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Siebel Systems, Inc.

Integration is not simply a matter of integrating CRM applications to an ERP system; it is financially costly and technically complex.

The Problem: Managing Enterprise Application Integration

Integration is the single largest spending priority for IT organizations today, according to a February 2002 survey of chief information officers reported in CIO magazine. The reason is clear: Enterprises have underestimated the complexity of application integration, system administration, and maintenance. At the same time, vendors have typically delivered proprietary, internal-facing, application-specific integration solutions that perpetuate and even exacerbate the problem.

In order to support key business processes that span the enterprise — and extend beyond the enterprise to partners, suppliers, and customers — today's organizations need to connect an increasing number of packaged and legacy applications. Business today is moving at an ever-increasing velocity. To compete effectively, organizations must accelerate their business processes: They need real-time visibility into business conditions and market demand, and they must be able to respond quickly to changing conditions. Cross-application integration is imperative to achieving real-time visibility and responsiveness.

However, the intricacies of system integration, coupled with the inherent cost and complexity, have burdened IT staffs and resulted in a rigid and inflexible IT infrastructure. Not only are companies unable to deploy real-time, cross-application business processes, but they also have lost their ability to make changes to adjust in real time to market, competitive, and customer dynamics. The application infrastructure is no longer an advantage but instead a liability. As CIOs are now recognizing, the integration problem was never addressed from a business perspective. Consequently, there is no adaptable, cost-effective infrastructure for the implementation and execution of application-independent, enterprise-wide business processes.

Not Simply a CRM-to-ERP Problem

The problem is not just a matter of integrating customer relationship management applications to an enterprise resource planning system. That is a fundamental trivialization of the problem. In reality, organizations must integrate a wide range of disparate applications to support complex business processes that cut across multiple applications and organizational boundaries. This is further complicated by the fragmentation of data across multiple silos, problems of data redundancy, and lack of real-time access to critical information.

According to a recent independent survey of enterprise software customers, the typical organization has about 50 major applications running in its IT environment. These include legacy and custom systems, prepackaged software, and ERP applications. For larger organizations, the situation is even more extreme: Companies with more than $1 billion in annual sales have an average of approximately 500 applications, and the largest organizations have as many as 5,000 or more.

Companies, therefore, are dedicating a significant portion of their IT resources to integrating disparate applications. Traditional approaches rely on custom development, so they are difficult to maintain, modify, and upgrade. Traditional integrations also are dependent on the systems for which they are specifically designed — including both the applications software and the integration infrastructure involved. Therefore, they are not reusable: If the organization changes its underlying applications or its integration infrastructure, it must reimplement integrations that support cross-application business processes.

The high cost and technical complexity of integration has placed significant limits on organizations’ ability to achieve the strategic benefits that are possible from cross-application business processes. To date, no approach has overcome the barriers of high cost and technical complexity to deliver the full benefits of multiapplication integration. In fact, many companies have fallen into the trap of sacrificing best-in-class applications for a one-stop shop "integrated" solution. But in reality, no organization can run its entire business, and its extended enterprise, on a single application suite.

Typical Approaches to Integration — and Their Shortcomings

Having long faced the problem of integration, organizations have taken various approaches to solving it. Three recent approaches include point-to-point, proprietary, and information bus with custom business processes.

Point-to-Point

The most ubiquitous approach is point-to-point integration, which focuses on data-level integration: Each application is separately interfaced with other applications it needs to connect with. Not only is this approach costly and time-consuming, but the number of integration points becomes unmanageable as the number of applications requiring integration increases: The number of integration points required to connect n applications is equal to [n x (n-1)]/2, also known as the Order N2 problem. So if 50 applications need to talk to one another, the number of integration points required is (50 x 49)/2, or 1,225. If any of the underlying applications is upgraded or replaced, all of the integration points connected with those applications also must be reimplemented.

Proprietary

Another approach — one heavily promoted by vendors of large enterprise application suites — is the monolithic proprietary approach. These vendors, whose core competence may be in databases or ERP applications, for instance, are proposing an all-in-one solution in which the vendor provides an integrated suite of applications for enterprise-wide transactions, focusing specifically on CRM, ERP, and supply chain management. The objective of this proprietary approach is to ensure that all of the applications in the suite are tightly coupled with one another. Vendors proposing this proprietary approach often refer to it as an "integrated front-office-to-back-office suite," an approach that depends completely on an enterprise deploying applications from only one vendor.

This approach falls short in several key respects. It assumes that the vendor's suite will encompass all of the applications and functionality that organizations require — a highly unrealistic assumption. No vendor has the domain expertise and resources to develop best-in-class applications across every category. It demands that organizations replace any existing applications with those provided by the enterprise application vendor, and it locks an organization into a closed and inflexible architecture dependent solely on one applications software provider. A single-vendor proprietary solution demands that organizations accept inferior, least-common-denominator functionality as a compromise for integration within the vendor's product suite.

In essence, this is a vendor-centric — not a customer-centric — approach. It is focused primarily on connecting the vendor's own limited product set within its closed, proprietary architecture, and it would require organizations to abandon significant prior IT investments. In short, this approach does not solve the problem that organizations face — namely, visibility and accessibility across systems, business flexibility supported by the IT infrastructure, and business process execution across a multitude of best-in-class applications designed to deliver strategic advantage.

Information Bus

A third approach to integration is to connect applications to an information bus — several of which are commercially available — which serves as a backbone to tie disparate applications together into a common network. The information bus is an advance over point-to-point integration because it minimizes the number of integration connections required.

However, to support processes that cut across multiple applications in the network, organizations must build custom programs. These sit on top of the applications and direct the various applications to work together in support of specific business objectives. Organizations spend significant time and money on building custom business process flows, which require expert resources with the knowledge and experience to design and deploy them.

Not only are custom business process flows expensive and time-consuming to develop — leading to higher cost and slower time to deployment — but they are also one-off creations that are not industry standards-based. As a result, they are difficult to maintain, modify, and upgrade. And, because custom business processes are built to work with specific applications, they are not reusable across a diverse set of applications. In short, this approach is costly, slow, and unscalable.

Universal Application Network: Enabling Business Process Integration

In approaching the challenge of interapplication integration, Siebel Systems looked at the problem through the eyes of its customers. It became clear that the problem is really about business flexibility, visibility, and real-time response to the increasing speed of change in market dynamics — those are the objectives for which integration is simply the means. Organizations want a cross-application approach that is both flexible and low cost, and they want to be able to leverage best-in-class technology — best applications, best server technology, and best business process model expertise. As a result of taking this customer-focused perspective, Siebel Systems is collaborating with the leading systems integrators and integration server vendors, leveraging their expertise and Siebel Systems’ industry and CRM domain expertise to deliver Universal Application Network.

Universal Application Network is a customer-centric solution that solves the complex multiapplication integration problem within and across the enterprise in a highly cost-effective way. In essence, Universal Application Network takes a standards-based approach to the design and development of cross-application business processes, while leveraging the proven integration server technology of leading vendors, which is robust and highly scalable. These business processes are application-independent and are therefore deployable across a diverse set of applications. The result is a vendor-independent solution that dramatically reduces the need for customization, minimizes complexity, speeds deployment, and delivers a low total cost of ownership.

Universal Application Network is based on Web Services and Extensible Markup Language (XML), which provide the standards for specifying Universal Application Network business processes.

With Universal Application Network, organizations are not locked into a single vendor or proprietary architecture, nor do they have to sacrifice best-in-class application functionality for a proprietary, single-vendor solution. Universal Application Network gives organizations choice, flexibility, scalability, and visibility, while at the same time reducing cost, complexity, and time to deployment.

Delivering End-to-End, Prepackaged, Extensible Business Process Solutions

Universal Application Network is built on an innovative architecture that enables prebuilt end-to-end business process solutions to be deployed out of the box with minimal customization.

• These solutions support both intra- and inter-enterprise business processes, spanning applications across and beyond the enterprise.
• Universal Application Network leverages Siebel Systems’ leading CRM domain expertise and the extensive experience of leading systems integrators in developing and deploying superior out-of-the-box business processes.
• The business processes can be easily and quickly extended and modified, enabling organizations to rapidly adapt their business processes to changes in strategy, operating procedures, customer requirements, and market conditions.

Embraces Industry Standards

• Universal Application Network is based on emerging XML and Web Services standards. It includes an industry-standard specification for defining business processes, supported by the leading vendors of integration server technology — IBM, Mercator, SeeBeyond, TIBCO, Vitria, and webMethods.
• As a result, organizations receive all of the proven benefits of deploying a standards-based solution: reduced deployment risk, dramatically lower cost of development and support, and a choice of preferred integration server.

Delivers Industry-Specific Business Process Solutions

• Universal Application Network delivers end-to-end business processes tailored for specific industry segments.
• Organizations can speed their deployment and lower the total cost of ownership by selecting prepackaged business processes that address key industry-specific requirements.

Provides Reusable Business Processes, Enabling Organizations to "Create Once, Deploy Everywhere"

• The prepackaged business processes are independent of both the underlying applications and the integration server, so they can be reused across multiple divisions or lines of business — even where different applications or integration servers are deployed.
• This reduces implementation cost and complexity and leverages existing IT investments, while accelerating time to deployment.

Leverages Proven Integration Server Technology that Is Robust, Highly Scalable, and Reliable

• Developed through more than 15 years of industry experience by leading integration server vendors such as IBM, Mercator, SeeBeyond, TIBCO, Vitria, and webMethods, the integration infrastructure is technically robust, highly scalable, and reliable — supporting the integration requirements of the world's largest organizations and most complex IT environments.

Figure 1 — Universal Application Network provides a total integration solution, delivering end-to-end business processes that are independent of the underlying applications or integration server.

Gives Organizations Maximum Flexibility to Choose Best-in-Class Applications

• Universal Application Network is application-independent, so the prepackaged business processes can interoperate with any underlying applications, thus enabling organizations to leverage their existing IT investments.
• Organizations are not locked into a single vendor's proprietary product set, and they have the flexibility to select from any vendor's offerings.

Universal Application Network: End-to-End Solution

Siebel Systems is partnering with leading systems integrators to deliver end-to-end, industry-specific business processes across and beyond the enterprise, leveraging the systems integrators’ expertise and experience gained through thousands of customer engagements. Combined with Siebel Systems’ extensive CRM domain and industry expertise, this standards-based approach provides prepackaged solutions for cross-application business processes that incorporate industry best practices while reducing cost, complexity, and time to deployment.

1. The business process solutions are easily configured and extended, using an intuitive graphical business process design tool.
2. The design tool generates the business processes in a standards-based format. Business processes are application-independent, so they can interoperate with a diverse set of applications, enabling organizations to leverage their existing applications for increased competitive advantage.
3. By closely collaborating with the leading integration server vendors to support an industry-standard format for defining business processes, Siebel Systems has ensured that organizations can leverage their best practice processes on all of these leading platforms. These vendors are accelerating their product release plans to support Universal Application Network, so that their servers can read and execute standards-based representations of business processes. Business processes can be created once and deployed on different integration servers.

Universal Application Network Components

At the highest level, Universal Application Network consists of three components: business process library, business process design tool, and integration server.

Figure 2 — Universal Application Network enables prebuilt business processes to be deployed across a diverse set of applications.

Business Process Library

The business process library is a collection of prepackaged end-to-end industry-specific business processes — such as customer creation or quote-to-order — which can be configured and executed across multiple systems of record and business logic. These business processes are based on XML and Web Services standards and thus are independent of both the underlying applications and integration server. Business processes consist of three components: business process flows, common objects, and transformation maps.

• Business process flows — Business process flows orchestrate a sequence of steps across multiple applications to achieve a business objective. They are defined using an industry-leading specification, which is based on Web Services standards.
• Common objects – Common objects are a composite of application data models and are compliant with industry-specific standards such as Open Applications Group. They add a unique ID to identify the objects across applications, eliminating the need for point-to-point mappings. Siebel Systems provides a comprehensive set of predefined objects, such as customer, employee, product, and quote objects. These objects are defined using XML/XSD standards.
• Transformation maps — These provide mappings between the application data models and the common objects and are based on XSLT standards. For example, in Siebel eBusiness Applications, "country" might be represented as "USA" and is mapped to "country" in common objects as "United States." Siebel Systems provides prebuilt transformation maps to back-office applications (such as Amdocs, Kenan, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Portal, and SAP).

Business Process Design Tool

This is an intuitive graphical tool for developing and configuring business process solutions, including business process flows, common objects, and transformation maps. The design tool has import and export capabilities to accept and emit definitions of the business process solutions in XML standards. The design tool consists of two components: Business Process Flow Modeler and Transformation Modeler.

• Business Process Flow Modeler enables the user to describe business processes at various levels of abstraction. A business analyst uses the modeler to describe the business process independent of the underlying applications. A developer can then define further details by providing process flows that indicate how a specific application accomplishes those steps. The Business Process Flow Modeler provides visual representation of error conditions, transactional boundaries, and compensating transactions. The modeler accepts and emits Web Services-based XML representations of the defined processes.
• The Transformation Modeler is used to define common objects and transformation maps. The user can drag and drop fields and choose available functions libraries to define transformations. The Transformation Modeler also can be used to define custom transformations. It accepts and emits XSD schemas and XSLT-based transformations.

Integration Server

The integration server coordinates interapplication communication. Examples of commercially available integration servers include IBM CrossWorlds InterChange Server, Mercator Integration Broker, SeeBeyond Business Integration Suite, TIBCO BusinessWorks, Vitria BusinessWare, and webMethods Platform. These vendors are enhancing their integration servers to execute the standards-based business processes delivered by Universal Application Network.

Each vendor has different components in its technology, but fundamentally they are similar and include the following elements:

• Transport layer — This is a messaging service that provides queuing, guarantees delivery of messages, and supports both synchronous and asynchronous messaging. Examples include IBM MQSeries and TIBCO Rendezvous.
• Adapter — An adapter connects an application to the transport layer. It relays events from the application to the integration server and can "introspect" the application — it has the ability to import application configurations into the integration server. Examples include TIBCO, SAP, and Vitria Oracle Adapters.
• Common object model — A common object model is a framework for defining common objects. It is extensible and supports customer-developed objects.
• Transformation — The integration server executes the transformations at run time.
• Business Process Controller — The Business Process Controller provides step-by-step execution of a business process. It provides support for long-running transactions and error handling.

Conclusion

Universal Application Network represents an innovative new paradigm for multi-application integration. It is the first and only standards-based, best-in-class solution that fully meets the key objectives of enabling organizations to deploy end-to-end, industry-specific business processes while reducing the cost, complexity, and time of cross-application integration. Universal Application Network transforms application integration from a complex and expensive technical challenge into the strategic ability to implement customer-facing business processes across and beyond the enterprise.