E-Business Textbook

1. E-Business Textbook Chapter 3 What is Application Integration? E-Business Instructor Guide

2. Introduction • What happens if eBusiness applications do NOT interact with company’s core line of business systems? • Company’s goals for eBusiness will not be met • Customers will become frustrated • eBusiness project will be a failure • Stages 3 and above in eBusiness solutions: • Extending enterprise systems to the web • eBusiness cannot be disconnected from these core systems • Commitment, planning, investment of time and money • eBusiness is typically implemented in phases • Commitment to maintenance and growth is essential E-Business Instructor Guide

3. eBusiness Objectives • Motives for moving toward eBusiness: • Increase Market Share and Revenues • Improve Customer Service • Increase Operational Efficiencies • Competitive Advantage • Objectives and priorities must be clearly identified and agreed upon at the onset of an eBusiness project • Quick and dirty eBusiness interfaces, which do not integrate with the core legacy applications, often will not truly address the business objectives E-Business Instructor Guide

4. Integrated eBusiness Solution • Before marrying eBusiness with enterprise systems, get to know what these legacy systems are all about • Parts of a legacy application suite • Database file structures • Business Rules, Data Integrity Constraints • Business Functions • User Interface E-Business Instructor Guide

5. Sample Legacy Application Parts E-Business Instructor Guide

6. eBusiness Integration Approaches • Direct access to legacy system database files • Legacy screen capture techniques • API calls to legacy application modules • Import/Export mechanisms or files • Custom, transformation routines • Dynamic, object messaging interfaces E-Business Instructor Guide

7. Direct access to legacy system database files • eBusiness applications could read and write data directly to the corporate database, as shown below: E-Business Instructor Guide

8. Legacy screen capture techniques • Browser Screen Scraping • Legacy screens are displayed over the web, with technology that makes them look more web-like and operate in a browser friendly manner • Batch Screen Interaction • Where an eBusiness application can call the screens (like an API) of a legacy system and retrieve output E-Business Instructor Guide

9. API calls to legacy application modules E-Business Instructor Guide

10. Import/Export mechanisms or files • Often set up for bringing standard transactions into packaged software • A common example is EDI Order Import files and related programs E-Business Instructor Guide

11. Custom, transformation routines • Can be run at regular intervals to: • Convert legacy database information into smaller, simplified, eBusiness database files • Upload web transactions from the eBusiness system back to legacy database • This approach is common for integration: • eBusiness system is hosted using different technology and possibly a different platform (or even an external company) from the core business systems E-Business Instructor Guide

12. Dynamic, object messaging interfaces • Newer technology in which application components can be reused between modules and even external applications • Example: • Providing the capability for XML messaging between programs E-Business Instructor Guide

13. Application Integration and Stages of eBusiness • Stage 1: Web Presence • Stage 2: Basic Intelligence • Stage 3: eBusiness • Stage 4: Innovation • Stage 5: Trading Partner Relationships • Stage 6: Distributed Application Componentry E-Business Instructor Guide

14. Stage 1: Web Presence • No need to integrate with back end business systems • However, a company planning to grow their site would begin setting up eBusiness infrastructure internally by: • Selecting hardware platform to be used for eBusiness • Selecting web serving software (then install and configure it) • Addressing networking requirements • Connecting web server to Internet via ISP and register domain name • Establishing standards for visual look and feel, corporate image, navigational style • Developing initial HTML pages, graphics, directories, and configuration for serving up static pages E-Business Instructor Guide

15. Stage 2: Basic Intelligence • Requirement to use back office application suite and databases starts to come into play • Minimal programming on server side • Minimal integration with server apps and databases • Development primarily consists of: • HTML and client side objects that can be downloaded and run on the client browser • Initial data capture pages and inquiries against back end information structures • Search capabilities on the site for visitors to more easily find what they are looking for • Meta tags within HTML for search engines to find content E-Business Instructor Guide

16. Stage 3: eBusiness • NOW, the need to integrate with back office systems becomes critical • As the site evolves to provide full online capabilities, such as order processing, order status, product catalogs, A/R inquiry, manufacturing specifications, inventory availability… • Must implement one or more of the integration approaches discussed in the previous slides E-Business Instructor Guide

17. Stage 4: Innovation • Level of eBusiness integration becomes more sophisticated to achieve innovative eBusiness and electronic Customer Relationship Management • Integration should be tight, well-defined, and efficient • Emphasis on more access to historical data on customers and their buying patterns • This involves more advanced data capture techniques and the use of the history data from both the legacy and eBusiness applications to help drive the eBusiness site E-Business Instructor Guide

18. Stage 5: Trading Partners • Dynamic interaction between trading partners’ business application suites demands tight back end integration • Emphasis on immediate allocation of inventory and immediate shipping notices: • Orders should go directly from the customer system into the vendor’s back end order processing system • To accommodate direct interaction: • Integration approaches involving direct database access or direct API calls will often be required E-Business Instructor Guide

19. Stage 6: Distributed Application Componentry • Traditional legacy applications will need to be significantly re-architected • Integration will be tight at all levels • The integration approach involving dynamic object messaging will likely be required E-Business Instructor Guide

20. State Management Techniques • Dynamic and event-driven web interfaces are stateless • For example, a user may start down the process of placing an order or changing a shipment date and then bail out at the last minute and jump to another site • From an application development perspective, the statelessness of the web may seem somewhat limiting: • A typical business system generally has a series of input and output screens and various paths that an application can take • Each screen is presented based on previous user input or results E-Business Instructor Guide

21. State Management Techniques • Parameter passing • Cookies • Environment variables • User authentication • Transaction processors E-Business Instructor Guide

22. Scalability of Legacy Applications • To easily migrate legacy apps to an eBusiness framework, consider the following factors: • Database • Encapsulation • Modularity • Technology • Skills Availability • End Application E-Business Instructor Guide

23. Tips for Moving to eBusiness • Using the six factors from previous slide, realize the effects of your design decisions on scalability of your web application • Options for back-end eCommerce database: • Model an entirely new database • Use a mixture of the existing database (for display data) and new files (to store transaction data) • Develop the entire e-commerce application over the same database that is used for other corporate systems as in the integration approach of directly accessing legacy files E-Business Instructor Guide

24. Tips for Moving to eBusiness • Maintaining object business rules, for use by various applications, is important when extending a system to the web • Design site so that both visual and functional components can be easily maintained and reused • Plan and budget for the inevitable maintenance, support, and skills transfer that needs to occur: • It is important that the tools and platforms used for the project will fit in with the organization’s existing IT environment and skill sets E-Business Instructor Guide

25. Tips for Moving to eBusiness • The new site should provide the company with the opportunity to not only process their transactions but to market and upsell to their customers at the same time • The user interface must be very easy to use and visually pleasing, with a sales and marketing orientation • The application must be flexible enough so that it can easily be changed and grow as marketing demands and as new technologies become mainstream • Maintenance will be constant E-Business Instructor Guide

26. Summary • Key to the success of any eBusiness strategy lies in how well the integration between legacy applications and eBusiness solutions is orchestrated • Various methods for integrating eBusiness and legacy applications were discussed • eBusiness application architects have big challenges: • Figure out how the integration works • Figure how the front end user interface will behave in a dynamic, “web-like” manner while staying true to the procedural aspect of business transaction processing in the back end • A state-of-the-art eBusiness solution will have: • Standards of how the site will operate and appear to the user • Requirements documented and agreed upon • Considerations for how future needs and technologies will be accommodated E-Business Instructor Guide