Enterprise resource planning and service-oriented architecture are coming together. Three of the major software vendors of ERP software are moving their own platforms to ones that support Web services.
Oracle Corp. is rolling out its Fusion platform, which updates the PeopleSoft HR software with Web services interfaces. Already, its Fusion Middleware allows users to build their own composites, or applications that reuse already-existing functionality in other programs, said Wayne Bobby, vice president for solutions for finance and administration at Oracle Federal.
Likewise, SAP AG, based in Waldorf, Germany, has migrated its MySAP ERP software to a new Web services-based platform called Netweaver.
It is now exposing all the core functionality as Web services. So far, more than 1,500 functions are available. “We are going to expose every single element of our solution as a Web service,” said David Ditzel, director of public services technology solutions for the company.
In a similar move, CGI Inc. of Montreal has migrated its federal ERP software, called Momentum, to a Java 2 Enterprise Edition-based platform, allowing developers to easily hook their own J2EE applications into CGI’s software, said Heidi Green, head of CGI's state and local ERP practice, based in Fairfax, Va.
ERP systems traditionally are known as large, monolithic applications that tend to be difficult to install, maintain and upgrade. SOA promises to make software more responsive, namely by making it easy to reconfigure to meet changing needs.
In many ways, the federal government has tried to simplify ERP deployment by breaking the job into smaller chunks. For instance, when the Social Security Administration wrote the business case for a new core financial-management system in 2001, it broke fiscal duties into discrete functionalities, following Clinger-Cohen Act tenets to mitigate risk, said Tom Bianco, who manages the Social Security Online Accounting and Reporting System.
SSA’s system uses components of the Oracle Federal Financials package, including the general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable and purchasing modules.
With Web services-based interfaces, the modular approach could now become more fine-grained, advocates said.
As the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards said last summer, the SOA Reference Model is “a paradigm for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may be under the control of different ownership domains.”
By reusing capabilities, theorists say, organizations could make better use of available resources or meet changing needs more quickly.
- Jacob Jackson, WashingtonTechnology.com
READ MORE...
Showing posts with label soa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soa. Show all posts
Monday, March 26, 2007
Monday, November 27, 2006
Data management master class
Master Data Management, or MDM, is touted as the silver bullet for ridding companies of inconsistent and untrustworthy business data. But does its real value lie in being an enabler of SOA?
MDM isn't new by any means. So why do proponents think it will fare better than past approaches? There are several reasons. First, MDM works by establishing master data rather than by focusing on operational (transactional) data. Second, MDM is an active approach to managing the entire information lifecycle, allowing companies to define new data, monitor exceptions as the data changes and rationalise and synchronise data as it is updated.
Last, and perhaps most promising of all, is that MDM takes a services-based approach that is in line with modern service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives. In other words, it treats data as another enterprise service in an SOA. Some refer to it as the 'fourth layer' of an IT architecture that sits between data and the business logic and presentation layers.
Master data management has gained prominence in recent years because of a highly fragmented application landscape caused by lines of business applications optimised for specific functions or departments. Having these multiple ERP and CRM instances and home-grown IT systems creates data silos that make it difficult for a business to get a single authoritative source against which all other data is compared, or, in MDM parlance, a 'golden record'.
"The problem stems from the fact that companies don't have all their business data in one place," notes Cliff Longman, chief technology officer at data warehousing and MDM firm Kalido.
Longman ultimately blames a lack of strategic thinking about data as one of the root causes of the problem. "Companies didn't treat data as an asset," he says. "There was no holistic discipline or training for managing it like financial assets." For instance, financial accounts software supports a consolidation process for a unified chart of accounts, mapped to multiple financial systems for integrated reporting and performance management. So why aren't other types of business data treated with the same level of respect?
Clearly having a shared and flexible IT architecture that works with consistent, accurate and up-to-date master data is vital. For that reason many point to MDM as a seminal development for IT setting the goal of moving towards SOA.
The MDM approach seems to sit nicely with how SOAs are supposed to work - ie by decoupling master data from business applications. The real promise of SOA is that you don't need to know in advance which applications will be talking to each other. But with that paradigm it's critical to first agree on common data definitions.
Longman argues that one can't have SOA without having an enterprise data service. "MDM inherently creates that data service component within an enterprise SOA, actively synchronising clean and consistent data to applications as an on-demand service," he says.
- Madan Sheina , CBRonline.com
READ MORE...
MDM isn't new by any means. So why do proponents think it will fare better than past approaches? There are several reasons. First, MDM works by establishing master data rather than by focusing on operational (transactional) data. Second, MDM is an active approach to managing the entire information lifecycle, allowing companies to define new data, monitor exceptions as the data changes and rationalise and synchronise data as it is updated.
Last, and perhaps most promising of all, is that MDM takes a services-based approach that is in line with modern service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives. In other words, it treats data as another enterprise service in an SOA. Some refer to it as the 'fourth layer' of an IT architecture that sits between data and the business logic and presentation layers.
Master data management has gained prominence in recent years because of a highly fragmented application landscape caused by lines of business applications optimised for specific functions or departments. Having these multiple ERP and CRM instances and home-grown IT systems creates data silos that make it difficult for a business to get a single authoritative source against which all other data is compared, or, in MDM parlance, a 'golden record'.
"The problem stems from the fact that companies don't have all their business data in one place," notes Cliff Longman, chief technology officer at data warehousing and MDM firm Kalido.
Longman ultimately blames a lack of strategic thinking about data as one of the root causes of the problem. "Companies didn't treat data as an asset," he says. "There was no holistic discipline or training for managing it like financial assets." For instance, financial accounts software supports a consolidation process for a unified chart of accounts, mapped to multiple financial systems for integrated reporting and performance management. So why aren't other types of business data treated with the same level of respect?
Clearly having a shared and flexible IT architecture that works with consistent, accurate and up-to-date master data is vital. For that reason many point to MDM as a seminal development for IT setting the goal of moving towards SOA.
The MDM approach seems to sit nicely with how SOAs are supposed to work - ie by decoupling master data from business applications. The real promise of SOA is that you don't need to know in advance which applications will be talking to each other. But with that paradigm it's critical to first agree on common data definitions.
Longman argues that one can't have SOA without having an enterprise data service. "MDM inherently creates that data service component within an enterprise SOA, actively synchronising clean and consistent data to applications as an on-demand service," he says.
- Madan Sheina , CBRonline.com
READ MORE...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)