Portals are Made for Enterprise Application Integration

1. Portals are Made for Enterprise Application Integration JA-SIG Monday, June 9, 2003 Barry WalshSenior Director, E-Business ServicesIndiana University

2. ` Early Spec problem?

3. Chronology of Related Events • 1969: IBM: GML for tagging content in documents for law offices. • 1975: EDI for shipping manifests • 1981: Bob Epstein, Paula Hawthorn and Mike Ubell separate applications from databases with their Intelligent Database Machine. This essentially defined C/S • 1983: Xerox PARC: first working RPCs. • 1984: Sun uses RPCs for its Network File System. • 1986: SGML becomes an official international standard. • 1991: Tim Berners-Lee: first Web browser and defines HTTP. • 1996: The W3C begins developing a “simplified SGML,” which becomes known as XML. • 1998: Microsoft combines XML and HTTP into SOAP. • 2000: IBM and Microsoft announce WSDL and the UDDI directory system for Web services. • 2002: The Web Services Interoperability Organization is formed by IBM, Microsoft and other vendors and user companies. Source: Computerworld 5/19/03;

4. Several Forces at Work in our Institutions • Rapidly expanding user bases; • ERP vendor systems; • Open Source movement; • Portals; • SOAP  Web Services; They’re not necessarily unrelated!

5. The World as We’ve Known it • IT systems targeting discrete business functions • IT systems targeting common (simple) processes Attribution to Mike Zastrocky of Gartner

6. Typical Experience Until Recently • Users logged on to systems and navigated to find information or perform processes. • training • Individual apps • different sign-ons • Poor/non-existent user interface standards • Or worse still, the system sent printed output to them through snail-mail The point is they usually had to overtly seek out the information in disparate systems*

7. Vendor ERP Solutions • Common Look/Feel? • Consistent navigation • ECAR Study shows broad satisfaction • Some possible ‘convergence’?

8. Obvious advantages of buying • Embedded best practices in business process • Someone else did/does the R&D • Someone else does the maintenance and enhancement and reg driven updates • You get to know the names of legions of young inexperienced consultants You get to read exciting news stories about your vendor on occasion

9. Non-Vendor Solutions also Working • UT; PSU; IU; others • Any English majors in the room? To Buy or Not to Buy; that is the question; Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous consultant’s fees; Or to take up arms against a sea of vendors; And by opposing, end their stranglehold.

10. Obvious advantages of building • You get what YOU want. • You control the pace of development and enhancements • You call the shots on consultant use a lot more • More expertise stays at home You get to know scads of really talented developers!

11. Caveats • Clear disadvantages to both. • Reality says you may have to customize • Worst of all worlds? • Compromised the value proposition • Paying the vendor for the vanilla system at every new release and must re-customize

12. Options • More likely you will end up building, buying and assembling • Loosely coupled systems are more and more the future and that’s why integration is key • Customization takes on a new form • Based on what and who I am….driven by a directory. • Role based view; not everybody needs the entire SIS or whatever • Speaks to a functional component model • Mike spoke of “Modular but integrated“ this morning

13. Gartner on Network Enabled Components—aka Web Services • Servers at the core of the network will increasingly act as "facilitators" by guiding procedure calls to the locations where they can be most efficiently executed. • Given such capabilities, the emphasis of software development shifts to re-architecting business functions into modular, network-enabled components spread across a highly-distributed computing infrastructure. This evolution, more than anything else, is the fundamental driving force behind the Web Services architecture.

14. What might this look like ? • A more proactive push process to deliver in one place all information and processes I may need…the information finds me. • The ‘official’ place to which the organization would send stuff it wanted you to address. • Single sign-on; • Seamless transport between and among back office and other systems • Sounds like a portal to me

15. Why do we need a portal? What are the problems? • Broadening base of information “consumers” with varying levels of technical expertise. • Students and faculty increasingly demand mobile access to IT resources. • Aging, monolithic or silo’d applications • Developed to serve specific audiences; • Current users must find and learn to use each “silo”. • Disparate information systems that lack integration and flexibility; • Too complex for majority of end-users

16. Why do we need a portal? Cont’d • Every new website is potentially a new silo • “Age of disintermediation” – more of our students expect to be able to do things for themselves. • Dealing with non-traditional campus communities in traditional ways • Enable a more cost effective, nimble and sustainable application development process….. and not just for IT developers Bottom Line: Trying to change the way the institution creates and delivers e-Services

17. Evolution of Portals • First Generation (Referential) • Search; catalog • Second generation (Personalized) • Subscribe; personalize • Third Generation (Interactive) • Productivity and enterprise applications • Fourth Generation (SES) • Web Services (Gartner definition)

18. So…what is an enterprise web portal? A web-based framework consisting of a role based, but personalized view of an integrated set of services which provide easy access to information, applications, processes and people.

19. Some caveats and disclaimers • We in IT and the back office units are not the primary target audience for enterprise portals • Students (and their parents); • Faculty; • Staff; • Alums; • Not all of them are technically savvy; • Neither IT nor the service providers will drive the services in the portal….see Rule 1 above • IT providing a service delivery framework and several specific ‘utility’ services

20. Attribution to Mike Zastrocky of Gartner Business Case for Enterprise Portals Internally facing portal = productivity W W W Externally facing portal = revenue enhancement • Soft Benefits • Dam the “infoflood” • Single UI • Single sign-on • Presentation layer • Correlation • User satisfaction • Ubiquity of access • Tangible ROI • Cost avoidance • Targeted deployment • Self-service • Business velocity InformationAccess

21. Enterprise Portal ROI • It’s about changing: • The way the institution does its business … align with the mission • Some institutional behavior • It provides the best opportunity for enterprise application integration • Portals encourage common development practices etc. • Development teams need not create their own individual (silo’d) solutions for each service • Developers can focus on actual services for their users

22. Enterprise Portal ROI cont’d • Portals enable Web Services (WS) deployment • WS encourage Portal-oriented development • The enterprise portal provides a framework for • Persistent authentication (single sign-on) • Role-based customization • Personalization • Flexible workflow (routing & approval) • User Interface and Navigation • Accessibility

23. Enterprise Portal ROI cont’d • Emphasis on delivery of services to the user • WS and Decision Support have a huge future together • “The point of WS is to make it easier for people to construct and integrate applications” Henry Morris, IDC

24. WS in Application Development • "You won't see a whole new array of things that you couldn't do before because of Web Services, but you'll see application development enabled much more quickly," says Larry Calabro, a partner in the technology integration unit at Deloitte Consulting in Chicago. Calabro says Web services standards will make it easier for companies to build applications that more effectively integrate existing software packages such as CRM and ERP.

25. Gartner

26. Gartner: • By 2004, Web services will represent the dominant mode of deployment for new application solutions for Fortune 2000 companies (0.8 probability). • True interoperability standards won't exist in the portal product market until 2004, forcing users to build "uberportals" to integrate multiple portals within their enterprises (0.7 probability).

27. Gartner: The Big Challenge in Portals • Every Website is a potential new silo • Silo’d service delivery units • Changing people’s habits • Existing methods have to stay in place during transition • That allows those resistant to change to linger • A long term commitment is required to get through the transition

28. Why is IU’s OneStart “next generation”? • More than an info-portal…focused on application and service delivery • Commitment to a strategy for web services • Ability to reflect customized roles • Integrated ‘e-doc’ routing (EDEN) • Flexible and responsive to change • Service layer insulates user from back end systems • Distributed Group Page/Channel publishing for service/content providers • Positioned to address future needs for user mobility • Enterprise application integration is the target • One place for all of my data and e-services. It comes to me!

29. Other IUIE FIS SIS HRMS Users Security Workflow OneStart & EDEN OneStart Customized Personalized Adaptable Desktop Application Delivered User Interface Channels Applications Other Content Services Infrastructure Record Keeping Application Services EDEN

30. http://onestart.iu.edu

31. Abstract • In this era of heterogeneous application services, the need to integrate these for members of the university community has never been greater. Vendors promise integration and that solution works for many institutions. For others, the single vendor ERP direction is not an option or is not a desired strategy. Enter the enterprise portal. Properly architected and supported, it can provide a sustainable platform for delivering Enterprise Application Integration (EAI).

32. SIS HR/Payroll Batch Real Time Financials Library MS 0 20 40 60 80 100 Integration: Emphasizing Student Services Batch and Real-Time Integration of CMS With Major Systems Attribution to Mike Zastrocky of Gartner