparable to J.A.R.V.I.S. from Ironman. We would leverage the AI to automate the maintenance of the services and applications we support so that we can focus on learning new technology. The AI would be able to automatically patch and resolve any security vulnerabilities, and automatically heal the service should a problem occur.

In five years, what do you see your team working on?

Middleware will continue to bridge the gap between the hardware and application layer. More of the work will transition to the support of containers, container orchestration and the cloud.