A fortune 500 enterprise and one of the United States’ largest utility companies, PPL employs more
than 6,500 people, supporting over 2.5 million customers with essential energy.
The challenge
PPL Corporation asked Leverage Technologies to help them solve an ongoing upgrade issue.
The old version of webMethods they were using was no longer in support with Software AG,
meaning PPL incurred extended support costs, while parts of their system could no longer integrate
up to date versions of Linux Red Hat and Windows. Critically, this meant they could not achieve the
levels of encryption required by their strict IT security protocols.
Unfortunately, the skills to address this challenge were no longer present in-house. And important
knowledge and insight into the original implementation had also been lost.
The solution
Using our extensive webMethods expertise, Leverage Technologies identified and uncovered the
missing implementation insights, filling knowledge gaps, identifying issues and recommending an
optimised, low-risk upgrade strategy.
Our specialists worked as part of the in-house team, adapting to uncertainties as they arose and
flexing our process to fit seamlessly within PPL’s existing Scrum/Agile project approach.
The outcome
Our multi-practice team completed 48 features containing over 197 stories and 1192 tasks. We
upgraded and tested webMethods installations across five separate PPL Corporation businesses,
including development, QA and production systems.
“We deployed a big scary upgrade and most of the company was completely unaware. When
engaging in an upgrade for support purposes, the business users not being aware that anything even
changed is the ultimate measure of success”.
Additionally, our team provided all the required training environments and document libraries,
ensuring productivity was not unduly affected by the upgraded user experience.
PPL were able to reduce support costs and crucially, bring their encryption levels up to the required
standard.
“Overall, the project was a challenge from many perspectives. Leverage Technologies utilized their
expertise to make the process smooth and controlled. It was a pleasure working with such a
professional and capable team.”