>>Welcome back to Boston. We're down in the Seaport. This is the Cube's coverage of red hat summit, 2022. I'm Dave ante with my co-host Paul Gillon, Sebastian Moes. Here he is a senior enterprise architect at bit mark Sebastian. Thanks for coming to the queue. Welcome to the United States. Good to have you in Boston. >>Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. It's uh, good to be on a live summit again after, uh, those, uh, testing two years >>Strange, isn't it? I mean, people kind of don't know what to do. Shake, bump this bump, >>And >>It's like, but where everybody wants to get out of the, the home, the lockdown and, you know, there's a real pent up demand. Tell us about bit mark. >>Um, bit mark is a managed service, uh, provider for, um, German statutory health insurance companies. Um, we manage about our software that we develop, um, is for about 85% of the, uh, German health insurance companies. Um, we have, uh, not only do we build the software, we also have data centers where we run software for, for our customers. Um, and it's everything that a health insurance company is, uh, mandatory to have to run their business, so to >>Speak what, what's the life of an enterprise architect like these days and how, how has it evolved? How has it changed? Uh, I mean, independent of the pandemic, will we get to that, but, but, you know, technology changes, organizational objectives of, of changed the public policy changes. How, how was your, the life of an enterprise architect changed? >>Um, well we, we have this, uh, big monolith JG E application that is, uh, run on JBO. Um, and now we want to, we want to change that into a more modern environment and using, uh, OpenShift to do that. Um, and yeah, there's, uh, there's a lot of reg regulatory things that come up that need to be, um, need to be figured in. Uh, there is new demands that our customers have that we need to figure out how to get to market, uh, and to be able to deliver software more faster and, you know, make the turnaround, uh, or have the turnaround be less. >>So kind of following the technology trends of going from big monolith to microservices and containerization and distributed data, the, the, >>The whole, the scalability, uh, you know, and quick turnaround, that is, that is the main focus. >>So the application that you're here talking about this pace to face in application, kind of a new market for you, a new direction, is this part of that overall shift to a more modular microservices based, uh, >>Structure? Um, well, we, we, we had applications like this before, but this is a new branch of it because, um, there's a strong drive in Germany too, for more digital digitalization. Um, and to have a new interacting model with the customer from basic things to more advanced features like medication services, vaccination status, um, managing your allergies, and that's an edit value that we want to give, uh, for our customers. So they can, their customers can benefit. >>I dunno what it's like in Germany, but in the United States used to call up the doctor and say, Hey, can I just, can we do this over the phone? No, you gotta come into the office. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and then of course, with the pandemic, it was like, you can't come into the office. It was just total flipping, cuz you could get 80% of what you needed done, and this is what your app enabled essentially. Right? >>Yeah. And, and some that and some added value as well, uh, to, to give, um, yeah, a benefit for using this, uh, online interaction for, um, the insured people, the, the patients, >>Essentially a digital gateway, including your data. Well, that's the other thing you can't get right. As a patient, you can't ever get through your data, it's like right. You >>Get it, but nobody else can >>Get it. <laugh> sometimes it's hard for you to get it cuz of again, in the United States, HIPAA and the, and the, and the requirements for privacy restrict often access to, to data, you have to go through hoops to get it. So, uh, so, so that experience is what you codified in your application. Yes. >>Um, yes, we have this, uh, unique data set of all health related information that people have to, uh, interact with in, in when they're sick or when they deal with their healthcare company. Um, and yeah, we wanna provide that data to the customers. So they're able to look at it. Um, there's also the, uh, electronic patient folder. You can say, um, where there's data like medical exams and stuff in there that they have access to. We provide that as well for, for our customers. Um, but, uh, yeah, it is about the interaction and that I can see when I put something in to my insurance company via email or the doctor put something in that I have the interaction on my phone and see when it was delivered, um, to them when it's active, when I get the money, stuff like that. >>Now this application is built on OpenShift, it's cloud native, uh, has all the constructs. How different was that for your development team from building something like you mentioned, the monolithic Jbos application that you already have, how different was building the cloud native, uh, >>Constructs. Um, it is quite different. I mean, it's building software, there's a lot of the same things involved. We've been, we've done agile and scrum, uh, before and so on, but we now have a, um, we're trying to be, or no, we're actually achieved to be faster in bringing this to market, um, deploying it in different data centers, doing it all automatically doing automatic tested, uh, right as part of the pipeline. Um, there's, there's a lot of huge steps that we can, we're able to take because of the technology. And that's why we did go there in the first place. That's why we said, okay, this is, it needs to be, uh, cloud native. >>You found that red, red hat had the full suite of tools that you needed. >>Um, yeah, I mean, we, there's some open source stuff that we've also integrated into the pipeline and everything, but there's a lot of, for example, we are using the, uh, three scale, uh, the API management from, from red hat, um, just to be able to, um, use the functionality that we build, that the customers can use the functionality in other products that they use that serve partner people, uh, uh, certain partner companies can, are able to use the services as well. >>Okay. So the, the, the dumb question is, but I'll ask it anyway is you could get this stuff for free Kubernetes, open source, you know, you get E Ks for free. Why didn't you just use the freebie? >>Why? Um, well, we're, we're on a scale with so many, um, uh, customers and data centers that we have to take that we do need support in, in a way. Um, and I usually say, so if we take software from whoever, whatever company it is, we're gonna break it. Yeah. <laugh> um, the, the, the transaction load that we have is, is quite, uh, intense and the performance that we need, uh, especially in the, in the business to business, um, market is, is so big that we do need the interaction with, with a vendor and that they're able to help us, uh, with certain escalations >>German Germans play rough. So <laugh>, um, you know, when a, when a vendor announces an innovation lab, I always go, okay, that's an EBC, like an executive briefing center. It's all gonna be used for sales. But my understanding is you actually leveraged the innovation labs. It was actually helpful in building this application. Is that true? >>I, I, I actually, uh, to part in the open innovation that we did with RA hat, and we knew we knew what we wanted to do. We, we knew the technology, we knew what we wanted to have done, um, but they helped us to, to get there step by step with the, with the tools they have, the, um, uh, you know, the ways of working and how this is, this is built. It really lends itself to, to build that step by step and worry about some stuff later and just do it. Um, yeah, piecemeal, >>This is Al is also a new market for you. It's your first real business to consumer facing application. That's that implies a very different approach to experience design, uh, to how you >>And performance yeah, >>Yeah. Perform exactly. Uh, how did your development team adapt to that? >>Um, well, there's, there's, you know, certain things that you build into the process, like integration, testing, automated integration testing, where the application just gets checked right after you check in your software. Um, we built in low testing to, you know, we have an idea of how many transactions per second, there will be. And so the low testing takes care of that as well. Um, and that is easier if you have a small piece of software instead of the whole monolith that we usually have. And so you, we are able to, to build it quicker and get it out quick in, in hours. >>How, how have you, um, accessed customer feedback, you do your, you know, net promoter score surveys, what, what's the been the customer reaction, your, your consumer >>Reaction? Um, they, they, I mean, I'm kind of the wrong guy to talk to, to, uh, about <laugh> to >>Talk about, come on the architected, the thing. >>Yeah, I, I did. And, and then the feedback has been, it's been very good so far, uh, and we are pretty happy with it. Uh, it's it's running, uh, very well. Um, I don't quite know how they got there. Our customer does, uh, you know, uh, questionnaires and, and stuff like that. Yeah. We have a, a different depart, uh, department to, to solicit feedback on that. But from what I hear, uh, it's, it's received very well. >>One of the cloud native features, I understand you used extensively with APIs, uh, for integrations. How are you making this application accessible to partners? What, I mean, what are you exposing? How will you use those APIs to enhance the value through, through an ecosystem of >>Partners? Um, well, we document them, um, and so they're out there to use. And as long as there's a, um, a security process within, um, em that we have in front of it, um, they're open source, um, APIs. So, uh, as I said, they have other programs that they wrote themselves or that they bought that are able to use those APIs, um, from an open API document. Uh, and, and just interact with that as long as the user is, uh, authenticated, they're able to, to get this data and show it in a different context and use it in a different context. >>Did you play golf? >>Um, I used to time ago, not anymore. >>Now, do you know what a Mulligan is? Yes, I did. Okay. If you had a Mulligan, you'd do this all over again. What, what would you do differently? >>Um, an interesting question. I, don't not sure. Um, you, you say you're smarter after, after you've done that. Yeah. And, and of course there's, uh, there's, there, there there's certainly were things that I didn't expect that would happen. Um, like how, how really you need to go modular and on, on everything and need your own resource and infrastructure. Um, because we came from a very centralized, um, uh, scope. We had a database that is a big DB database, um, and now we're going into smaller database and not decentralized a lot. Um, and that was something that the extent of it, I didn't expect, I, I wanted to use more smaller things. And, and that was something that we very quickly learned that no, we need really need to separate stuff out. >>Was that an organizational sort of mindset shift? Um, are you, are you rethinking or rearchitecting your data, um, your data architecture as part of that, or is that more, or is this more just sort of tactical for this app? >>Um, no, we're definitely need to need to do this because, uh, it really gets, um, or it really is a, um, something to handle a, a big pool of data is, is really a challenge or can be a challenge at times >>To scale, >>To, to, to scale that up. Right. Yeah. Um, and so, yeah, we are going to, to separate that out and double some data. That's, that's gonna be a thing it's gonna be more data at the end, but since it's scaled out and, and decentralized, that will >>Help a lot of organizations would say, well, we wanna keep it centralized monolithic, which is kind of a negative term, but I think it's true, uh, because it's more cost effective. We're not gonna duplicate things as much. We're gonna have roles that are dedicated, but it sounds like you're seeing a business advantage of distributing those functions, decentralizing those functions to a >>Extent, right, right. Because if you, if you have a centralized Mon monolith, then it, I, yeah, it might be negative, but it really is. It's a good working software. Um, but to have that, it's, um, it's really hard to release new features and new, new, you know, even buck fixes it, it just takes time. It, it is, uh, uh, a time consuming process. And if you have it decentralized and in smaller packages, you can just do, Afix run it through the pipeline, have the testing done and just put that out within hours. >>How important was it to bit more to build this application on an open source platform? >>Um, the open source didn't come so much in our perspective of things, or we didn't consider it that much. It was just, this is there. This works. We have a good support behind that. Um, we are, our, our coach is not open sourced, then we're not going to anytime soon tell about it. Um, we're actually thinking about having parts that might be, uh, a kind of open source dish, uh, just in the healthcare community kind of thing. Um, but, uh, yeah, no, that didn't F factor in as much. Um, it was just something that we had >>Experienced another architecture question. So you've got the application stack, right. If I can use that term, although application development tools that you build use to build the application, and then you've got the data that the application needs, how are those architected, are they sort of separate entities? Are they coming together? >>Um, we used to have, we used to have, uh, uh, data, um, net a, a, um, an MDA approach, a J hue. Um, so they're very strong connected. That is, there's just in the database. There are models and entities that we use in the, in the JBO. Um, and well, we're still gonna use hibernate to, to, uh, to do the G GPA, but it's, uh, yeah, it's something that needs to be restructured because it just takes a lot of resources to manage data from different parts of the application, bringing them together, um, that will, will need to change. >>And what about new data sources? If I came to and say, Sebastian, I need to inject new data into the, the app. I need to get this to how, how, how difficult or, or fast easy is that, >>Uh, now in the, in the world now, or actually we wanna >>Compare, can you compare before and now, I mean, it wouldn' have to happen before would be >>Like, in the time in the timeframe it's, it's, it's not, it's hard to say. I mean, but if you have a project right now, we're talking, uh, months, um, like a year to, to get it done, get it tested, and then it even takes, um, up to a month to before it's out to every customer. Yeah. The rollout process takes some time. Yeah. Um, and we're planning on, or we, we developed the new, uh, the new software we developed in a couple of months. Uh, and then it is deployed and then it's in production and it's in production for all the customers that wanted to use it for now. I mean, it's not deployed to all customers yet, uh, because they need to adapt it and in their way. Um, but they have it, you know, it's, it's right there. It's deployed. Yeah. When we fix it, it's in a, you know, hours, couple days it's out and it's out in production, in different data centers for different customers. >>And we've come full circle the life of a, of an architect. It's, uh, it sounds like it's much better today. Sebastian, thanks so much for coming to the cube. Appreciate your time and your insights. And thank you for watching. Keep it right there that you watching the Cube's coverage of red hat summit, 2022 from Boston, Dave Valante for Paul Gillon, we'll be right back.