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University of California Technical Presentation November 15, 2006

University of California Technical Presentation November 15, 2006. Presented by: Bill Docherty Senior Director, Product Management. SumTotal Technical Infrastructure Overview. Architecture and System Requirements System Integration and Administration (SIA) Security (SCR)

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University of California Technical Presentation November 15, 2006

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  1. University of California Technical Presentation November 15, 2006 Presented by: Bill Docherty Senior Director, Product Management

  2. SumTotal Technical Infrastructure Overview • Architecture and System Requirements • System Integration and Administration (SIA) • Security (SCR) • Support/Upgrades

  3. SumTotal Architecture and System Requirements 1.1 - To open the discussion, please handout a diagram, describing the system’s architecture indicating each component’s location with respect to a corporate firewall.

  4. SumTotal Architecture and System Requirements 1.2 Response: The SumTotal platform supports MS SQL 2000/Windows 2000 and Oracle/Unix environments 1.3 Response: SumTotal’s robust role-based security model provides the ability to enable/disable features by role without jeopardizing application integrity

  5. SumTotal Architecture and System Requirements Con. 1.4 Response: The SumTotal platform is a 100% thin/web client based application that is idea for low bandwidth environments 1.5 Response: The SumTotal platform leverages industry standard database platforms such as SQL Server 2000 and Oracle and therefore supports the use of any third party tool for archiving and backup 1.6 Response: The SumTotal application has been developed with object oriented principles in mind but is not 100% object oriented

  6. SumTotal Architecture and System Requirements Con. 1.7 Response: The SumTotal platform is based on open industry database standards and principles with a well documented relational database structure. Communication between the web server and database server tiers occurs via OLEDB/ODBC with calls to database stored procedures and no embedded SQL. SumTotal “domains” capability supports multiple sites/instances in a single centralized database. The SumTotal database supports the use of third-party data archiving and backup tools. 1.8 Response: Same response as question #1.7 above

  7. SumTotal Architecture and System Requirements Con. 1.9 Response: The SumTotal application is developed in ASP (active server pages) with server side JavaScript. The system also makes extensive use of database stored procedures. The application source code can be modified using any tool that supports editing ASP pages. SumTotal happens to use MS Visual Studio for development internally but this tool is not required. In addition, SumTotal exposes a broad set of SOAP-based web services. The only areas of compiled code that cannot be customized are several COM objects that control system security functions such as providing secure access to online content. 1.10 Response: The SumTotal application can be supported by one or more web servers and one or more physical database servers, each which can be monitored independently and tuned to optimize application performance.

  8. SumTotal Architecture and System Requirements Con. 1.11 Response: The SumTotal application does not require the pre-installation of any software components on client workstations other than a browser for most modes of the application. The Report Manager component (which is typically used by a small audience) does require the use of the MS Office Web Components control, which does require the use of IE and Windows. In addition, individuals that will upload content must support the download of a Java applet to support the upload process. 1.12 Response: SumTotal 7.2 is the current shipping version of the SumTotal suite. The application is developed in ASP (active server pages) with server side JavaScript. The system also makes extensive use of database stored procedures.

  9. SumTotal Architecture and System Requirements Con. 1.13 Response: No, the SumTotal application does not use a software engine or “black box” 1.14 Response: SumTotal has developed an intermediary language and tool named “Spanner” that allows for the creation of optimized database stored procedures for multiple database platforms in reduced time. Ownership of the application source code remains with SumTotal but does not impact the University of California’s right to customize the code to meet their needs. The application source can be maintained in escrow at a customer’s request

  10. SumTotal System Integration & Administration (SIA) 2.1 Response: SumTotal's database repository is normalized in database tables. As a result most data is stored within individual database fields and not in XML documents. However there is a facility within our LMS and LCMS that enables customers to create their own metadata fields and store them as XML in the database. 2.2 Response: All user interface text elements are stored in resource files to facilitate localization in multiple languages and can be easily changed by customers as desired. The system also supports customer defined meta-tags for various objects in the system such as learning activities and TotalLCMS projects, courses and assets.

  11. SumTotal System Integration & Administration (SIA) 2.3 Response: The SumTotal platform provides strong support for third party content, authoring tools and virtual meeting products. With support for any content produced to the AICC/SCORM standards in addition to out-of-the-box connectors for Breeze, Centra, WebEx and Interwise, SumTotal is unsurpassed in content support. 2.4 Response: The SumTotal platform is highly scalable with customer implementations with more than 300,000 active users and 4,000 concurrent users. The SumTotal platform easily provides the capability to support 20,000 licenses.

  12. SumTotal System Integration & Administration (SIA) Con. 2.5 Response: SumTotal has a well defined batch integration process to import data from HRIS/Payroll/Personnel systems on a regularly scheduled basis. This batch integration interface supports importing flat files containing user, organization and job/role information and is a standard aspect of just about every SumTotal implementation. This batch integration process has been implemented for the University of Michigan to automatically keep users, organizations and user/organization mappings up to date in TotalLMS 2.6 Response: With customers spanning just about every vertical industry, SumTotal can run into a range of implementation challenges. One example is with the delivery of learning content to low bandwidth environments, which is typical in the retail industry. SumTotal ran into this challenge at one of the largest grocery chains in the country and worked collaboratively with the customer to develop a remote content solution that ultimately became a part of the SumTotal core product offering.

  13. SumTotal System Integration & Administration (SIA) Con. 2.7 Response: SumTotal will provide an example of generating a Microsoft Access based report to demonstrate the openness of the SumTotal database and the ease with which 3rd party reporting tools can be used.

  14. SumTotal Security (SCR) 3.1 Response: The SumTotal application supports Microsoft IIS running on the Windows 2000 or 2003 server operating system and supports Integrated Windows Authentication between the client browser and IIS. If Active Directory Services is installed on the server and the browser is compatible with the Kerberos V5 authentication protocol, both the Kerberos V5 protocol and the challenge/response protocol are used. 3.2 Response: The SumTotal system provides a standard application login interface that requires that a user enter a valid login/password combination to access the system. In addition, the system can be implemented with other authentication mechanisms such as NT Authentication, LDAP, Active Directory and Siteminder. One a user is successfully authenticate the application is able to determine the users data access permissions based upon their association to security roles, audiences, domains and organizations. SumTotal has not had a customer report of a user being able to access data in the system that violates their access permissions in the system.

  15. SumTotal Security (SCR) 3.3 Response: The SumTotal system does not utilize root or system administration privileges to accomplish application features/tasks. 3.4 Response: The standard application does not use LDAP to implement system security. System security is controlled and maintained using the security roles defined within the system. The SumTotal system can be implemented with LDAP for user authentication and is a standard aspect of the product implementation.

  16. SumTotal Security (SCR) Con. 3.5 Response: The SumTotal platform complies with CFR 21/Part 11 which is an FDA guidelines that covers the required auditing of training records to be able to prove the validity of that data. This results in the maintenance of a complete audit trail for user, learning activity and learning activity roster records in the system. 3.6 Response: The SumTotal platform leverages the industry standard Microsoft IIS web server platforms and as such third party tools such as WebTrends can be easily used to monitor application usage and traffice. The WebTrends tool is used by the SumTotal Systems datacenter to analyze usage traffic by hosted customers.

  17. SumTotal Security (SCR) Con. 3.7 Response: The database login information utilized by the SumTotal web server to access the SumTotal database is configured by a system administration configuration setting and is stored in an encrypted format. 3.8 Response: Response to each of the OWASP Top Ten is on the three subsequent slides

  18. OWASP Top Ten Security Vulnerabilities

  19. OWASP Top Ten Security Vulnerabilities

  20. OWASP Top Ten Security Vulnerabilities

  21. SumTotal Security (SCR) Con. 3.9 Response: SumTotal does 3.10 Response: SumTotal typically releases a new major or minor application version every six months and the goal of each release is to support new server/client operating system versions, browser versions and application/database patch releases. In addition, SumTotal has a dedicated performance and compatibility testing lab where every attempt is made to support the latest versions of software platforms for existing SumTotal releases based upon customer demand.

  22. SumTotal Security (SCR) Con. 3.11 Response: SumTotal does not typically require remote access to customer server environments to address issues but there are times where having such access can assist in resolving an issue in a more timely manner. In such instances such remote access is controlled by the customer. In instances where the application is hosted by SumTotal, all remote access to the customer environment by SumTotal occurs via CheckPoint SecuRemote authentication. 3.12 Response: For most customers the data stored in the SumTotal platform is not considered restricted personnel information. The SumTotal platform does support the use of SSL to encrypt all application data traffic that flows between application users and the SumTotal web server.

  23. SumTotal Security (SCR) Con. 3.13 Response: SumTotal Systems currently has over 100 people dedicated to some aspect of customer support in our global organization. Our Standard Support program operates on a queue basis where the next available engineer is assigned a new support request. Issues can be escalated directly to Customer Support Management or through your SumTotal Account Executive or Professional Services Project Manager. Escalated issues are elevated to SumTotal executive management as necessary (no less than weekly) and there is a dedicated Customer Advocacy function to assist in the tracking and resolution of particularly important or complex customer issues. 3.14 Response: The SumTotal platform leverages the industry standard Microsoft IIS web server platforms and as such third party tools such as WebTrends can be easily used to monitor application usage and traffice. The WebTrends tool is used by the SumTotal Systems datacenter to analyze usage traffic by hosted customers.

  24. SumTotal Support/Upgrades 4.1 Response: Product support is initiated by a request from a customer file via phone or over the web. The request comes into our Tier 1 representative, whose primary responsibility is to log the issue into our ticket tracking system and perform a basic level of troubleshooting. If the issue is not immediately resolved, it is assigned to a Tier 2 representative with functional expertise in the product area in question. At any point, the support engineer is empowered to escalate the issue to other functions within our organization to facilitate swift resolution. 4.2 Response: SumTotal’s recommended approach for extending the applications features is to leverage our SOAP-based web services interface. This model abstracts customers from database schema and application changes in future release. SumTotal provides detailed web services documentation and can provided tailored training and consulting on the user of web services to meet specific customer needs.

  25. SumTotal Support/Upgrades 4.3 • Response: Three functional shortcomings in the current shipping product are scheduled to be addressed in a release in 2007. They are: • The ability to assign required training to an audience • The ability for a manager to define a delegate or proxy • The ability to define email attachments for notifications

  26. University of CA Technical Presentation, November 15, 2006 Presented by: Bill Docherty, Senior Director, Product Management

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