The end of an era is arriving. Applications and system integration no longer must lock companies into a certain way of working. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) based on Web services allows the development of composite applications or mash-ups, which combine multiple traditional applications to support specific business process flows and information needs.
Structured correctly, these SOA-based composite applications should allow companies to tailor applications to fit their best practices more exactly, yet not rewrite them when a change or an upgrade occurs.
This requires more than SOA integration tools. For manufacturers to gain the benefits of this next generation of integration and applications, application software providers need to architect systems very differently than in the past. This is starting to occur, but beware: Many enterprise, supply chain, and manufacturing applications companies are talking SOA, but not fully changing the architecture into a true small-object, Web-services-based SOA.
Some leading supply chain and ERP providers are building SOA platforms that allow better integration and visibility between applications, and to outside solutions. Meanwhile, many are simply wrapping existing large blocks of functionality so a Web service can call them. The result is a better way to integrate between existing applications. However, those without a large cutting-edge IT staff may look for more application functionality at the start.
Today, the SAP partner ecosystem is talking about composite applications. Visiprise, ClearOrbit, iBaseT, DevEx, B2D, and Applied Materials (formerly Brooks Software) all have SAP xApps. Many xApps are valuable new implementations, or allow better integration between existing functionality. These are applications neither company could have developed independently.
Going a step further, SAP and Invensys’ Real-time Finance is a good example of truly new functionality that can result. This “endorsed SAP business solution” spans ERP, manufacturing execution systems (MES), and automation for process industries. It takes direct costs from the control system, MES, and ERP; then calculates overhead and contribution margin. Manufacturers buy XMII middleware from SAP and the real-time application from Invensys.
Apptricity is a software company entirely devoted to providing SOA composite apps that—together with enterprise apps—deliver functionality most ERP systems do not have alone. Apptricity’s supply chain, expense reporting, and financial applications automate specific dynamic transactions. Apptricity’s approach is to ensure code is platform- and database-agnostic, ready for a business analyst to tailor to a company’s specific best practice processes, and capable of integrating with nearly anything. The concept is that IT can provide or help support a truly differentiated process with exact-fit applications. Even more interesting, the composite application approach can deliver software to support temporary processes cost-effectively.
While the major application creep toward SOA continues, some manufacturers are gaining relatively quick wins by deploying not just SOA but composite applications such as these. Unlike building composite applications from scratch, IT investment is relatively minimal because the providers have built out application frameworks that only need tailoring to have an exact fit to a business process. If you have not heard much about them, it may be because they deliver a true competitive advantage.