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CRM3_wp_Sun.pdf

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Customer relationship management systems are designed to address loyalty and retention requirements and maximize the value of customer relationships.

Introduction

Market research studies indicate that the majority of the budget for implementing a CRM system is spent on integration—the consulting and IT services required to integrate CRM systems with operational and legacy systems. Not only does this add to the cost, but it also lengthens the amount of time it takes to deploy new applications. The availability of Web service architectures offer a new opportunity for CRM developers to create CRM services faster and for less cost than today's proprietary application environments.

The Data Interoperability Challenge

CRM is more than an application set—it is a business strategy for selling, servicing, and marketing to customers. Bringing together data from business-critical applications and systems to provide a unified view of a customer is the first step in discovering and delivering what that customer wants. CRM promises to reduce transaction times, streamline business processes, identify trends and behavior, promote cross-selling, and much more. It can improve customer loyalty and interaction with more relevant and personalized services that ensure a consistent customer experience, whether in person or online. It can increase revenue streams by identifying new opportunities, and decrease costs by enabling customer self service and improving operating efficiencies.

For most companies, existing applications and IT infrastructure are unable to support the dynamic requirements of today's CRM strategies. Various departments and operating units typically have dozens of disconnected applications addressing different aspects of their customer relationships. With the advent of Web applications and services, customer information is increasing at an unprecedented rate. There are now more customer interactions—support, inquiries, marketing program responses, pre-sales information, purchasing history—and more customer data than ever before.

Typically, CRM applications are standalone designs. For example, each application uses its own data format, login and authentication mechanisms, user interfaces, and so on. While these "stovepipes" of information can address particular tasks, they rarely share data with other applications. Worse, information gathered from multiple customer contact points such as the Web, telephone, fax, and email remain wedded to particular applications. This means that valuable customer data is locked into individual applications and cannot be extracted without significant time and effort. The large amount of customization required means it is more difficult to make changes in the future, to CRM applications as well as to interconnected systems such as e-commerce and supply chain management. This can lead to loss of flexibility and agility in addressing new market situations.

This paper highlights how companies can accelerate return on investment and minimize risks when deploying CRM applications by taking into consideration the overall design and deployment architecture. Utilizing CRM solutions that adhere to open standards and deploying them on an enterprise-capable, Web service architecture can provide a number of benefits, including a unified customer view, faster development time, and greater deployment options. The Sun™ open Net Environment (Sun™ ONE) architecture is a platform for incorporating IT assets from both within and beyond the enterprise, and deploying them as Web applications and services. The Sun ONE platform offers an ideal way to extend the reach and capabilities of next-generation CRM applications.

Integrating Enterprise Data Through CRM

Enterprises use hundreds, and in many cases thousands, of applications. Each does its part in facilitating business operations. Some of these applications represent large data sets—for example inventory, supply chain management, and e-commerce—while others contain small amounts of information, such as customer contact information carried on a sales laptop. Specific applications are integrated on a case-by-case basis, usually the result of a customized effort. However, the majority of enterprise data remains locked within the application, unavailable for any use other than its original design.

The recent developments of Web standards such as the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and the Simple object Access Protocol (SOAP), coupled with the wide adoption of Java™ technology, represent a significant step forward in enabling data and applications interoperability.

• XML is a platform- and language-independent mechanism for describing data. The goal of XML is to enable standardized data to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML.

• SOAP is an XML-based protocol for sending messages and making remote procedure calls in a distributed environment.

• The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE™) defines the standard for developing multi-tier enterprise applications. J2EE simplifies enterprise applications by basing them on standardized, modular components, providing a complete set of services to those components, and handling many details of application behavior automatically, without complex programming.

CRM is emerging as an ideal platform for building new services that take advantage of data from multiple points within the enterprise. Many constituents need access to customer information, both inside and outside the company, including service, support, marketing, sales, and operations, as well as customers, partners, and channel providers. Building customer-related applications using a common data set enables each group to maximize the value of the data, while minimizing the effort that each must expend to obtain it. Overall design principles of an effective CRM solution should include:

• Open Architecture: Published, open interfaces help to ensure that all data is readily accessible whenever it is needed. open APIs enable the greatest choice of compliant solutions, maximizing development and deployment options and avoiding single-vendor lock in.

• Leverage Existing Investments: Taking advantage of existing IT assets maximizes investment in infrastructure and applications while minimizing downtime. Utilizing a standard architecture for integrating new applications with existing enterprise information systems reduces development and deployment costs.

• Security: Strong security technologies and protocols are needed to ensure that data and applications are available only to those who are authorized. Promoting data and transactional security instills confidence and promotes use among customers and channel partners.

• Scalable: Designing a system that can be managed for growth is essential. As applications and services become interdependent, each subsystem must be capable of keeping up with growing demand.

• Available: Customer demand, including inquiries, support, and orders, happens around the clock, so services and applications must be available with minimal downtime to satisfy customer requirements. Systems need to be "always on," with availability features that reduce both planned and unplanned downtime.

• Reliable: As customer interaction moves to the Web, it becomes the face of your business to customers. The systems behind your site must be ready to deliver whatever is requested—as reliably as your best employee.

• Manageable: Responding to customer demands requires comprehensive system management capabilities. Efficiently monitoring and maintaining IT assets delivers better service levels to users, and controls costs.

The Sun ONE architecture addresses key elements of success in developing a new CRM system. Deploying CRM applications based on the Sun oNE architecture simplifies interaction between multiple data sources and enables access to information and capabilities previously too complex or cumbersome to integrate effectively.

Sun offers products and services from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center. It has long been a leader in network computing, and is well recognized as an early leader in the development and proliferation of the Internet with technologies such as the Java platform. The Sun oNE architecture, based on Java technology, enables efficient application and service deployments. It allows a business to leverage the services infrastructure to communicate in a common language across multiple platforms, while integrating data from multiple sources.

Migrating CRM Applications to the Internet

The Web holds obvious appeal for CRM developers and customers alike. For developers, moving away from the client-server model can mean less effort to design and deliver user applications. Web browsers are available for virtually any device, and the interface is nearly universal. Developers need only to use a standard set of APIs and protocols for the presentation layer of their applications. This reduces development efforts, compared to the unique device interfaces that are required under the client-server model.

Web capabilities such as portals and directories offer further benefits. Portals offer the structure to aggregate, personalize, and present applications and information to users. Users can customize their portals to deliver the information they want, where and how they want it. For example, certain types of customer activity can be redirected to a cell phone, while inquiries can be made over the phone with replies faxed directly to the customer. Portal software can offload CRM developers from much of the effort required to deliver these capabilities. Directory services can help manage roles and access rights, managing logins across multiple applications and enforcing which users get access to IT assets. LDAP directory services can scale to hundreds of millions of users, and offer APIs and libraries that developers can quickly utilize. LDAP directories work with existing user directories, creating a meta-directory that is available to all applications while enabling distributed administration and maintenance. Creating a directory mechanism that can utilize existing user information, and is available to all applications—with benefits such as single sign-on—removes the need for developers to create such a mechanism for each application or installation.

For customers, Web-based applications provide a common and available interface—the Web browser—that helps reduce training and deployment costs. Applications based on open technologies help prevent vendor lock-in, protecting and leveraging existing investments, and keeping future deployment options open. Because Web technologies are available on a range of devices, customers have more flexibility in how their solutions are deployed.

open, well-defined Web technologies have produced many tools and capabilities that give programmers the flexibility and agility to quickly react to market situations. These technologies operate with proven scalability, and are more open to integration due to standard, published APIs. The Web's broad geographic reach and low cost per transaction are giving rise to new business models enabling high levels of personalization, which can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customers and developers alike can use the Web to create opportunities, reaching out to customers in ways that were not previously practical from an economic perspective. As businesses migrate CRM applications to the Internet to improve productivity, save costs, and provide new services, they should consider the following:

• Evaluate CRM as a more efficient means of providing common services for all customers. Use proven technologies—for simple services, this may mean HTML and Secure Socket Layer (SSL). Services that are business critical should use more capable platforms such as the J2EE application server. Using the J2EE application server can help shorten development and deployment time by enabling developers to focus their efforts on business logic, not system infrastructure.

• Architect for any device or service. If a service is a success, customers will want to access it from wherever they are, using all kinds of devices. As well, design each service so it can be used by other services. For example, a single authentication service should be used by all other services. This makes sense because creating an authentication capability unique to each service is inefficient and costly, while sharing directory data and policies across all services is very efficient.

• Define communities and policies. One of the more complex tasks in creating CRM applications based on integrated data is determining the rules for using the applications. This is especially important as data becomes more available to applications and customers through the Internet.

• Use a Web portal as the design center. Portals provide a common point of integration, keeping costs low and productivity high. Portals can be configured to deliver information and services to the right people at the right time. And they offer the ability to aggregate applications, access those applications from a single login session, and deliver services to a variety of devices, including voice-enabled and browser-based devices. In addition, portals can offer enhanced security to keep customer relationships private.

Sun has developed an architecture for creating CRM services which provide additional benefits and capabilities for developers and users alike. The comprehensive Sun ONE platform enables faster development and deployment of Web applications and services.

About the J2EE Platform

The J2EE platform offers developers many advantages and capabilities, such as "Write Once, Run Anywhere™" portability, Java DataBase Connectivity™ (JDBC™) APIs for database access, Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) technology for interaction with existing enterprise resources, and a security model that protects data even in Internet applications. Building on this base, the J2EE platform adds full support for Enterprise JavaBeans™ (EJB™) components, Java Servlets APIs, JavaServer Pages™ (JSP™), and XML technology. The J2EE standard includes complete specifications and compliance tests to ensure portability of applications across the wide range of existing enterprise systems capable of supporting this technology.

Working together as a platform, J2EE modules support multi-tiered, distributed applications and the ability to reuse components, unify security, and flexibly control transactions. Compatible with multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, Java and J2EE technologies address opportunities ranging from handheld devices and desktops to the biggest servers available. The acceptance of the Java language is underscored by the availability of many different applications servers today, all compatible with the Java platform, and its pervasive presence on e-commerce sites. As a single standard that can sit on top of a wide range of existing enterprise systems—database management systems, transaction monitors, naming and directory services, and more—J2EE technology breaks the barriers inherent between current enterprise systems. The unified J2EE standard wraps and embraces existing resources required by multi-tiered applications with a unified, component-based application model. This enables the next generation of components, tools, systems, and applications that will supply the strategic requirements of the enterprise.

The Sun ONE Architecture

Synchronizing the relationships between a company and its customers is difficult, and typically requires working with many different technologies, distributed around the network. Most companies have a broad mix of technologies, processes, and applications in place. CRM applications, mainframes, Web and e-commerce systems, desktop spreadsheets, and many more are part of the IT operational fabric. These can be broadly categorized as:

• Local applications: Applications that run on dedicated workstations or PCs, such as office applications.

• Client-server applications: Applications that are split between presentation logic on a client device and business logic on a server. Typically, these applications perform business-critical functions such as accounting, human resources, and manufacturing. This means they usually require large database back ends and tight coordination between programs running on clients and servers.

• Web applications: Applications that run over the Web are based on client browsers and standard Web protocols such as HTML and HTTP.

• Web services: A service that runs over the Web can combine with other services to create a more useful or powerful solution. Web services provide a modular, well-defined, and encapsulated function based on XML that is used for loosely coupled integration between applications or systems.

• Web clients: Applications written in the Java programming language that are delivered over the Web to Java technology-enabled devices such as personal computers, cellular phones, and PDAs.

Sun uses the term Services on Demand to describe all of these. Services on Demand constitute the manner in which enterprises use their information assets to transact and report business operations and communicate with others, including customers. By using Services on Demand, enterprises enable the IT environment to transact and report business operations and communicate with others—anywhere, anytime, on any device.

The Services on Demand vision is a comprehensive framework, encompassing traditional Net-based services, such as security, authentication, and directory, along with more advanced capabilities, including virtualized storage and composite services, which are created by combining separate services.

A comprehensive view of the way a company manages its suppliers is contained in reports and databases, as well as in the way transactions are performed. Because this view includes data, applications, reports, and transactions, Sun calls them DARTs. They represent a way to think through a company's customer activities. Companies may have hundreds, if not thousands, of DARTs associated with managing customer relationships.

Figure 1: DARTs Provide Insight Into the Applications Needed to Manage Customers

Services on Demand represent evolution, not revolution—they will not supercede other network and development approaches. In order to make the Services on Demand model attractive, businesses must be able to leverage existing application assets and expose them as services. Rather than connecting with existing resources, Services on Demand can leverage and extend them. The Services on Demand concept is the foundation for modular, flexible, integratable, and automated access to digital assets, including computing resources, from virtually anywhere.

Web Services

The term Web services has acquired a specific meaning that has been endorsed by industry vendors and analysts. Web services are modular, encapsulated functions that can discover and engage other Web services to complete complex tasks over the Internet. Unlike hard-wired applications—for example, traditional client-server applications based on Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs), CORBA, or Distributed COM (DCOM)—Web services are loosely coupled. They can dynamically locate and interact with other components on the Internet to provide services, and can themselves be dynamically located and used by other Web services.

In addition to mature Web protocols—HTTP, HTML, and SSL—a number of technologies are emerging that support the Web services model. A Web service usually relies on an XML message to communicate data with other service components. Popular standards for transport include SOAP and e-business XML (ebXML). Web services may be advertised and described in a service registry such as UDDI, which can store references to service interfaces specified in WSDL, a framework for describing a Web service's XML-based interfaces.

• As previously explained, XML describes a class of data objects called XML documents which are stored on computers, and partially describes the behavior of programs that process these objects independent of the application logic. Any service that can process an XML file and output messages in XML format can communicate with any other application or service that can do the same. The XML format is being used to defined unlimited languages for specific industries and applications, including CRM.

• ebXML is a worldwide project to standardize the exchange of electronic business data. It defines core components, business processes, registry, and repository, messaging services, trading partner agreements, and security.

• SOAP is a protocol for initiating conversations with a UDDI service. SOAP makes object access simple by allowing applications to invoke object methods, or functions, residing on remote servers. A SOAP application creates a request block in XML, supplying the data needed by the remote method as well as the location of the remote object itself.

• The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) specification describes available Web services components. UDDI provides a way for developers to find services they may want to use when creating their own Web service. It also provides a publicly accessible set of implementations of the specification that allow businesses to register information about the Web services they offer so other businesses can find them. Also, UDDI registries can be used on an intranet to expedite development of internal Web services.

• A Web Service Description Language (WSDL) file provides information on a Web service, including the data format needed to use the service, what operations and services are available, and what message type is used to communicate with it. WSDL is an XML format for describing network services as a set of end points that are operating on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information.

• Java technologies (based on the Java programming language) have been at the center of Web development for many years, from back-end servers to consumer devices. Many Services on Demand are enabled by Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), J2EE, Java Servlet, and JavaServer Pages (JSP) technologies.

Emerging Java specifications, known as Java APIs for XML, are enabling the creation of Services on Demand using familiar JSP and EJB components for the Java platform. These include technologies and protocols for working with XML, directories, repositories of services, and messaging, as well as transitioning existing services.

The interconnections between the UDDI registry, tools, protocols, and Web services are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Web Services Are Highly Modular in Design, Enabling Rapid Development, and Deployment

A developer tool is accessing a UDDI registry to see what services are available. The registry could be publicly accessible or a private enterprise registry.

The tool browses the registry by sending XML messages in the SOAP protocol. Within the registry are descriptions of the services that are available and a pointer (URI) to a .le written in WSDL that describes the services and interfaces. This model is called static lookup because service discovery is performed at development time. (An application that browses the registry to discover services at runtime is called dynamic lookup.)

The application generally accesses the Web service via XML, SOAP, ebXML, and so on, although it is possible to register a service in the registry that uses other protocols, such as Jini™ technology.

The Web service is usually built from components, such as EJB components, wrapped in XML/SOAP, or it could be a legacy application that has an XML/SOAP wrapper. The Web services model is applicable to the CRM developer environment. Applications can build on existing capabilities, and make themselves available either within the enterprise or out to a chain of customers, partners, and suppliers.

Sun ONE

The Sun ONE solution architecture enables "just in time" delivery of information in DARTs as they are aggregated into a Web services model. As previously discussed, Sun ONE is Sun's architecture for delivering Services on Demand. The Sun ONE architecture provides all of the tools and technologies for designing, creating, assembling, deploying, executing, and maintaining Services on Demand. The Sun ONE platform is designed to support major standards initiatives such as SOAP, J2EE, UDDI, LDAP, XML, and ebXML, making it ideal for developers who want to take advantage of the Services on Demand Vision

Products from Sun work together to form an integrated platform, creating a comprehensive product offering for delivering applications and services on the Sun ONE platform. For companies that need solutions that are sold, integrated, and supported worldwide, Sun offers a complete set of products and services.

However, an important aspect of the Sun ONE platform is that it is integratable. Because the Sun ONE architecture is based on open standards, it will interoperate with existing systems and future acquisitions. Companies can choose the components and systems they prefer, taking advantage of an architecture that uses open APIs and protocols. As well, developers can integrate the technologies required to optimize deployment for their solution set.

Figure 3: The Sun ONE Architecture Delivers Services on Demand

The Sun ONE platform is the basis for scalable, reliable, and open standards-based Web applications today, and Services on Demand tomorrow. As Figure 3 shows, the architecture encompasses: Platform, identity, and policy:

• Operating system, hardware, storage, and networking platform, which includes the directory technology necessary to define users, subscribers, organizations, and policy. Presentation, business logic, and data access:

• Service Delivery is the presentation layer. In this architecture, the portal server delivers services to any device, aggregating content as well as providing security, personalization, and knowledge management. It provides a framework for rapid development of complex Web applications.

• The Service Container provides business logic—where the Web services run—and is typically a J2EE application server. The Service Container contains pre-built Web services that an enterprise may build or buy, often hosted by an existing commerce or communications application.

• Service Integration is the data access layer. This layer integrates enterprise assets such as business-to-business (B2B) and enterprise application integration (EAI) applications, legacy applications, and database repositories using Java technology-based connectors.

• Tools for creating, assembling, deploying, and testing services.

The Sun ONE Architecture offers the technology, products, and standards for Services on Demand, as well as superior integration across the platform and defined interoperability with legacy systems and software provided from third-party vendors. It offers the following capabilities:

• Web applications middleware, including the standard messaging and Web server capabilities

• Web services middleware, which provides new features for basic XML Web services

• Identity and context services, including knowledge about user preferences, intentions, and goals

• Web client model, which defines how rich Java applications can be provisioned to portable devices and desktops, with the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME™) and desktop Java standards

• Other middleware interfaces and core Web services such as directory services, portal services, security and policy, e-commerce services, and communications capabilities

• Java technology and Web development tools, including the ability to wrap legacy languages and application components for Web services

• Systems and applications management for Web applications and Web services

• Platform services relevant to Web applications and Web services containers The Sun ONE architecture addresses important issues, such as privacy, security, and identity. It defines practices and conventions to support situational context, such as client device type and user location. And it supports systems that can span multiple networks, including the traditional Web, wireless Web, and home networks. The architecture is designed to ensure that Web services, developed using any tool and running on any platform, can seamlessly interoperate.

Sun Support for CRM

Sun's industry-leading, open architecture and commitment to working collaboratively with partners make it the ideal choice for developing and deploying innovative, Web-based CRM applications. Sun's open standards-based, pervasive platform, built upon Java technology, the J2EE platform, XML, and the Solaris™ Operating Environment (OE), makes the integration of widely diverse systems possible. Sun's platform and approach to solving business problems has been widely accepted by customers, independent software vendors, service providers, and systems integrators. Sun has one of the largest and broadest portfolios of CRM application partners in the industry. Alliances with these partners provide customer-proven, highly integrated, and optimized CRM solutions that help reduce risk and accelerate ROI.

Sun is strongly committed to the CRM community, offering a number of products and programs which can be used to develop, deploy, and market CRM applications and services:

iForce

Sun's iForce^SM initiative provides a rich array of products, programs, solutions, and partners to deliver targeted, customer-driven vertical and horizontal solutions. This initiative brings together Sun and its global industry partners to deliver proven solutions that help customers—ranging from start-ups to large enterprises—harness the power of the Internet and drive business advantage. A significant differentiator of the iForce initiative is the dynamic relationship and interaction between Sun and its partners.

This community provides customers with a way to engage with Sun and its industry partners for the tools and solutions that make it fast, easy, and safe to leverage the Net Effect to improve business processes and reduce time to service. The iForce initiative enables an intra-community exchange of products, services, tools, certification, programs, and expertise that fuels growth and enables all parties to remain focused on their core competencies, while working together to deliver solutions based on best practices to their mutual customers.

The iForce community is based on three values Sun has held since its inception—open interfaces, network computing, and a non-compete technology model that leverages the core competencies of global solution and service providers. With the strong products and technology available in the iForce community, customers can improve time to market and service by using Sun's tested, proven integratable, easy-to-deploy solutions. The iForce community underscores Sun's commitment to understanding its customers' strategies and needs.

• iForce Partner Program: Promotes collaboration and cooperation among the best and brightest in the industry. Sun brings together all of the groups that impact creation and delivery of solutions to customers, so they can work together more effectively. Each group makes a unique contribution to the network, resulting in more complete solutions.

• iForce Ready Centers: Designed to help Sun's customers and iForce Partners utilize the iForce methodology as the basis for building and deploying best-of-breed solutions.

• iForce CRM Network: An open, collaborative community of partners whose goal is to accelerate the delivery of innovative CRM solutions developed and deployed on the Sun ONE platform. The program provides independent software vendors, resellers, and systems integrators with the technology and tools to address the technical and infrastructure challenges in developing and deploying enterprise CRM solutions.

Solaris Operating Environment The Solaris 9 OE is the foundation of Sun ONE. It redefines the operating system to a services platform by combining traditional OS functionality, application services, and identity management. Its capabilities are essential to the security, manageability, and quality of Services on Demand that are created using Sun ONE. As the foundation for Sun systems, the Solaris OE enables an IT organization to deliver on the promise of massive scale, continuous real-time computing, and secure systems—while increasing service levels, reducing risk, and decreasing costs. And because the Solaris OE is tightly integrated with the Java 2 platform, it will remain at the forefront of operating environment offerings.

Sun Servers

Sun servers offer a single, binary-compatible architecture on platforms ranging from one to 106 processors, providing optimal scalability, flexibility, and performance at a low total cost of ownership. Sun provides excellent investment protection for applications and hardware by offering a seamless, smooth upgrade path with a common UltraSPARC™ architecture and the Solaris OE. Sun hardware features state-of-the-art technologies such as Fibre Channel, redundant and hot-swappable components, high-performance architectures, fault-isolated system domains, and advanced system management functionality. Sun servers, including the Sun Fire™, Netra™, and Sun Enterprise™ product lines, are designed for high performance, reliability, and manageability in a variety of form factors and configurations for any environment.

Sun Storage

Sun StorEdge™ complete storage solutions are optimized for the Solaris OE and tailored to Sun's server platform, while supporting heterogeneous environments. The Sun StorEdge hardware, software, services and support offerings provide an end-to-end solution.

Sun Storage ONE, Sun's open, integrated storage software architecture, is designed to automate best practices and deliver availability, utilization, performance, and resource management using StorEdge software suites. Sun offers storage systems that provide high-performance computing, consolidation, and data continuance solutions.

Sun ONE Infrastructure Products

Sun offers a comprehensive line of software products that can be used to deploy a solution based on the Sun ONE architecture. These core components of Sun ONE include the full range of application, directory, messaging, portal, and Web capabilities—based on open and proven technologies— to enable rapid assembly and deployment of scalable Internet services.

Sun ONE Application Services Reference Architectures are completely integrated proof-of-concept solutions. Using Sun ONE infrastructure products, reference architectures are designed to help reduce deployment risk. Reference architectures can accelerate the deployment of Services on Demand while addressing the complexity, resource constraints, and other Web services deployment issues. Sun ONE Application Services Reference Architectures are available in Sun Authorized iForce Ready Centers to test work loads before buying and design decisions are made.

Consulting and Support Services

People and processes are just as important as products. Sun delivers the support and expertise companies need to plan, implement, run, and maintain an efficient IT environment.

Sun experts can integrate all the methodology, expertise, products, and services needed for an effective CRM solution. Sun works with organizations in a variety of ways to build and maintain flexible, open systems architectures that optimize the benefits of CRM solutions.

• Sun Professional Services can help plan, architect, and implement CRM, e-commerce, portal computing, supply chain management, and service provider solutions.

• Sun Educational Services can help analyze your staff's existing skill set, build a customized education plan, and certify your staff for optimal performance through comprehensive skills analysis, training, education, and certification offerings.

• Sun's Support Services offers flexible, customizable support plans to help companies meet 24x7, mission-critical requirements for maximum uptime and minimal hassles.

• Sun Remote Services (SRS) helps monitor and manage the systems vital to operating your business with maximum uptime—from mission-critical system monitoring and management with SRS to Internet-based self monitoring.

Through best practices, methodologies, and years of consulting experience, Sun Professional Services delivers Sun ONE expertise to help companies meet the demands of designing and implementing architectures—tailored to specific business and technical requirements—for long-term success.

Using Web Services to Increase Customer Service—An Example

Self-service programs are an efficient way to lower the cost of customer interaction while increasing customer satisfaction. Customer self-service enables users to edit account information and preferences, check on delivery status, and access other services without human intervention. The following example illustrates how Web services can be used to deliver value-added customer services through a Web-based, self-service application.

It is well understood that Web-based services can provide information for a fraction of the cost of telephone-based support, as well as enhance customer loyalty and profitability. However, integrating multiple billing, commerce, and inventory applications as well as disparate infrastructure platforms presents a significant challenge to existing IT environments. To provide real-time data to customers, this company has created a Web self-service application that provides customers with the ability to check order status and edit account information.

Figure 4: Deploying a Customer Service Application as a Web Service

A customer wants to check order status and delivery information for the last 90 days. Using a Web browser to log into a portal, his name and password are authenticated by the directory service. From the Web page, he clicks on the "Review Orders" link. This action sends a request over Secure HTTP (HTTPS) to the J2EE application server.

The application server uses Web services to pull together information from many sources and applications. The business logic in the Get_Info EJB component obtains information from past and pending shipments. Using the XML data format and SOAP messaging protocol, the Get_Info service retrieves information from three systems:

1. A request for all pending orders is sent to the order administration system. Once this information is extracted, it is sent back to the application server.

2. A request for all products being built is sent to the shop floor system. Once this information is extracted, it is sent to the application server.

3. A request for a list of all orders shipped in the last 90 days, including delivery information, is sent to the shipper's information system. Once this information is extracted, it is sent back to the application server. Because shipping is outsourced, the request and response are sent through the firewall.

When the application server receives the necessary data, the data is combined and processed, then sent to the portal. The portal formats the information into HTML suitable for viewing on a Web browser. Note that one advantage of using a portal is that it can take the same data from the application server and format it for use by other devices, such as cellular phones or PDAs.

After reviewing the information, the customer decides to change his default shipping preference. He clicks on the "Edit Profile" link to do this. Although it is a different system, he does not have to log in again, because the portal provides single-sign-on capabilities.

The customer's information is retrieved from the Order Administration system. Once the Preferences screen appears on his Web browser, the customer changes the default shipping preference. This information is sent to the application server, where an EJB service (Update_Profile) sends SOAP messages containing the updated profile information in XML format to all enterprise information systems (EIS) systems.

A Web service such as this example enables customers to access the information they want, when and where they need it, and illustrates the services on demand model. At the same time, the cost of providing this information is greatly reduced, since additional capability can be added without recreating the infrastructure. For example, reseller information can be added as a separate channel within the existing portal, with authentication being handled by the same directory server. Web services allow for new applications to be developed and deployed much quicker, and they can be reused for other purposes, greatly simplifying the development of new services.

Moving Ahead with CRM and Sun ONE

Quickly reacting to changing customer and market requirements can help businesses improve their revenues while decreasing costs. Sun ONE is an open, extensible, standards-based platform for developing innovative, Web-enabled CRM solutions. Integrated, optimized capabilities such as directory, portal, integration, and application services can speed development and deployment, accelerating the ROI on CRM projects. By leveraging information assets into new services, organizations can deploy impactful customer-driven applications utilizing the Sun ONE platform. The Sun ONE platform is:

• Integratable: Based on open standards, it is easy to integrate with your existing applications and best-of-breed, third-party applications. With Sun ONE, companies won't be locked into a single vendor's solution, because it extracts value that is currently trapped in legacy systems, integrating the data into the solution of your choice.

• Open: Sun is committed to driving standards such as Java technology and XML for integration. Sun ONE speaks the same language as all of your trading partners—it can transform data in real time between widely used standards such as electronic data interchange (EDI) and XML.

• Comprehensive: Sun ONE offers an end-to-end infrastructure for developing and deploying CRM applications that includes fully integrated portal, application, and directory server solutions. This unified platform provides a foundation for delivering third-party applications without heavy investment in costly back-end integration or point-to-point solutions.

• Reliable: The Solaris OE is acknowledged by the industry to be the premier UNIX® environment for SPARC™ and Intel architecture systems. By minimizing planned and unplanned downtime, reducing administration errors, and simplifying troubleshooting, it keeps mission-critical applications available and ensures high-speed, reliable access to data.

Reference

• iForce CRM Network • Sun ONE • The Solaris OE • iForce • Java Technologies • Storage • Sun Professional Services, Support, and Consulting

• Scalable: The Sun ONE platform scales across multiple CPUs and machines. This means Sun ONE software can easily handle heavy traffic, huge data sets, and computing-intensive problems. As CRM applications encompass and interact with more enterprise applications and users, the Sun ONE architecture delivers plenty of room for growth.

For many years, Sun has been a leader in providing Internet products and technologies. Sun's strong support among industry-leading CRM developers, the iForce initiative, and especially the iForce CRM Network Program, offer the resources and assistance needed to develop and deploy innovative CRM applications. Sun enables enterprises to deploy an integrated, flexible and extensible CRM framework based on the Sun ONE architecture, that satisfies the current needs of the customer-driven enterprise, while preparing for the technologies, applications, and devices of tomorrow.