First Quantum Minerals Limited
First Quantum Minerals Limited (FQML) is a metals and mining company operating in eight countries around the globe. They are one of the top ten copper producers. As a very good conductor of electricity, Copper is essential for power generation, transmission and distribution and is also used in telecommunications and electronics.
FQML was established in 1996 in Zambia and now operate six mines across four continents, mainly producing copper but also quantities of gold and zinc. As well as focusing on delivering shareholder value, FQML supports initiatives to help local communities with work, homes, conservation, and water sustainability.
With a geographically diversified portfolio to manage, FQML needed to integrate their ‘source of truth’ HR system (Lumesse) into their existing IT estate (Active Directory, Payroll and other employee-based systems).
Affinus were engaged by FQML to design, build and develop integration using on-premise BizTalk Server 2010 Standard.
After many successful years using BizTalk 2010 standard FQML migrated BizTalk 2016 Enterprise and migrated the HR system to Workday.
Originally, FQML engaged Affinus for their BizTalk consultancy to design, build, deploy and support their original HR BizTalk integration solution. To keep costs down and to prove the capabilities of BizTalk within the organisation, this was achieved using a single application on BizTalk 2010 Standard and without the need for SDLK environments.
FQML re-engaged Affinus in 2018 to upgrade, migrate and implement BizTalk 2016 Enterprise and to implement the new HR system Workday into their current integrations.
The project included:
FQML needed the ability to deliver HR data to different systems including Active Directory, Payroll, Access control and Training Systems.
Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) via VSTS in the Cloud
Before development could begin on BizTalk 2016, it was necessary to establish a software development lifecycle (SDLC). This included the installation and configuration of BizTalk 2016, once installed this would enable future interfaces to be developed and delivered in a consistent and quality-controlled environment, with proper release management and version control.
Migration
Affinus were required to upgrade and separate the single monolith BizTalk 2010 application and migrate into individual system-based BizTalk 2016 Enterprise applications.
Workday Integration
Implementing BizTalk 2016 enabled FQML to take advantage of the Microsoft Azure platform and create a hybrid BizTalk / Azure implementation particularly making use if the inbuilt Logic Apps Workday connector.
Support
Affinus continue to support the live system and assist with the design and development of new interfaces. An integral part of the Affinus support offering is the proactive monitoring of the BizTalk estate with partner product BizTalk360. Affinus support customers with installing, configuring, and training in BizTalk360.
Affinus needed to build out and migrate from the original BizTalk 2010 environment to BizTalk 2016. Next came a process of capturing the design requirements for the new HR system Workday.
The software development environments were then scoped out to enable the delivery of the CI and CD processes.
The Workday interface was then added to the current solution with as little impact as possible, this was relatively easy as Affinus had originally created a best practice BizTalk solution using a canonical data model.
If you’d like to know more about our work at First Quantum Minerals, or how we could support your project, give us a call.
Call our team on 020 3051 1232 or email us at contact@affinus.com.
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