B2B Application Integration: e-Business-Enable Your Enterprise - Softcover

Linthicum, David; Mary O-Brien

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201709368 ISBN 13: 9780201709360

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2000

Synopsis

Explores the technology that enables application integration between businesses engaging in e-commerce, covering data-oriented, application interface-oriented, method-oriented, portal-oriented, and process integration-oriented technologies.

About this title

Review

Making business applications communicate across corporate boundaries can be complicated, which is why system architects usually coordinate such projects. B2B Application Integration explains some of the approaches these system architects can take to get application A to talk to database B and Web site C, without simultaneously allowing hacker yahoos in for a look around. David Linthicum surveys technologies generally, and also the products that implement them. He's a fine teacher, able to clarify complicated processes with words and illustrations. He's also well informed enough to express and support opinions on how various technologies are limited, which products live up to their claims, and how to implement specific mechanisms for application integration.

In a typical section on an application integration technology, the book introduces terms and explains the relationships among the pieces of the technology. Block diagrams and flow charts show which pieces talk to which others. Where appropriate, competing technologies are explained side by side--for example, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Extensible Markup Language (XML). There's very little code included, other than the barest examples for illustrative purposes. This is a book for architects and planners, not implementers. As such, it's an excellent survey of software integration technologies. --David Wall

Topics covered:

• Tools for making different applications and database management systems speak to one another, within and across corporate borders
• Various approaches to the integration problem (data integration, business process integration, and so on)
• Middleware
• Remote procedure calls (RPC)
• Message queuing
• Extensible Markup Language (XML)
• RosettaNet
• Microsoft BizTalk
• Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)

From the Inside Flap

Business as usual? Does anyone remember what that phrase even means anymore? About the only thing certain about "business as usual" is that it is inadequate to survive in the new, technology-driven business environment. It just doesn't get the job done anymore. If IT organizations fail to transform and enable themselves to compete in the new Internet economy, they will find themselves among the "left-behinds," wondering what in the world hit them. Gartner Group has proclaimed that "e-commerce applications and technology have been elevated to 'core competency' status, and their success or failure will determine an enterprise's viability."

It is a whole new business world out there. It is dynamic and fluid. It is relentless. And it is dangerous. The thing that makes this new world so challenging to IT organizations is that the Internet e-Business model no longer exists solely in a technology domain. The new e-Business model is now being shaped and driven by the business units; technology has been reduced to an enabling role.

The importance of the Internet is mushrooming before our eyes. Forrester Research forecasts that the e-Business market will reach $1.3 trillion in only three more years. According to the IDC, businesses will spend $10 billion over the next five years to create the infrastructure that will support this e-Business market. In its research, Forrester found that almost half of the Fortune 500 executives surveyed had already opened up three or more corporate data systems to their business partners-and that 60 percent expected that number to grow threefold or more by 2001. Gartner predicts that by year-end 2002, more than 50 percent of large enterprises will have implemented at least one large-scale, extended-enterprise application to support multiple trading partners or Web-based external access to applications.

Woe be to the executive who tarries!

Determined to add competitive advantages to their businesses, savvy IT executives are enlarging their roles to provide customized business information applications and e-Business systems. All other aspects of their businesses, including traditional development for the enterprise, will be outsourced, purchased via packaged applications, or managed in the most efficient, cost- and time-balanced manner. This coming business reality requires a new type of integration technology--a technology that is dependent on intelligent, flexible middleware layers that "glue" all of these disparate applications and processes together.

The purpose of this book is to describe to you just how those middleware layers will function to hold everything together--and allow your business to succeed in the new e-Business world. Extending Enterprise Application Integration

The extended enterprise consists of automatic, electronic interfaces that link the computer systems of the ultimate selling business, the partners that finance or manage the transaction, external suppliers, carriers, and support operations. In turn, these external partners connect with a multitude of internal enterprise systems that support customer service, sales, manufacturing, procurement, logistics, accounting, human resources, and corporate finance.

The technology process of the extended enterprise is sometimes described in terms of "long transactions"--traditional purchases that are electronically and automatically linked across the supply, order, and financing chain in one continuous set of connected transactions. When an order is placed, all affected systems (supply replenishment, credit checks, financial accounting, sales reporting, feedback from marketing campaigns, and so on) are provided with real-time or near real-time updates so that the implications of the sale are recognized and acted upon.

e-Business depends on many of the same concepts and approaches that I outlined in my last book, Enterprise Application Integration. B2B application integration is a direct outgrowth of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), reusing many of the same approaches and technologies. However, e-Business challenges all the existing rules, since both approaches and technology must morph around this new, and more complex, problem domain.

Many of the lessons we learned in solving EAI problems will aid us in finding a solution set for B2B application integration. However, some of the approaches to application integration that occur within a firewall will be nontransferable to B2B application integration. Moreover, we need to create new concepts and technologies that are unique to moving information between partner organizations. As we saw with EAI, current technologies are limited, and users must learn to pick and choose wisely, bypassing the hype in order to determine which technology is best for their needs. Why This Book?

Although many books on the market address the high-level issues of e-Business, currently no other book details how to create B2B application integration solutions to move information and processes between organizations in real time. It doesn't take a genius to declare that applications should share information between organizations. Such declarations amount to little more than words. Accomplishing the task is something else again--action.

This book covers all aspects of B2B application integration, from concepts to technology. When you read it, you will understand the next level of e-Business technology. In addition to gaining the ability to apply this technology appropriately, you will clearly understand the enabling technology and standards, such as message brokers, application servers, XML, RosettaNet, BizTalk, and EDI. Whenever possible, I have taken advantage of case studies to make these concepts more accessible to you, and you'll also find case studies in the appendixes.

Ultimately, our task is to create the right e-Business strategy while keeping in mind the business drivers. After that, we must consider the architecture. Finally, we must consider the availability of various tactical solutions utilizing technology and techniques.

As we approach a real-time economy, the necessity of B2B application integration becomes more and more obvious. Even so, bridging the gap from "business as usual" to the benefits of the new e-Business is absolutely daunting for most organizations. The solutions will not come about overnight. It will take years of planning, analyzing, developing, and testing before we are able to take that first substantial step closer to e-Business nirvana.

Reading this book is the best way to begin mapping out your organization's path to B2B application integration success.

0201709368P04062001

Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0201709368
• ISBN 13: 9780201709360
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432