Solutions showcase process-management functionality, EAI evolution
Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 12/1/2003 7:00:00 AM
Two leading enterprise integration application (EAI) vendors—SeeBeyond and TIBCO—have unveiled new versions of their software suites that reflect growing user demand for technology that does more than simply pass data between disparate applications.
These new packages allow companies to design and execute business processes, as well as monitor the performance of those processes. Of course, these processes typically are built around the data contained in multiple business applications.
Both vendors announced the addition of process management functionality to their product suites at user conferences this past fall. Andy Meyer, an IT manager with Emerson Process Management, St. Louis, told MSI these new capabilities would cause his company to buy more SeeBeyond technology.
"Many vendors have integration components," Meyer said in an interview at the SeeBeyond user conference, "but sometimes you have to integrate the integration. SeeBeyond has a complete suite, and the incorporation of business process management will increase our use of their solutions."
Ross Altman, SeeBeyond's CTO, says the new version of SeeBeyond's ICAN package will allow companies to build what amount to composite applications—mini-programs comprised of bits of functionality from two or more larger applications—that address their unique business problems.
Mark Vitesse, TIBCO's general manager for manufacturing, says his company has pre-configured a number of process management solutions that should appeal specifically to manufacturers and distributors. These solutions address areas such as order and inventory management, product life-cycle management (PLM), and the incorporation of RFID technology into a warehouse management strategy.
Vitesse says these solutions represent TIBCO's evolution from a supplier of simple integration technology to a company that can help customers develop proactive business strategies. The solutions incorporate the three levels of technology contained within the TIBCO Active Enterprise product suite.
The first level is messaging technology, which passes data between various applications. The second level is a process flow tool that grabs event-related data from the messaging level and uses it to create the processes that should take place when specific events occur. The third level is a digital dashboard that can be used to manage the processes created on the second level. The dashboard also can be used to track key performance indicators that tell whether the processes are working properly.
Currently, TIBCO has an order-management solution that allows companies to determine the credit status of a customer placing an order and send a message to someone who can resolve the problem before the order has to be delayed. The TIBCO inventory management solution allows for checking all locations within an organization for alternative products if a customer orders a product that is out of stock at one location.
The TIBCO PLM solution pulls data on engineering change notices from product data management packages and uses its messaging bus to broadcast that information to a manufacturer's supply chain partners. The RFID solution takes data from RFID readers and transfers it to a back-end database where it can be used to drive business processes, such as inventory tracking and tracing.
While the TIBCO solutions address areas covered by supply chain management, ERP, and PLM vendors, Vitesse says the TIBCO solutions complement, rather than compete with, those applications. "Enterprise software vendors can't do this alone, because many companies have multiple enterprise systems from multiple vendors," he argues. "Our messaging layer is the secret sauce that lets you execute these scenarios with multiple applications."
While recognizing the need to evolve their product lines, these EAI vendors also know their primary role remains giving companies the tools to extract value from applications they have from other vendors. "The infrastructure of the future will be built upon the past," says Jim Demetriades, CEO of SeeBeyond. "Businesses will build what they need for tomorrow based upon what they have in place today."
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