The evaluation of business processes, transaction needs, and workflow remains a starting point for most successful integration projects and the place where the CTO and business managers often intersect, according to industry experts.
Tom Gernon, CIO of pharmaceutical instruments and consumables manufacturer PerkinElmer, recently completed the integration of the company's electronic storefront to its back-end ERP and other systems via webMethods' EAI platform.
The biggest challenge for Gernon involved aggregating data in disparate systems and then standardizing on common data definitions. The work became a team effort, with Gernon creating cross-functional groups from IT, business, and operations departments to settle on common semantics and processes last year. Wellesley, Mass.-based PerkinElmer also contracted with systems integrator Molecular, in Watertown, Mass., to help design the infrastructure and drive the project, which began in August 2001 and went live in November 2001.
"We are doing a much tighter integration with our business teams now," Gernon says. "Our structure has changed to having a strong focus on applications in IT and to aligning our many organizations along function lines. Our sales group knows who their IT counterparts are."
Michaelides embarked on a similar crusade at Textron. She created "centers of excellence" teams within the company to coalesce around the idea of an interconnected enterprise and eliminate the repetition of effort across departments.
Among the integration details the centers of excellence have ironed out are plans to move away from API adapters to a more generic approach of storing metadata that will service particular applications. They are completing work on a single LDAP directory for authentication that will eventually be extended to customers and partners.
"The main goal is about best-practices, making sure that everyone is involved, that there is documentation on projects and reuse of code," Michaelides says. "It's a challenge educating the company about middleware. But we realize that we can be better than the sum of our parts."
This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.
Download now »
Server virtualization is a popular option for dealing with mounting datacenter costs. Another equally promising approach is the use of an Application Delivery Controller. Citrix NetScaler provides a low-cost way for organizations to reduce their server count and accrue cost savings from a reduction in space, cooling, power and personnel.
Download now »
The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.
Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation
Effectively address data protection challenges, implementing solutions that help store and protect business–critical data while cutting costs and improving efficiency and reliability.
Download now »
Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts
Recommend This
