Introduction to Enterprise Systems Architectures: Adaptable Systems

1
Introduction to Enterprise Systems
ArchitecturesAdaptable Systems

• FMIS 3202 Enterprise System Architectures
• Nik R. Hassan
• Spring 2007

2
Business Challenges

• Most enterprises are burdened with a vast array
  of computers, applications, and islands of
  automation that are linked together through a
  variety of ad hoc mechanisms
• Fragmentation from
• Diversity of application architectures and
  technology
• Local focus of application functionality
• Major barriers to the capture, communication, and
  integration of management information necessary
  for the effective operation and improvement of
  the business.
• Holding the business hostage
• The maze of connections conceals the intricacies
  of the business operation
• Locks the enterprise into outdated business
  practices and organization structures
• Presents a major challenge to the introduction of
  new applications
• Skilled knowledge workers are unable to access
  needed data and collaborate to develop enterprise
  solutions to key problems
• Frustrate attempts to respond to changing
  business needs and opportunities.

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Goals of this Course

• Many managers recognize the need to change but
  dont fully understand the opportunities or how
  to employ the technology effectively
• Many technical people understand the details of
  various technologies but dont have the
  enterprise perspective or authority to provide
  consistent, integrated solutions.
• Show how Enterprise Systems Architectures address
  these and other issues by
• Bringing together business and technical
  perspectives
• Demonstrating the role of technical standards to
  both multiple vendors as well as consumers of the
  technology
• Show how the standards fit together to provide
  detailed specifications for the enterprise
  integration architecture
• Give the student an appreciation of how to
• Integrate many of todays silo applications
• Incorporate commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS)
  solutions
• Rapidly develop new, flexible applications for
  competitive advantage
• Enable the enterprise to exploit its intellectual
  capital
• Promote solutions that exploit cross-unit IT
  synergy in the form of IT-relatedness, knowledge
  relatedness and knowledge complementarity

4
Legacy Systems

• Current enterprise landscape is littered with
  systems that are the result of the evolution of
  business and technology over many years
• New systems are deployed leaving older systems
  unable to adapt, but at the same time, still
  being deployed
• No incentive to rework older systems (f they
  aint broke, dont fix them!)
• Older systems become difficult to operate or
  integrate because of both changes in the
  technology and changes in business operations
  that are reflected in the newer system
• Competition between business units discourage the
  sharing of ideas and the development of common
  solutions
• Client/server technologies are off-loaded to
  local server that become isolated from other
  systems

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Characteristics of Enterprise Integration

• Adaptable systems and processes
• Flexible
• Scalability
• Manageability
• Streamlined business processes
• Management information
• Support for electronic commerce
• Integrated security
• Replaceable components
• Reliable and recoverable systems
• Economies of scale from product, customer and
  management
• Complementary benefits from product, customer and
  management

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Adaptable Systems

• Systems need to be adaptable because
• Changes driven by technology
• Globalization of business activities
• Rapidly changing markets
• Intense competition
• Reorganizations such as consolidations,
  divestitures, and mergers
• Enterprise systems and processes must support
  these changes.
• Unfortunately, business processes are tightly
  coupled to computer applications.
• Businesspeople responsible for the processes do
  not understand what is implemented in the
  business applications
• The technical people who once understood the
  details of the design are no longer available.

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Flexibility

• An efficient might reduce costs
• An efficient but inflexible system will not allow
  organizations to engage in new revenue-generating
  activities
• Flexibility need to be built into the design in
  places where it does most good to the business
• Define flexibility
• The ability of the software to perform outside
  its original business rules without making
  substantial changes
• Example-eBay
• Started as an auction
• All business systems are designed for auctions
• How can eBay take advantage of other business
  opportunities outside auctions without
  overhauling the whole system?

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Scalability

• Definition The ability for a system to operate
  at the unit per unit capacity within the
  requirements of the customer.
• Ebay before 1998 was operating on totally free
  software (including CGI/Perl for business
  code/form processing, FreeBSD for the operating
  system, Apache for the Web Server, GNU dbm-a
  database free from MIT). It maxed out at 50,000
  items.
• After 1998 it migrated to Oracle for database,
  Microsoft IIS for Web server, and combination of
  Solaris and NT for operating systems on different
  servers.
• By 1999, the database servers could not grow any
  bigger
• Had to rewrite all the code so that they can
  scale each tier
• Data Tier
• Application Tier

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Manageable

• Even if the system is flexible and scalable, it
  still needs to be manageablemaintained in
  running order with minimal interruptions
• Not too much time on fixing bugs, duct-taping
  systems

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How to make systems adaptable

• In order for systems and processes to be
  adaptable, they must be structured so that
• Responsibility and control over each business
  function is defined and assigned.
• Each business function is defined once, to be
  performed in a consistent manner.
• Coupling and dependencies between business
  functions are minimized.
• Clear responsibility and control
• same processes should be employed throughout the
  enterprise, as much as possible, even if the
  executions are distributed.