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While Web-architected products are by no means old news, it is true that most enterprise asset management (EAM) providers have latched on to the benefits of Web architecture that are truly compelling to their customers.
Providers and customers alike agree that a Web architecture is a good thing. However, it is not always apparent to customers which Web architecture is right for them. Some initial considerations that customers can into effect include:
Lower total cost of ownership
Web-architected enterprise applications deliver significant cost savings over traditional client/server options. For example, a multi-site client/server deployment requires client and server software in each location. A Web-architected deployment only requires one instance of server software for deployment across multiple locations. Further savings can be realized when a third party hosts the server.
Faster deployment, easier maintenance
Because they require only a single instance of server software and there is no cumbersome client software, Web-architected enterprise deployments take a fraction of the time of client/server deployments. They also are far less complex to maintain and administer.
Cross-enterprise visibility
Web-architected deployment facilitates the sharing of information between locations and between systems. For example, because all product inventory can be viewed as a single, logical “enterprise inventory,” new efficiencies can be realized by managing inventory on an enterprise scale, rather than on a “siloed” site-by-site basis.
Web services and the SOA
“Web services” and the “service oriented architecture” are two of the most important new terms one must understand when considering Web architectures.
Originally coined by Gartner, a service-oriented architecture, or SOA, is one in which applications are no longer standalone monolithic entities serving a specific audience, but rather members of an enterprise-wide family of functionality that is invoked on an as-needed basis to optimize business processes enterprise-wide.
The key to implementing an SOA is to separate application business logic from user interfaces. The logic is then accessible as “services” that can be invoked by a number of middleware mechanisms, including Web services.
Because Datastream 7i was designed from the ground-up with this kind of multi-tier architecture -- utilizing Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) in the middle tier, and Java Server Pages (JSPs) and servlets for presentation -- it is ideally suited to be a “solid citizen” within an SOA. The same cannot be said of applications that mingle their presentation and business logic by bypassing the EJB layer and instead using JSPs for both business logic and presentation.
As the key technology driving the emerging SOA, Web services are extensible markup language (XML)-based technologies that provide a standard and highly cost-effective way to integrate any number of systems and interfaces. Web services accomplish this by providing a common framework for applications to share data and interoperate. Companies can use this capability to enhance the value of existing applications by enabling interoperability with other internal enterprise applications, as well as with those of other companies. In fact, Web services know no geographic bounds and can span the globe. For example, an ERP application in Sydney can share data with an EAM application in Cleveland.
In short, Web services allow companies to:
• create applications that access the functionality of other enterprise systems;
• seamlessly integrate applications using standard technologies (XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI);
• expose legacy applications’ business logic, so it can be accessed and used in new ways;
• allow corporate portals to easily access the business logic of all Web services applications.
Building a foundation for Web services
Web services are emerging as a required technology in enterprise applications. Not just as a “wrapper” technology, but as a fundamental building block to application architectures. Web services and other SOA-enabling technologies will not emerge as dedicated platform products but will be offered as features of virtually every software infrastructure product.
Companies like Datastream Systems are making this vision a reality. These compelling capabilities are why Datastream has built the latest version of Datastream 7i on a Web services foundation. It supports all of the key Web services standards, including Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), a standard that allows one application to invoke a remote procedure call from another application, or to share an object over the Web. This allows Datastream 7i to share information with any external application, and to be an integral part of any SOA.
To maximize the benefits of this technology, more than 180 functions within Datastream 7i are accessible through SOAP. This means that companies can access the product’s functionality not just through the product’s standard interface, but also through interfaces of other products. This enables an exciting range of new capabilities.
For example, using Web services employees can submit work requests to Datastream 7i through commonly used applications- as opposed to training every employee in the company on how to generate work orders. A good example of this is Microsoft Outlook, perhaps the most commonly used interface of them all, which is based on Web services and can be used as an interface to Datastream 7i.
The creation of a work order is just one example of how Web services can optimize a business process. Through an entirely familiar interface, end-users are given direct access to an unfamiliar application. The potential for creating these types of process improvements is practically limitless using Web services, and it is a vivid example of how Web services radically extend the value of these types of enterprise applications within the enterprise.
It is also an excellent example of the power of an SOA. By making application functionality -- in this case a work order -- available to any application, companies can radically improve corporate performance by driving waste out of business processes.
Benefiting from Web services today
Web services currently enables two fundamental capabilities:
• Interactive integration with complementary applications, such as ERP systems, financial systems, and so on.
• Interactive integration with complementary user interfaces written in technologies using Visual Basic, Java and the .Net framework. The resulting interface in each of these cases is an HTML thin client.
The benefits of integrating a Web services solution with complementary systems are clear. For example, a manufacturer could coordinate production schedules from an ERP system with preventative maintenance schedules in their Web services solution. And any facilities management company could integrate its call center system with the solution so customer service reps can enter work orders into the system. With the advent of Web services and SOA, this type of integration is relatively simple and can create powerful new organizational efficiencies.
With functionality offered by enterprise application solutions, Web services make it possible to improve the overall usability of these applications for traditional users, by providing the means to deploy a zero footprint, robust HTML interface to complement the product’s existing Java-based interface.
And as can be seen in the previously mentioned Microsoft Outlook example, the integration with complementary user interfaces makes it practical to expose the application’s functionality to a whole new class of users. Employees who never would use an application in their normal working days are accessing it all the time to request maintenance and repair services.
Moving forward: The future of Web services
The SOA is the future of enterprise application infrastructure, and Web services will be a key enabling technology to making that future a reality. In the months ahead, as companies seek to implement SOAs, entire segments of the software industry will shift as robust support for Web services and other SOA-enabling technologies become of paramount importance.
Products like Datastream 7i are positioned for this shift, with architecture already built on a robust Web-services foundation, and a true multi-tier architecture that includes an EJB layer. This means that the promise of Web services exists today, with the underlying architecture being built to enable the SOA of tomorrow.
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