Enron Broadband Services
Lead Analyst/Developer MediaCast Service application — Dec ‘00 to
Apr ‘01
Enron Broadband Services was all about trying to sell excess broadband capacity on demand. If a customer wanted to stream content to the internet, EBS would sell the server capacity and the bandwidth to facilitate the broadcast.
There were deals in the works for on-demand content like Corporate Minutes and training; live streaming content such as a music concert; and scheduled content. EBS’ blockbuster deal was to be the Blockbuster Video deal, which fell through.
The software I was working on was ultimately what caused EBS to come crashing down along with the rest of Enron. Not what I was working on specifically (which was just a small cog in the wheel) but the larger effort on which several dozen people were frantically working. The EBS brass was selling the capabilities of the service before the software to facilitate the services was available. Alas, their goals were too lofty and they ran out of time, especially after the Blockbuster deal fell through.
I was responsibe for the architecture and development of a distributed workflow application whose users could be located anywhere across the globe. The software captured media service contract data as well as technical details for service activation. Both customer service and network operating center personnel were users of this application.
Here is what I did:
- Gathered requirements for, designed, and developed a Lotus Notes/Domino Service Activation/Deal Launch application capturing initial deal contract data and also the technical data for implementing the Internet broadcast deal, including general contract terms as well as multi-tiered service level agreements.
- Developed the back-end Oracle data model and schema and implemented the middleware to facilitate migration of the contract data to Oracle
