DaimlerChrysler automates Java app deployment

Software Magazine, Spring, 2002 by Elizabeth U. Harding

Technology, speed, and flexibility made DaimlerChrysler a driving force behind progress in the global automotive industry. With a car-making lineage that began in 11334 with the manufacture of the first automobile, DaimlerChrysler today has over 400,000 employees and reaps close to $160 billion in revenues.

To stay on top and respond quickly to shifting market demands, DaimlerChrysler is constantly revising and improving its methods for gathering, manipulating, analyzing, and circulating data.

"We have been moving for quite a while now toward Web-based applications," says Rick Rose, senior manager of cost and investment systems, DaimlerChrysler Technology Center, Auburn Hills, Mich. "In the finance area, for instance, we have a demand for high performance and heavy-duty kinds of applications. We determined that we needed to build thicker-client applications using Java as the foundation."

Deploying client-side Java applications to large numbers of users was an issue, however. After developers built an application, it got packaged onto a CD, and people had to physically load it on desktops and servers. "We often ended up having problems with the applications because another group hit the same servers and loaded different pieces of software that was shared and was on a different version," says Rose. "We had to go back out and correct these problems.

To improve deployment, Rose says, his team opted for DeployDirector, a Java deployment tool from Sitraka Software, Toronto. DeployDirector lets DaimlerChrysler make quick changes and provide functionality rapidly to customers. And it's all done electronically.

"There was constant handholding in the old environment," says Rose. "With the new environment, every time someone logs on to our application, [DeployDirector] checks what is on this person's desktop and automatically brings down the latest version of software if something has changed. We no longer have situations where we have software that has been taken out or overlapped by someone else."

DeployDirector saves both time and network bandwidth through class-level differencing, Rose says. This feature allows administrators to deploy only the changed components of an upgrade instead of a new version of the entire application. Not having to drag an entire application across the network alleviates bandwidth issues, Rose says.

In addition, DeployDirector does not require software updates to be deployed to all users at the same time, another feature that helps the network. "Only when the user logs on does the system check what he needs," says Rose. "It's not all done at once. This is much better for the network."

According to Rose, DaimlerChrysler has so far deployed six applications that are accessed by about 4,000 users.