| Electronic
Application Integration |
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Organizations have grown their
IT solutions over decades adapting various technologies
internally. Though the solution has been adequate
to deliver internal business processes, it has
become a challenge in the Internet age to integrate
the same with emerging technologies and continuously
deliver value in response to ever-accelerating
business needs.
Legacy Infrastructure has cumbersome; however
migrating to new platforms is also a risky proposition
in the absence of ready replacements. Organizations
need to find a intermediate route to adapt to
new technology painlessly while retaining the
existing organizational IT assets including infrastructure
and data.
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| The
Solution |
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The solution lies in providing
an interface between the existing applications
to new platforms and solutions leveraging the
data in the legacy systems while building new
interfaces and delivery channels to demonstrate
value addition to the business. The focus has
to be on the business, in creating business value,
on professionally and holistically managing a
portfolio of assets at the organization's disposal
and in building those assets, with the goal being
to yield the biggest value for the organization
as a whole. There needs to be a rebirth in programmatic
thinking about strategy, planning and execution
at the enterprise level.
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| Compusol
EAI Solutions Framework |
COMPUSOL
has devised its EAI Solutions framework based integrating
technology with business needs to achieve measurable
business value to our customers. The Framework enables
us to demonstrate Holistic integration of Business
with technology in order to obtain a higher saving
to the customer while showing tangible results through
business integration.
Infrastructure Centric
EAI Solutions need to integrate with the existing
Infrastructure and leverage from the existing data
and business rules. There mat be instances of Message
Queue implementations, Infrastructure and Application
Adapters that may be redeployed to maximize returns.
Legacy Infrastructure would pose further challenges
in terms availability of support from the original
vendors and the "openness" of the existing solution.
Application Affinity
EAI solutions need to possess a degree of "Application
Affinity" to bring about appropriate transition
from Legacy to contemporary. Application adapter
development includes operational control and monitoring
interfaces, common logging and audit facilities,
access to system and message metadata (as well as
the ability to extend this metadata) and a clear
method for including the adapter and its generated
metadata in the development context. On average,
users of EAI systems utilize 2-3 pre-built adapters,
but one year into the implementation, they are found
to have five or more systems, implying most deployed
application adapters are custom.
Data Centric
EAI solutions using existing data and extending
the same to new platforms and solutions need to
be integrated in the new metadata to present a unified
platform for use in various applications. Data Integration
remains a major challenge as it remains business
critical and risk prone. By appropriate planning
and technology, the risks can be mitigated to ensure
that 24/7 availability and smooth transition is
managed. |
| The
Methodology |
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Phase One: Structure the
Architectural Transformation
Phase One takes two things into account. It takes
the Inventory of the current situation and infrastructure
and the Objectives desired by the customer to
achieve business needs. Secondly, it accounts
for the influences on business environment on
the objectives. Phase One Activities: · Identify
Sponsors in both Business and IT · Setup Architecture
Team comprising of members from users, IT and
COMPUSOL. · Define Formal Charter for the Architecture
Team. – o Objective o List participants, Job Functions,
Skills, Roles in the team o Plan for Development
and Implementation Process with In-process verifications
o Exit Criteria
Phase Two: Establish Process and Structure
This Phase is broken into three Stages:
- Establish the Principles and Best Practices
for Decision-making based on Share Holder expectations,
Organization Policies, Information Policies
and Technology Policies, and the traceability
thereon.
- Establish the Process to define the Tasks
and the baselines to achieve the objective of
the enterprise architecture.
- Define the process and application integration
that must occur between the enterprise architecture
and many of the other business and IT processes
within the enterprise.
Phase Three: Deliver Value
It would be a challenge for IT managers to actually
have a method for ensuring that their projects deliver
tangible value to the business, and do so in a fairly
short period of time.
Our framework has determined two metrics to assess
value.
- Process Metric –It measures the success of
a particular iteration of the project and how
it matched with the game plan for it devised
in phase one.
- Enterprise Key Performance Indicators – The
metrics for the actual process and deliverables
and the impact they have on whatever global
metric the enterprise uses to determine growth
in business value. It may be financial efficiency
or business effectiveness--how is it reducing
time to market, or increasing the movement of
information, or number of repeat customers,
ROI, etc.
The bottom line to a successful architecture strategy
is to think about enterprise architecture, business
goals than as purely a technology problem. The Framework,
ultimately, aims to improve the business by employing
Information Technology. |
| Technologies |
Compusol
has been successful in poling together its expertise
in various domains and technologies to offer comprehensive
solutions to bring about a unified framework to
deliver information on Web-based technologies.
Platforms
Compusol has had extensive experience in Internet
Technologies to build integrated solutions with
Legacy infrastructure. Some of the platforms that
we support are:
XML
XML has come to be known as the “Lingua Franca”
of B2B integration. It has become a necessity to
manage data interoperability across enterprises
and platforms. Compusol has been working on XML
since 1999 and has developed considerable standardization
on the same.
EDI
One of the options to integrate enterprises would
be through EDI where standards-based electronic
documents generated could be employed to transfer
information. The introduction of XML-based has further
extended the possibilities in this methodology.
Compusol supports most commonly used EDI standards
such as X.12, EDIFACT, ebXML and BizTalk. We have
considerable experience in Sterling Commerce Gentran
and BizTalk Server on the implementation front.
SOAP and Web Services
Web Service is any component that:
- is network-based, modular, self-contained,
self-describing,
- offers platform and implementation neutral
services,
- conforms to a set of open standards and specifications,
and
- leverages a common infrastructure for description,
discovery and invocation.
Web Services offer an evolution of the Internet-standards
based distributed computing model, an evolution
in the way of architecting, designing, implementing,
and deploying e-business solutions. Web Services
foster a change from tightly coupled, rigid, and
static solutions that focus on implementation technologies,
to loosely coupled, flexible, and dynamic solutions
focusing on dynamic business models, enabling dynamic
integration for both new and existing applications
with decreased human interaction.
Companies are experiencing an explosion of interactions
both internally and externally. This results in
an increasing need for dynamic business relationships
that drive companies to use reusable, flexible,
adaptive software assets for the creation of their
e-business solutions. What benefits do Web Services
offer dynamic e-business? From a technical standpoint,
Web Services offer:
- easier development, service, and upgrade
of solutions
- reuse of existing, proven assets
- reduced dependence on implementation specifics
From a business standpoint,
Web Services allow business to:
- concentrate development efforts on computing
assets that drive revenue
- out-source services that provide no business
value-add
- evolve business models and relationships
as necessary
- reduce costs of internal integration and
of testing emerging market opportunities
- establish interactions with marketplaces
more efficiently
- deliver business functions to a broader set
of customers and partners, if appropriate
COMPUSOL
has been conducting considerable research in
application of Web Services in the Enterprise.
COMPUSOL brings its best practices and solutions
in Web Services to ensure higher Interoperability
and ROI into the solutions.
Message Queue Middleware (MQM)
MQM provides reliable, asynchronous, and loosely
coupled communication services. Philosophically,
MQM represents the realization by major software
vendors of the need for ubiquitous message queue-based
communication services. MQM can be successful where
other forms of communication could not because it
satisfies four important conditions:
- No simultaneous connection is required between
sender and receiver
- There are extremely strong request and response
delivery guarantees even when communication
does not occur simultaneously between sender
and receiver
- Requests and responses can be translated
and reformatted en route between senders and
receivers
- The business models behind major MQM products
are designed to promote adoption by the independent
software vendors (ISVs) that build the majority
of packaged applications.
In fact, for any alternative to MQM to work, it
must satisfy the same conditions.
Communicating Via MQM
With MQM, applications communicate with each other
as a series of messages. While in transit between
senders and receivers, MQM providers keep messages
in holding areas called queues — hence the name
‘message queuing middleware’. Queues protect messages
from being lost in transit and provide a place for
receivers to look for messages when they are ready.
Applications make requests by sending messages to
queues associated with the intended receiver. If
senders expect responses in return, they usually
include the name of a response queue (that the sender
must create in advance) in all requests that they
make to the receiver.
MQM offers a number of benefits to developers:
- Applications can use MQM providers to send
messages and continue processing regardless
of whether the receiving application is running
or reachable over the network (this is one of
the two primary reasons that MQM is loosely
coupled — connections are not required to communicate);
the receiver may be unreachable because of a
network problem, or be naturally disconnected,
as in the case of mobile users who only connect
periodically to the network
- Applications may be unavailable because they
have failed, or because they only run during
certain hours; when the network becomes available
(or the receiving application is ready to process
requests) MQM providers will deliver any waiting
messages
- MQM providers use well understood techniques
such as disk-based logging and error detection/correction
protocols to make sure that messages do not
get lost in transit, delivered out of order
or delivered more than once; in other words,
MQM provides the level of reliability required
by mission-critical applications (arguably this
makes MQM the ‘reliable, loosely coupled’ approach
to communication)
- MQM providers can also route messages efficiently
around failed machines and network bottlenecks;
administrators can configure redundant communications
paths to ensure availability.
Perhaps most important, messages typically encapsulate
requests fully and do not require shared state between
sender and receiver (this is the other primary reason
why MQM is loosely coupled). Developers can use
MQM providers, along with protocol and message translators,
to bridge between dissimilar application architectures.
As long as the sending application can produce a
message using one MQM provider — and the receiver
can accept a message with another MQM provider —
it is a straight-forward process (for the first
time) to convert between wire protocols and message
formats.
COMPUSOL currently supports MQM products from Microsoft
( MSMQ), IBM ( MQSeries) and Tibco ( Rendezvous)
Directory Services and Meta
Directory Services
Most companies recognize that installing, using,
and maintaining distributed applications represents
a cost to their bottom line. Most ongoing costs,
such as those associated with daily data backups
and installing new users, are fairly easy to understand
and predict. But other less obvious costs include:
- Client Configuration
- Server Configuration
- Single Sign-on
- User Information and Management.
- Lack of Inter-Application Awareness and
integration
Whether the cost is tangible or simply an opportunity
cost, each of the areas above contributes in some
way to total cost of ownership (TCO).
Solution Requirements
To lower TCO, organization need applications that
more aware of the environment in which they are
deployed, sense and adapt to changes, and share
information about themselves with other applications
to enable synergy. Organizations require the following
characteristics
- Applications should be engineered to take
advantage of standards-based directory services
to store, use, and share information about users,
infrastructure and applications, and thereon,
provide managed services.
- Applications need ways to interact synergistically
with other components in their environment and
prioritize Quality of Services to users.
- Application Environments should be able to
determine the Security applicable to different
users and provide resources and applications
accordingly through a “Single Sign-on”
- The Environment should be able to integrate
multiple applications such together to synchronize
and manage users from a single point.
COMPUSOL offers Integrated Directory and Meta-directory
services on various platforms, standardized around
the X.500 and LDAP standards. COMPUSOL, through
its partnerships, provides solutions on
- Microsoft Active Directory Services and Meta
Directory Services
- Netscape Directory Services
- Critical Path InJoin Directory Services and
Meta Directory Services
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