the enterprise nervous system: integration in the 21st...

The Enterprise Nervous System: Integration in the 21st Century

Enterprise Integration Summit

April 13-14, 2010 WTC HotelSao Paulo, Brazil

Jess Thompson

Notes accompany this presentation. Please select Notes Page view. These materials can be reproduced only with written approval from Gartner. Such approvals must be requested via e-mail: [email protected]. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner Inc or its affiliates

This presentation, including any supporting materials, is owned by Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and is for the sole use of the intended Gartner audience or other authorized recipients. This presentation may contain information that is confidential, proprietary or otherwise legally protected, and it may not be further copied, distributed or publicly displayed without the express written permission of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. © 2010 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates.


Strategic Imperative: A company that implements an "enterprise nervous system" can respond to changing conditions quickly because all people and automated systems have situation awareness.

An ENS is a system of systems The event processing aspects of an ENS are an overlay on other applicationsAn ENS is a system of systems. The event-processing aspects of an ENS are an overlay on other applications. Input events come from multiple, relatively independent sources. The output is not limited to one person, group or system — it is shared among multiple recipients who use it to adjust their behavior. An ENS provides situation awareness on a broad scale to multiple people, departments and application systems. An ENS inevitably requires substantial application integration and infrastructure work. Application integration means making independently designed systems work together. Some event-enabled applications are all new, but many are developed as extensions or modifications to existing business applications. For example, airlines have separate application systems for many functions including flight scheduling food catering scheduling flightseparate application systems for many functions, including flight scheduling, food catering, scheduling flight crews, fueling, aircraft maintenance, reporting arrival and departure times, and gate scheduling. These systems were originally separate "stovepipes," but the ability of an airline to respond to changes in conditions is determined by the speed and effectiveness of information transfer among departments and their respective applications. Airline-state information becomes outdated in seconds or minutes. When weather or equipment failure disrupts operations, each operational department must dynamically alter its plans. The infrastructure collects event data from dozens of applications and sensors in hundreds of locations to provide situation

T li h thi t t l i t t i ti ' li ti d d t b t l th

Page 1Jess ThompsonBRL37L_118, 4/10


awareness. To accomplish this one must not only integrate an organization's applications and data but also the infrastructure supporting its business processes, applications, data and sensors; that is, one must create an enterprise nervous system (ENS).


Based on Gartner's CIO surveys "improving business processes" has grown from not being an identifiedBased on Gartner s CIO surveys, improving business processes has grown from not being an identified priority in 2004 to being the top priority of CIOs in the 2005-2009 surveys. This reflects the pursuit of a higher-order strategy of increasing business agility. Business agility is the ability of a business to adapt rapidly and cost-efficiently in response to changes in the business environment. The pursuit of agility has spawned initiatives such as business process improvement, application integration, data integration, and operational sense and response. But being truly agile requires that organizations knit together these initiatives into a holistic system — an enterprise nervous system.organizations knit together these initiatives into a holistic system an enterprise nervous system.This presentation examines integration's new role of establishing an ENS in the context of the three key issues:• The enterprise nervous system: why now?• What are the higher-order initiatives that lead to the formation of an ENS and how do they extend the scope

of integration?• How are megavendor products evolving and which are best positioned to support integration in the 21st



century?


Strategic Imperative: CIOs and business management must work together to implement a phased plan that results in business architecture, information architecture and technology architecture working in concert to achieve an effective solution architecture.

Application integration data integration and business process management are three seemingly unrelatedApplication integration, data integration and business process management are three seemingly unrelated disciplines. However, their relationship is uncovered by examining the disciplines within the context of an enterprise architecture, which is itself a discipline. The objective of enterprise architecture is to drive alignment between IT deliverables and business needs. Gartner's approach to enterprise architecture unifies three fundamental practices that otherwise would proceed independently: business architecture, technology architecture and information architecture. When these three practices work together, they drive the architecture of solutions (IT deliverables) in a way that meets business needs. Business architecture defines many of the goals, strategies, principles and relationships of important business dimensions. From this, the organization might decide that it needs to improve business processes by applying BPM techniques to better realize these goals and strategies. Enterprise information management is the discipline that creates an organization's information architecture. Data integration is fundamental to effective information management. Application development, deployment and integration are fundamental to establishing an effective solution architecture.Action Item: CIOs and business management must work to establish the organizational relationships and

t if th i i ti ' b i hit t i f ti hit t d



governance necessary to unify their organization's business architecture, information architecture and technology architecture.


Strategy Imperative: Agility is enabled through service-oriented architecture (SOA), business process management (BPM), business rules management (BRM) and operation sense and response (OSR). However, achieving optimum agility requires federation of those initiatives and integration of the supporting infrastructure.

Any enterprise that aspires to respond in real time must have the ability to be agile when needed and thatAny enterprise that aspires to respond in real time must have the ability to be agile when needed, and that requires that the enterprise decide how it will achieve enough agility to compete in a world in which instant gratification has taken on a key meaning. One way of facing this demand is to employ a technology strategy that is based on greater efficiency of operation (productivity), greater availability of information (awareness), and more options for handling anticipated changes (flexibility) and unanticipated changes (adaptability). These four enablers of agility provide a framework for examining an enterprise's agility and a structure through which technology solutions can be delivered to improve on agility. Unfortunately, most technological choices today (of the order of 80%) only incidentally affect these enablers of agility. This means that an enterprise may have a significantly larger potential for agility (because it has many technologies that enable agility in-house) than it actually achieves. The solution to this is to target specific technologies to specific enablers of agility and to deliver on the potential that those technologies impart.BPM, BRM, SOA, OSR and integration have significant roles in all four of the enablers of agility and, as such, it makes good planning sense to ensure that rules management and business process management efforts are

di t d i th t i ilit t t



coordinated in the enterprise agility strategy.


Tutorial: An ENS delivers business benefit by integrating initiatives in a manner that enables decision makers and knowledge workers to identify precursor events and detect problem events in "real-time."

How will moving toward real time deliver clear and measurable business benefit?How will moving toward real-time deliver clear and measurable business benefit?Many businesses face the problem of responding too late to situations that were foreseeable. Every day we hear stories of earnings warnings and poor performances that start with the excuse, "If only we had known." At the speed of business today, for example, is it good enough to know what your sales figures are with a week's delay? Or even a day's delay? Many retailers are moving to daily and even more frequent internal management information feeds.An ENS doesn't just enable an organization to respond faster, it enables it to know sooner. This gives it more j g p , gelapsed time to consider and action the best response options. Today's poor performances are often attributable to "knee-jerk responses" that result from having too little time between the reporting of old and trusted measures and the action that needs to be taken. From high-accuracy three-day weather forecasts to mobile location-based service information and website traffic to RFID tag tracking, new options for precursor event monitoring abound.Action Item: Consider what events you track today — and whether the delay in reporting them is acceptable. Then consider whether they are the right things to track or whether in fact a precursor event is something



Then consider whether they are the right things to track — or whether, in fact, a precursor event is something you could now attempt to monitor, because of advances in functionality and price/performance of IT.


Strategic Imperative: Develop the skills, devise an architecture and execute a plan to extend your integration beyond that of application and data integration.

The need for application integration making applications that were developed independently work togetherThe need for application integration — making applications that were developed independently work together — has been with us since the advent of stovepiped applications. Initially this was accomplished using a set of point-to-point interfaces using the infrastructure that the project team thought brought the greatest chance of bringing the project in on time and within budget. In the mid-1990s, organizations embarked on an effort to reduce the number of interfaces, the amount of programming associated with interfaces, the types of infrastructure used to implement interfaces and the data latency resulting from the interfaces. Soon after attacking application integration, organizations embarked on data integration, making data that was designed independently work together. Organizations have also embarked on improving and integrating business processes and, today, major application infrastructure vendors are extending their product portfolio with business process management technology. More recently, leading-edge organizations are deploying infrastructure offerings to support operational sense-and-response initiatives. Unfortunately, in many organizations, these initiatives occur independently, resulting in a set of unintegrated infrastructure technologies. Getting these independent initiatives to work together in a manner that supports today's increasingly complex business needs will require integrating that infrastructure as well as the IT resources



increasingly complex business needs will require integrating that infrastructure as well as the IT resources hosted on that infrastructure.


Improving business processes has been the top priority of CIOs for the past two years This reflects the pursuitImproving business processes has been the top priority of CIOs for the past two years. This reflects the pursuit of a higher-order strategy of increasing business agility. Business agility is the ability of a business to adapt rapidly and cost efficiently in response to changes in the business environment. The pursuit of agility has spawned initiatives such as business process improvement, application integration, data integration, and operational sense and response. But being truly agile requires that organizations knit together these initiatives into a holistic system — an enterprise nervous system.This presentation examines integration's new role of establishing an ENS in the context of the three key issues:This presentation examines integration s new role of establishing an ENS in the context of the three key issues:• The enterprise nervous system: why now?• What are the higher-order initiatives that lead to the formation of an ENS and how do they extend the scope

of integration?• How are megavendor products evolving and which are best positioned to support integration in the 21st

century?




Strategic Imperative: Begin transitioning from your point-to-point interfaces today. They cost more to maintain and inhibit the agility and responsiveness sought by modern organizations.

Today virtually every application development project involves integration Companies have integrated theirToday, virtually every application development project involves integration. Companies have integrated their applications since the 1950s, but relied mostly on slow, arms-length, point-to-point integration approaches, such as batch file transfer, until the 1990s. In the middle of the 1990s, as demand for up-to-date information grew and organizations became increasingly frustrated with the number of interfaces being maintained, message-at-a-time approaches to integration became more popular. Architectural patterns, such as hub-and-spoke, were addressed using multiple types of mediation-enabled middleware such as integration brokers, programmatic integration servers and BPM suites with ESB suites coming into use in the following years. H th h d i t f d i tt i t t d th 65% f th i t f tiHowever, even though modern interface design patterns exist, today, more than 65% of the interfaces continue to be built using a point-to-point design pattern. The driving forces that maintain integration's status quo are expediency and cost. Modern application infrastructure is expensive. Moreover, it requires developers to learn new approaches to integrating applications. However, the competition and customer demands of today are forcing businesses to become more responsive — to implement real-time systems. Conventional approaches to development and integration (the status quo) cannot cope with the needs of a modern, real-time business. Transforming your organization requires a marriage of new methodologies with technology. One must extend

di i l h d l d i i h h i h f S dl



traditional approaches to development and integration so that they incorporate the use of events. Secondly, one must deploy the application infrastructure — from BPM suites to event servers — that take advantage of the occurrence of events.


Tactical Guideline: In large organizations with semiautonomous business units (BUs), subsidiaries and external partners, a "federated" approach to SOA is the most effective in overcoming political, organizational and technical hurdles.

It is human nature to split an apparently intractable and complex endeavor into smaller easier to deal with tasks with theIt is human nature to split an apparently intractable and complex endeavor into smaller, easier-to-deal-with tasks, with the final, combined outcome being the solution to the overall problem. The same approach can — and, to a certain extent, should — be adopted to diffuse adoption of SOA throughout a large and organizationally complex enterprise. Rather than imposing a single enterprisewide SOA infrastructure and a single set of governance practices, it is more practical and politically expedient to adopt a federated approach to SOA in organizations that are not tightly controlled. The fundamental idea behind federated SOA is to logically split the enterprise into semi-independent SOA domains (for example, reflecting the enterprise organization in terms of subsidiaries, BUs or departments), each with its own specific SOA infrastructure, governance processes and SOA COE. Domains are then federated (that is, integrated — usually, butSOA infrastructure, governance processes and SOA COE. Domains are then federated (that is, integrated usually, but not necessarily, after the fact — to enable interdomain sharing of services) through appropriate interoperability infrastructure, governance processes and organizational settings. "SOA federation" is the process of enabling a federated SOA by establishing the proper technical, governance and organizational capabilities. At first sight, a federated SOA looks suboptimal, given the risk of inconsistencies and duplication across individual domains. Nevertheless, Gartner believes that organizations should proactively promote adoption of a federated approach because it will most likely prove the most practical way to achieve SOA benefits across the enterprise, especially in large and organizationally or geographically decentralized organizations. However, in many cases, users will be forced to go through an SOA



g g p y g , y , g gfederation process to reconcile and harmonize multiple, spontaneous and unmanaged SOA initiatives going on in various parts of the organization.


Strategic Imperative: Encourage SOA and BPM initiative collaboration. This will result in more-effective benefits for the enterprise that can eliminate several "reinventions of the wheel."

SOA and BPM try to address historical issues pertaining to the relationship between business and IT StovepipedSOA and BPM try to address historical issues pertaining to the relationship between business and IT. Stovepiped applications, with limited scope for adaptability, automate specific operational work tasks in a broader business process. Prior to SOA, application architectures addressed similar activities (such as business commerce transactions or data analysis) for greater efficiencies. BPM, enabled by an SOA, automates more of the end-to-end process, including transactional, reference and human-knowledge-centric activities, providing more of a closed-loop feedback mechanism to business leaders. IT and business managers find it difficult to predict costs, new features' implementation times or service delivery levels. Imprecise estimates elongate delivery time frames, causing missed opportunities. An "assemble and compose" delivery style, enabled by SOA, addresses this issue. IT prioritizations are loosely linked, but generally notcompose delivery style, enabled by SOA, addresses this issue. IT prioritizations are loosely linked, but generally not mapped to business goals. Structured methods, such as balanced scorecards, are not in widespread use. Big changes are treated as unusual, one-time/episodic events, rather than implemented as part of a strategy to achieve specific shared goals. BPM and SOA — supporting more-iterative, continuous refinements to automated operations — enable mid-course, strategic adjustments. SOA and BPM intersect along a variety of disciplines and can address these historical issues. BPM enabled via an SOA delivers strategic alignment of corporate goals with processes, changing enterprise culture and its concept of leadership. It supports better management and measurement of people in the context of the processes in which they work, drives better governing decisions and more. However, underlying the use of SOA and



p y , g g , y gBPM will be increased integration activity.See "SOA and BPM Are Better Together" (G00145586)


Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2015, business needs that are addressed by sense and response will drive organizations to use mediation in more than 80% of their interfaces.

Today many organizations proceed with higher order initiatives such as SOA BPM and improving situational awarenessToday many organizations proceed with higher-order initiatives such as SOA, BPM and improving situational awareness independently. Reasons to federate these can be found by looking at the question from the perspective of enterprise architecture (EA). EA (the discipline) is the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise's future state and enable its evolution. The necessary change is an intersection of the changes required in process, information and technology. Achieving federation will require organizational and technology changes. The required technology changes required will involve extending the scope of integration outward from business applications to encompass the application infrastructure supporting each of the initiatives.to encompass the application infrastructure supporting each of the initiatives.




Strategic Imperative: Plan the integration that establishes your ENS rather than have that integration be driven by near-term requirements.

In traditional IS architecture all intelligence (for example all data and logic) is held within the application systemsIn traditional IS architecture, all intelligence (for example, all data and logic) is held within the application systems. Applications are smart, but the network isn't. The federation of integration, SOA, EIM and BPM disciplines together with the convergence of formerly independent infrastructure technologies will establish a new system architecture summarized by the term "enterprise nervous system" (ENS). In an ENS, the network is semantically aware, process-aware and event-aware, thereby becoming smarter than today's application systems. Logic implementing data transformation, content-based routing, business process management (BPM) and sense and response that previously were handled entirely within the applications now is handled partly in the network. Certain data relevant to multiple business units and processes are maintained in shared operational and master data management data stores, message warehouses, data warehouses and p g , g ,metadata stores that are also "in" the network (outside of the conventional applications). The meaning of the term "application system" is changing as the ENS is deployed in a manner that federates the previously independent initiatives. Enterprises are shifting the focus of their automation away from the individual application systems and toward larger coalitions of systems that cooperate to execute compound functions and end-to-end processes. An ENS is essentially a subnet in an emerging, worldwide heterogeneous computing grid. All large enterprises already show early traces of an ENS by starting to use integration suites, BPM technology and other integration middleware to enhance interactions. However, the evolution to the ENS is widely underestimated because it is gradual and unheralded, and because system



architects have not yet transitioned to a mode of thinking that enables them to understand cross-initiative problems. Note that the governance implications are immense and the subject of upcoming research.


Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2012, BPPs will emerge as an ENS usage scenario that provides an efficient, agile environment, which is focused on providing quality information for the effective execution of business processes.

The business process platform (BPP) is an ENS usage scenario whose objective is establishing agile businessThe business process platform (BPP) is an ENS usage scenario whose objective is establishing agile business processes that are visible to and can be modified by knowledge workers and decision makers. In part, the BPP is predicated on developing a robust portfolio of assets by ensuring that newly developed applications are developed using existing reusable services, by creating services for your composite applications, by deploying purchased applications that are service-oriented and by weaving these services into business processes improvement efforts. Gartner projects that, through 2014, more than 70% of the services deployed by an organization will be developed from existing assets (think integration). Clearly, BPM will be critical for a BPP. However, effective information management (in particular, data integration) is also fundamental — a fact that's often overlooked. Agile, efficient business processes will help an organization operate more effectively. However, good processes without good information only address part of the problem. Multistep, composite and data consistency integration are equal enablers of a BPP. Achieving an integrated platform will require the collaboration of multiple centers of excellence, including integration, data management and BPM.Action Item: Users should seek an integrated platform that's founded on agile, effective processes created th h BPM di i li d i f ti t d i t ti k bl



though BPM, disciplined information management and integration as a key enabler.


Improving business processes has been the top priority of CIOs for the past two years This reflects the pursuitImproving business processes has been the top priority of CIOs for the past two years. This reflects the pursuit of a higher-order strategy of increasing business agility. Business agility is the ability of a business to adapt rapidly and cost efficiently in response to changes in the business environment. The pursuit of agility has spawned initiatives such as business process improvement, application integration, data integration and operational sense and response. But being truly agile requires that organizations knit together these initiatives into a holistic system — an enterprise nervous system.This presentation examines integration's new role of establishing an ENS in the context of the three key issues:This presentation examines integration s new role of establishing an ENS in the context of the three key issues:• The enterprise nervous system: why now?• What are the higher-order initiatives that lead to the formation of an ENS and how do they extend the scope of integration?• How are megavendor products evolving and which are best positioned to support integration in the 21st century?




Tactical Guideline: Plan the architecture of your SOA backplane in a manner that enables the backplane's evolution and its federation with SOA domains.

SOA Backplane: a collection of features which provide functionalities needed to enable any to any secure reliableSOA Backplane: a collection of features which provide functionalities needed to enable any-to-any, secure, reliable, scalable, manageable and high-performance communication across composite applications and processes, service provider applications and external domains in a technologically heterogeneous environment.SOA Governance: a collection of features that provide functionalities required to support the governance processes associated with that particular SOA initiative, including a registry/repository and SOA life cycle management tools (see "Understanding the Criteria, Use and Evaluation Scenarios for the 2009 SOA Governance Technologies Magic Quadrant" G00164785).SOA Containers: examples of various application infrastructure components that can host various forms of application logic: user interaction/presentation logic, composite front-ends, business processes, business rules, transactional back-end services and event-processing services.SOA-Related Capabilities: a collection of features that provide functionalities required to support advanced requirements such as BAM (see "Business Activity Monitoring Architecture Evolution" G00152469), master data management (see "Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management of Product Data" G00168054) and management of trading partner communities (as an example to support multienterprise B2B integration) (see "Key Issues for Multienterprise B2B



Integration, 2009" G00165369).For more information see "Gartner's Reference Architecture for SOA Application Infrastructure" (G00166524).


IBM offers a broad set of back-end integration products including WebSphere MQ WebSphere Message BrokerIBM offers a broad set of back end integration products, including WebSphere MQ, WebSphere Message Broker, WebSphere Process Server (WPS) and ESB, DataPower XI50 (appliance), WebSphere Integration Developer (WID) and WebSphere Transformation Extender (WTX), and WebSphere Business Events. These products (except WID and the XI50) have processor value-unit-based pricing. Effectively, license costs are driven by the number of processor cores across the platforms on which the products are installed.Since 2000, IBM has been building to a dominating position for application integration products within the application infrastructure market. In 2008, Gartner reported metrics estimating IBM as having approximately 30% of the application infrastructure market (based on license revenue). Contributing to this is IBM brand recognition, the company's "mind share" and the comprehensive suite of application integration products listed above. However, these advantages are partially counterbalanced by user feedback about some WebSphere application integration products being complex and, in some cases, impractical for some organizations.The theme of IBM's well-attended Impact 2009 was Smarter Planet. During the event, IBM chose to emphasize the role its application infrastructure will play in helping organizations to work smarter, where IBM defines working smarter as "becoming more productive and cost-efficient by taking advantage of tools and information that can yield the greatest benefit in a competitive environment."Al h h IBM d i Bl Cl d i i i i i N b 2007 IBM' S Pl i d



Although IBM announced its Blue Cloud initiative in November 2007, IBM's Smarter Planet messaging and strategy made little use of the prevailing cloud computing wind. However, the message (work smarter to reduce costs, rather than focus on reducing hardware and software costs via cloud computing) is effective in today's environment.


Microsoft packages many of its back-end integration features into a single product. The most recent version of that product isMicrosoft packages many of its back end integration features into a single product. The most recent version of that product is BizTalk Server 2009. Features in BTS include data transformation, intelligent routing, flow management, BAM, a rule engine and 19 application and technology adapters. Note that additional features like Windows Communication Framework and SQL Server are needed to establish its SOA feature set. It is complemented by tight integration with Visual Studio, which now provides support for developing and debugging BTS for maps and ESB guidance for extending the features of BTS in a way that enables IT users to establish an ESB.Since 2000, Microsoft has been steadily building its installed base, which now exceeds 8,200 customers. This success is due to a"shrink wrap" sales model, combined with low pricing ($34,999 per physical CPU). This makes the product affordable to midsize and some small businesses. With BTS 2009, Microsoft continues to offer "good enough" features at a highly competitive price. Its features provide approximately 80% of the functionality of products from other leading vendors which for many organizationsfeatures provide approximately 80% of the functionality of products from other leading vendors, which, for many organizations, completely meets their requirements and is good enough.Microsoft is the first IT megavendor to acknowledge the continued need for integration in an MDD world by positioning BTS alongside Oslo, the code name for Microsoft's MDD/declarative programming platform. Microsoft believes the MDD approach in Oslo prototypes will help developers realize the potential of declarative programming, inspire collaboration across roles, and enable IT staff to deploy, manage and evolve applications more easily. The Oslo platform likely will enable users to combine future versions of BTS, Visual Studio, Microsoft System Center and Microsoft SQL Server, as needed, in an effort to achieve those objectives.When queried about offering integration as a cloud-based service, Microsoft points to the .NET service bus, which enables connectivity among applications "in the cloud." With regard to the role of BTS in the cloud, Microsoft's stated direction is to focus BTS i i i t ti



BTS in on-premises integration.


Oracle has built its Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFM) portfolio through a series of acquisitions and is in position toOracle has built its Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFM) portfolio through a series of acquisitions and is in position to establish itself as a new powerhouse in application infrastructure and middleware markets, directly challenging IBM and Microsoft. Throughout its acquisitions Oracle's has consistently compared its current portfolio to that obtained in the acquisition, identify best technology and establish features that enable users to transition to the new technology. Gartner published its assessment of the current OFM portfolio in "Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g: A Technology Perspective" (G00171314).Prior to the acquisition, the Oracle product most frequently used for back-end integration was BPEL Process Manager. However, Oracle now promotes the use of Oracle ESB for back-end integration. The first version of Oracle ESB, 10g Release 3 sed as a fo ndation BEA Aq aLogic Ser ice B s and combined that ith additi e f nctionalit from OracleRelease 3, used as a foundation BEA AquaLogic Service Bus, and combined that with additive functionality from Oracle ESB. Using that original incarnation, Oracle is executing a series of releases, the most current being OSB 11g, which completes Oracle's assimilation of BEA back-end integration products. In OFM 11g, Oracle introduced a new service infrastructure with OSB 11g as the foundation and in OSB 11g a new composition model based on service component architecture (SCA).Oracle effectively extends OFM by offering a collection of solutions, packaged composite applications and packaged integrating processes branded Application Integration Architecture (AIA). AIA is hosted on the Oracle SOA Suite.Beyond SOA, Oracle's vision focuses on leveraging its SOA and CEP products to implement the multistep PI style used



Beyond SOA, Oracle s vision focuses on leveraging its SOA and CEP products to implement the multistep PI style used in some BPM scenarios. Oracle has not disclosed (officially or unofficially) how it intends to apply those features to address the challenges of cloud computing.


SAP's initial entry into the back-end integration space was the Exchange Infrastructure (XI) component of the NetWeaver platformSAP s initial entry into the back-end integration space was the Exchange Infrastructure (XI) component of the NetWeaver platform. The experience of customers with XI showed that it was good for integrating SAP instances, acceptable for integrating non-SAP applications with SAP and poor (relative to other alternatives) for integrating non-SAP applications. Today, back-end integration features are provided by NetWeaver Process Integration 7.1 (see "User Feedback About NetWeaver Process Integration: Focus on Enhancement Package 1" G00168196).Despite a long maturation cycle, SAP PI has been able to gain a notable customer base of approximately 1,800 to 2,000 productioncustomers with over 300 on the latest version. If initial user feedback is confirmed, the latest Enhancement Pack (update) to the current version will likely strengthen SAP's competitive position.This latest version represents an evolutionary engineering change, where the function of the system is capable of being distributed (for example, transformations can take place at the point of adaptation, instead of only at the hub). In addition, the change is intended to mitigate one of the major challenges of the product: substantial computing resource requirements. Also, SAP is working to improve the administration of the system. The combination of simpler administration with lower resource requirements should lower the overall total cost of ownership (TCO) for NetWeaver PI as a solution.Although SAP NetWeaver PI has reached a notable installed base and a good level of maturity, its future is uncertain in light of the lack of visibility about its long-term evolution and strategic role. The recent SOALogix acquisition risks further undermining PI's credibility due to the significant functional overlap between the acquired SOALogix Confero product and SAP's established



credibility, due to the significant functional overlap between the acquired SOALogix Confero product and SAP s established integration platform. Until SAP clarifies its application integration middleware strategy, users should limit PI use to tactical projects and avoid investing in the product for new, business-critical initiatives. See "SOALogix Acquisition Muddies the Waters on the Future of SAP NetWeaver PI" (G00173537) for more detail. .

the enterprise nervous system: integration in the 21st...

Documents