New under the sun
Kevin Parker, editorial director -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/1/2003 12:00:00 AM
Business software vendors often are unsure what to call their products. Their marketers devote fierce energies to the question of whether it's applications, systems, solutions, or tools they're selling—each word having its own fine-grained connotations. Nevertheless, after reading some business software advertisements, it's nearly impossible to say specifically what the software does (but that's by design, too).
In any case, it's only going to get worse, because so-called composite applications should have a big impact on enterprise and supply chain software markets over the next few years. A composite application combines business logic from a number of applications, is used to model a unique business process, and may be used by one or several companies. So what do you call that?
Recent reports from both Forrester Research and AMR Research attempt to put some bounds around composite applications—the term favored by both research concerns. Major enterprise and supply chain vendors are introducing composite applications, or at the least, releasing strategies for introducing composite applications. Market leader SAP seems to be a bit ahead of the pack with its xApps.
Composite applications would seem to be an idea whose time has come, since they address major concerns of both business and IT managers. For one, it's no longer viable, in the post-Y2K era, to suggest companies need abandon their legacy systems. Second, the rigidity of some enterprise systems has made it necessary to fit business processes to the solution, rather than vice versa.
In a report by Charles Homs, Forrester recently defined composite apps as follows: applications that dynamically combine and connect functionality and data from heterogeneous applications to support cross-functional and multi-organization business processes.
Homs points out that while workflow already is used to support sequential steps in business processes, events, and authorizations, composite apps go a step further, for example, by dynamically deciding what the next step in a business process should be, processing a few steps, and then asking for additional user input.
AMR, in a report written by John Bermudez, sees composite apps in the larger context of business process management (BPM). A core enterprise requirement going forward, BPM enables systems to respond automatically to inputs or requests for information, as if loosely coupled applications were seamlessly integrated.
According to Bermudez, composite apps will include an analytic data model to make information purposeful, business rules that are available to all, sophisticated workflow mechanisms, and support for thin and rich clients.
Finally, both research firms see hybrid apps being accessed through a portal or exchange infrastructure. So the idea of the trade exchange, initially rejected by the marketplace, continues to evolve and live on.
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