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Preface

Business Scenario - Integrating Systems

Business Scenario – Integrating the Business

The Challenge

With Your Cooperation - The Open Group Plan

Appendix: Key Requirements Already Discovered

^Preface

A recent meeting of CIOs revealed an overarching business problem that is supported at the next level down by multiple business scenarios. That problem:

Integrated access to integrated information to support business process improvements is the root problem. INTEROPERABILITY of the infrastructure to gain that access is the main technical challenge.

This brief describes the business scenarios surrounding these problems as a stimulus in determining the magnitude of these problems. Armed with this it is hoped that the community of CIOs will band together in cooperation with The Open Group to address the technical challenge.

^{Business Scenario - Integrating Systems}

Large enterprises have many procurement systems, even within a single division.  It would not be unusual for a large enterprise to have 50 or more stand-alone systems (point-to-point connections) with a single supplier.

This gives rise to two main business problems:

1. Inefficient procurement, such as:
   1. High cost of procurement due to:
   1. Need to integrate data manually
   2. Multiple accounts with single supplier for accounts payable
   2. High cost of materials due to:
   1. Lack of consistent pricing with a single supplier
   2. Inability to consolidate buying power and obtain higher discount level with supplier
2. Inefficient business processes, such as:
1. Designers re-inventing the wheel due to:
1. Lack of access to consistent data
2. Lack of awareness of available data
2. Schedulers unable to schedule efficiently due to:
1. Lack of access to consistent data
2. Lack of awareness of available data

It is the second of these two business problems - inefficient business processes - that describes the root problem.  It also demonstrates that simple access to information is not enough – there has to be push as well as pull.

Overcoming these business problems would be worth many millions of dollars to large enterprises, especially those in the manufacturing and transportation sectors.

It would not be practical to replace all of these stand-alone systems with a single procurement system due to:

• Time – procurement is not the only type of system that needs to be addressed.  There are many, many systems along the end-to-end chain of business processes and the time needed to replace them all would be impractical.
• Cost – as for the above reason – it would just not be affordable.
• Operational risk and business interruptionsduring the change over period.

What is needed is an underlying information layer that enables information to be integrated from the various systems and sources.

Figure 1 below depicts the need to provide integration of the various like systems. Here you can see the need for multiple like systems to share information, lest all the problems above are manifested in a failing business.

Figure 1: The Technical Environment – Integrated Information

A solution might be information integration technologies that enable procurement applications to access a common set of data as they do today. This would be inexpensive, as procurement applications would not have to change, and it would allow for graceful migration of the data from the current source to this more common source. Additionally this common source of information would provide a new standard and open interface to the information, to facilitate access for business partners, more about this in the next business scenario.

Unless we are able to find a way to integrate information easily as our companies change the costs will increase geometrically.

^{Business Scenario – Integrating the Business}

Large enterprises also need multiple stand-alone systems connecting them with the outside world.  Each of these has a specific purpose – sometimes to satisfy regulatory requirements – other times to improve customer service – etc.

The inability to address this generates the following business problems:

1. Inefficient enterprise process performance, exemplified by:
   1. Unpredictable quality
      1. Process errors introduced by need to access multiple systems
      2. Process errors introduced by need to manually integrate multiple sets of information
      3. Lack of awareness of available resources
   2. High costs
      1. Duplication of work and manual re-entry of data
      2. Multiple IT and database systems have to be maintained
      3. Lack of access to consistent data
2. Loss of competitiveness due to:
   1. Decreased efficiency with business partners
      1. Supply chain not optimal
   2. Longer time to market
      1. Lack of access to all the necessary systems with single view
      2. Inability to provide complete end-to-end view of product development
3. Poor customer satisfaction
   1. Inability to access all systems to provide effective customer services
      1. Lack of a single view of the customer

So, for example, for manufacturers a very specific business requirement is to provide highly reliable data from multiple systems to customers and operators, business partners and internal staff in business process specific views.  Their lawyers have a different business requirement and therefore a different system.  Their employees want to connect to the HR database. All of these systems were created with different requirements and different business value.  Yet now there is a business need to integrate the access to these systems from inside and outside the traditional company boundaries.

The challenge is to put in place set of services that provide this access, most probably using Internet and web technologies. Needed here is an underlying set of services that provides both the push and pull of access to information for those who need it, and to present that information in the context of the user, e.g. the lawyer, the customer/operator, the maintenance engineer, etc.

Figure 2 below depicts this desire to provide “portals” that provide a single operational view to enhance the efficiency of business processes. Behind these portals are the various systems and databases depicted above in figure 1. These various systems and databases are made transparent to the users of these business processes.

 Figure 2: User Views  – Integrated Access to Integrated Information

A solution might be a portal that could be accessed by the various constituencies using the information. However, this needs to be open to business partners at other points in the end-to-end process and these organizations may make different technology decisions. EDI failed originally because it required everyone to use the same proprietary technology. Today we need to base our decisions on open interfaces.

But there are many different portal approaches and the technologies are not standard yet. The different decisions made today in the different departments are causing tomorrow’s integration problems.

Unless we are able to find a way to make the different portal technologies work together the portal solution is itself likely to cause a significant increase (perhaps as much as 4x) in our infrastructure costs.

^{The Challenge}

The challenge that faces The Open Group and the industries we serve is to create a win for customers of IT products and services and a win for suppliers of IT products and services.

Suppliers are generally not achieving growth out of products – instead growth is coming from the supply of services.  These services are designed to benefit from the lack of interoperability between stand-alone systems.  So it would seem that the motivation for suppliers to solve the interoperability problem highlighted by CIOs will be hard to find.

That is what makes it worthwhile.  The good news is that people based businesses are inherently lower margin than product based businesses.  If we can show the suppliers a route to higher margin business – we can win……… and so can they and their customers.

The Open Group is acting on a vision to “create a market for an interoperable world that serves all the stakeholders.” To achieve this vision The Open Group and the constituencies in the marketplace (the buy, use and sell spaces) must work together to ensure that the right standards are delivered in the right products to meet real needs of the business.

^{With Your Cooperation - The Open Group Plan}

We all know that open standards can help, but they must be the right standards addressing the right areas. The Open Group is offering a unique opportunity to come together to provide leadership for global information technology standards and certification practices.

Actively participating in setting the directions for open standards will help ensure that the standards that move forward are those best positioned to support your business.

The Open Group aims to help IT customers and suppliers alike to realise the vision of the Interoperable Enterprise, by:

• Firstly, The Open Group will enable IT customers and suppliers to share a common understanding of the requirements of customers for interoperable IT solutions, so that the supply side in particular will be able to construct the business case for creating the interoperable solutions, in both applications and infrastructure products, that genuinely address those requirements.
• Secondly, The Open Group will work with industry-specific scenarios – one for each vertical sector for which it can find CIOs and Chief Architects willing to collaborate with it – to establish the necessary standards.  This work has already begun in the transportation sector - hence this paper.
• Thirdly, The Open Group intends to deliver, to IT customers and suppliers alike, the assurance of interoperability that will enable the IT market to function responsibly.

As a technology neutral forum for both customers and vendors, The Open Group is ideally positioned to facilitate effective dialog between the buy side and supply side of the IT industry.  With its world-class product certification process it is unique in being positioned to underpin the results of IT standards efforts - both its own and those of other standards bodies.

^{Appendix: Key Requirements Already Discovered}

The following organization description sets the context for some of the requirements already discovered that are presented below.

• The organization typically has a number of facilities of different kinds and in different locations. These include shops, offices, warehouses, factories, and laboratories.
• In addition to fixed locations, an organization usually has users who are mobile. Users can roam between different locations inside and outside the organization.
• Organizations have business relationships with other organizations of various kinds, including customers, suppliers, risk sharing partners, banks, legal advisors, regulatory agencies, and government departments.
• As well as having established business relationships, an organization may interface with the general public.
• The shape of the organization and its business relationships can change dynamically.
• The distinction between those “inside” and those “outside” the organization may not be easy to make.

The following are high-level requirements stemming from these business scenarios.

• Openness – Standards based open interfaces need to exist for all exposed interfaces. Specifically the areas of protocols, web portal, collaboration, and SAN/NAS connections require standards based interfaces. The rationale for this is that without open standards based interfaces the implementation of web portals for integrated access and storage solutions for integrated information will cause interoperability issues down the road.
• Data integrity – the same data exists in many formats, and the solution must support interoperability by translating as necessary between the multiple formats. For example if height is stored in multiple places, then the solution must assure that when height is used, it is provided to the user in the desired unit, e.g. feet, inches, meters, etc.
• Availability – the solutions being proposed must be available 7*24*365 as business processes that must be available continuously are using these services. This places high requirements on all services of the system. Where maintenance requires downtime, fallback services must be available.
• Security – the solutions being provided must be able to support different security levels and protection based upon both the sensitivity of the data, whether or not the data is exiting the firewall, and the use of the data. Included are the normal requirements for data integrity, confidentiality, logging and tracking. The system security must provide flexible policy management to handle these situations. Additionally the solution must provide strong authentication yet provide users with single sign-on and user administration. PKI certificates are managed by either internal or external certification authorities.
• Accessibility – the solutions being proposed must provide global accessibility to the information while not compromising security.
• Manageability – the solutions must be manageable.
• Internationalization and Localization – as the solutions will be deployed around the world they should be designed to accommodate currencies, time-stamping, multiple languages and adapt to cultural and technical requirements of specific countries.