Composite Applications For Users

Composite Applications for Users Edwin van der Sanden, CTO, Corizon

The Not-So-Agile Enterprise copyright 2008. all rights reserved Business Agility is a key differentiator for the business Faster response to changes in market conditions, legal requirements, opportunities, suppliers, etc. == more profit The IT organization should support this requirement for agility The notion of changing business needs has to be supported by the IT infrastructure But, does it?

The Not-So-Agile Enterprise

Example

Traditional Silo’ed Architecture

Traditional Silo’ed Architecture

copyright 2008. all rights reserved Business Processes rely heavily on human interaction, which is expensive and error prone Business changes are slow to implement and expensive due to retraining and adjusting of staff IT adds to this with rigid Point-to-Point integrations

SOA Enabled Architecture

copyright 2008. all rights reserved SOA introduces a common way to share business services and processes across business units: Expose Control Discover Access BUT only for Business Services and Business Processes, not the user interface

expensive for the service consumer

Increased dependency on service provider

Business Process execution and optimization is bottlenecked by continuous demand on human domain expertise. Increased SOA adoption leads to decreased business agility

Every Business Change requires re-implementation of several UIs

SOA success becomes its downfall

Breaking Down the Monolithic Application copyright 2008. all rights reserved Let service producers, i.e. the domain experts, build fit for purpose atomic UI functions or UI Services Run diagnostics Plan Engineer Take payment Order infrastructure THEN Enable the different user communities to recombine, or mashup, these atomic UI functions into User Processes oriented solutions. Back office

Breaking Down the Monolithic Application

Mashup Architecture

Breaking Down the Monolithic Application

Mashup Architecture can deliver

copyright 2008. all rights reserved Traceability Who is using what, when and how much both Design time as well as Runtime Scalability Avoiding direct dependency on domain experts by service consumers means more solutions can be built cheaper and faster Agility End users, analysts and developers to use flexible UI Services to mashup user process oriented applications Dynamic UI aggregation enable UI updates to be reflected immediately

State of the Software Industry

Application development tools

copyright 2008. all rights reserved e.g. J2EE, C# .NET - component based UI reuse - no provisioning for UI Service - custom framework development required Traditional e.g. Oracle/BEA, IBM Web Portal + service based UI + allows for live UI aggregation - consumer has very little control over portlet L&F or behaviour - burden on provider to supply multiple, customizable, views Portal e.g. Adobe AIR, Silverlight - a specialist type of "traditional" tools - component based UI reuse o some support for portlet embedding ( WSRP ) Rich Client e.g. Corizon Platform, JackBe o very diverse class of tools o customer grade to enterprise grade + can be combined with traditional development tools + live aggregation and customization of UI is possible Mashup

Conclusions

copyright 2008. all rights reserved Enterprise Mashups a natural fit for SOA Runtime UI aggregation ideal for SOA UI approach critical to SOA success Not addressing the last mile of SOA will keep heavy reliance on human interaction in place Traditional UI development does not deliver Application development stuck in traditional component based reuse Proliferation of UI detrimental to agility

Recommendations

copyright 2008. all rights reserved Adopt Make Enterprise Mashups part of your SOA blueprint in a way that makes sense for your business Analyse Take a look at your SOA effort and see how UI development is hurting it Experiment & Learn Select tactical areas to start showing how mashup tools can relieve this pain Different tools will suit different situations