HYPERSERVICE BUSINESS PLATFORM 0

Transcription

1 HYPERSERVICE BUSINESS PLATFORM 0 APPLICATION OVERVIEW NextAxiom Technology, Inc.

2 COPYRIGHT 2003 NextAxiom. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. TRADEMARKS NextAxiom and Hyperservice are registered trademarks of NextAxiom Technology, Inc. Identifies a registered trademark. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. NextAxiom may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from NextAxiom, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property. ABOUT NEXTAXIOM Based in Pleasanton, California, NextAxiom Technology is an innovative provider of software tools and infrastructure that makes business more measurable and interaction less costly. Our flagship product, the Hyperservice Business Platform, enables more effective execution of business process improvement initiatives. As a result of employing this platform, organizations harness their existing applications to achieve the productivity, customer satisfaction, and profitability objectives embodied by the trend of Six Sigma initiatives. For more information about NextAxiom, please see our website at

3 Contents Creating a Flexible IT Infrastructure with NextAxiom... 1 Case 1: Direct ment of Business Process Cycle Times...2 Case 2: Building a Single Interface for Multiple Non-Integrated Applications...3 Case 3: Creating Customized Extensions to Packaged Applications...4 Case 4: Increasing Scalability and Performance of Backend Systems...5 Case 5: Creation of Value Added Business Services...6 Case 6: Complex Data Transformation, Translation, and Mapping...7 Case 7: Integration of Interdependent Applications...8 Case 8: Automated Data Fault Detection...9 Case 9: Monitoring, Notification, and Automated Exception Handling Case 10: Automating Business Intelligence Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview i

4 CREATING A FLEXIBLE IT INFRASTRUCTURE WITH NEXTAXIOM This document examines typical integration, software development, and customization problems that can be solved using Hyperservice Business Platform and offers typical applications for these solutions. Metaphors of stovepipes and silos are often used to describe the rigid application-oriented architectures of IT departments. In these environments, integrating and customizing applications to fit the business structure requires grueling, expensive initiatives that take months to complete. There are often functional gaps between applications and the business activities they are meant to support which lowers corporate efficiency and productivity. In contrast is the flexibility of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) powered by NextAxiom s Hyperservice Business Platform. The platform encapsulates the functionality of IT assets with a layer of Web services, which allows them to be assembled on-demand in support of business initiatives. This increased flexibility makes it easier to shape IT applications to support business activities such as implementing Six Sigma initiatives, introducing new products or services, adding sales channels, merging with other companies, or outsourcing. IT applications directly correspond to the business initiatives they support, increasing overall efficiency and productivity. SOA s powered by Hyperservice Business Platform are highly modular. This allows an IT department to employ an incremental process for migrating to an SOA. A small problem can be solved using Hyperservice Business Platform, and then additional projects can be added to the first. Figure 0-1 Link Tag: Organizational activities disconnected from applications. GAP Business activities correspond directly to assembled Web services. ment of business performance. Rapidly assembled Web services. Traditional EAI solutions. Raw material Web services ment of application performance. Application Oriented Architecture Service Oriented Architecture Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 1

5 Case 1 Direct ment of Business Process Cycle Times CASE 1: DIRECT MEASUREMENT OF BUSINESS PROCESS CYCLE TIMES THE SOLUTION: How do you measure the cycle-time of a business process that spans multiple organizations, software systems, and applications? Most business processes involve multiple software applications such as Manufacturing, Financials, and Human Resources. Performance logs associated with these diverse applications simply measure application performance. Non-intrusive measurement of the cycle-time associated with each step of a business process as well as the overall process can be complex, costly, and time-consuming. Often, such measurements requires collaboration across functional units, and correlation of events and information across disparate systems. As part of a Six Sigma initiative to improve the Quote-to-Cash (QTC) process, your team needs to measure the cycle time for each subprocess: quote-to-order, order-to-ship, shipto-delivery, delivery-to-invoice, and invoice-to-payment. In addition, you will need to measure Key Performance Indicators, such as the number of sales quotes, that result in orders. NextAxiom's paradigm of composing software without coding, and built-in features such as Service Triggers, enables business experts to non-intrusively measure the cycle-time of business processes as well as capture useful information not previously available. BENEFITS: Generated statistics directly measure business activities Captured cycle time measurements provide information required for the step of Six Sigma Enables detailed optimization of business process with the freedom to capture any other relevant information Figure 0-2 Link Tag: High level Hyperservices enable measurement of business activities. Solution composition is entirely visual. Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 2

6 Case 2 Building a Single Interface for Multiple Non-Integrated Applications CASE 2: BUILDING A SINGLE INTERFACE FOR MULTIPLE NON-INTEGRATED APPLICATIONS Over time, your company has added software packages and systems inherited through acquisitions without fully integrating them to support its business activities. Users must perform swivel chair integration to add data to each application. This commonly leads to inconsistent information across multiple systems and longer customer service cycle-times. Six Sigma black belts in your company realize that although the company provides a single point of contact for servicing a customer, an agent has to manually copy data between several nonintegrated applications to conduct any transaction. This process is error prone, reduces the efficiency of customer interaction, lowers customer satisfaction, and lowers repeat high margin business due to incorrect orders and lengthy processing times. THE SOLUTION: NextAxiom unbundles the functionality of software packages into Web services building blocks. Using Hyperservice Studio, IT architects visually assemble these building blocks into an integrated Hyperservice. A light user interface layer invokes these Hyperservices to create a single integrated application for the end-user. Changes in business processes, such as the addition of new applications, are easily accommodated by simply plugging new Web services into the Hyperservice. BENEFITS: Increased business efficiency by reducing process cycle-time and defects Increased solution flexibility due to code-free composition and reusable building blocks Figure 0-3 Link Tag: Users can access and update software packages simultaneously through a single virtual application. Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 3

7 Case 3 Creating Customized Extensions to Packaged Applications CASE 3: CREATING CUSTOMIZED EXTENSIONS TO PACKAGED APPLICATIONS Adding custom logic is a time consuming job, especially when coding or scripting the application extension is required. Custom coded modules are also difficult to maintain. Changes are difficult to make, and the code often breaks when the main application is upgraded. Some of the modules available for your ERP system do not correspond to the way you run your business, so your company has foregone purchasing them and continues to operate those business processes manually. Automating manual business processes would greatly increase company efficiency. THE SOLUTION: NextAxiom s Web services assembly layer provides the perfect environment for creating customized extensions to your enterprise software packages. To create a customized extension, use the component Web services that represent your software package s integration APIs. Assemble these into a Hyperservice and map the flow of data between them. Drop in conditional logic, data manipulation functions, and other powerful Web services to finish your custom module. BENEFITS: Assembling application extensions from Web services is 70% faster than coding Logic is entirely visual, making it easier to understand than code Maintenance is simplified by ease of understanding and increased productivity Figure 0-4 Link Tag: Figure 0-5 Link Tag: Hyperservices implement custom behavior of application extensions. Powerful application functionality is added simply by dragging and dropping without writing a single line of code! Map the flow of data between fields. Add data transformation functions to the mapping. Flow of data is high performance because it avoids the overhead of XML transformation. NextAxiom comes with a powerful out of the box library of functionality that is easily added to applications. Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 4

8 Case 4 Increasing Scalability and Performance of Backend Systems CASE 4: INCREASING SCALABILITY AND PERFORMANCE OF BACKEND SYSTEMS Some requests to backend systems take minutes to return data. Others are very common and can place significant load on these systems. Adding a caching and load balancing layer between applications and back-end systems speeds up response time and helps manage total load on the backend systems. However, commercial caching and clustering solutions are often too expensive for smaller applications and creating a homegrown caching layer adds another piece of code that must be maintained. As part of a Six Sigma business improvement initiative, management needs an application that conveniently displays real-time statistics of the company s financial state. This requires pulling information from a variety of backend systems an data sources. THE SOLUTION: NextAxiom provides configurable, semantic-based caching and load balancing of Web services. In a Hyperservice, assemble the Web services that call the back-end functions you wish to cache or load balance. Enable caching for these services with a single mouse click. Easily configure multiple servers to share and distribute load coming from front-end applications. BENEFITS: Rapid implementation from modular standards-based architecture and out of the box caching and load balancing functionality Increased scalability and performance of existing architecture without having to change either backend systems or front-end applications Figure 0-6 Link Tag: Without a caching and load-balancing layer, every access to the backend forces the end-user to wait and adds further load to the backend system. NextAxiom's caching and load balancing shields end users from long lag times and reduces the load on backend systems. Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 5

9 Case 5 Creation of Value Added Business Services CASE 5: CREATION OF VALUE ADDED BUSINESS SERVICES Legacy systems linked by traditional EAI architectures are too inflexible to rapidly extend new business services. The long implementation time required to extend the IT architecture to support these new services risks losing windows of opportunity. Inflexible proprietary architectures also make it very difficult to incorporate third party services as part of a value added service bundle. Your responsiveness to changing market conditions is dictated by how rapidly you can modify your existing services, or introduce new services. A great source of profitability is found through offering new services to your existing customer base. THE SOLUTION: NextAxiom s standards-based architecture unbundles the services provided by your legacy IT systems and makes them available as raw material for new bundles of valueadded services. To create a new service bundle, take the component Web services that wrap your legacy IT functionality and link them together in a Hyperservice. If third party services are available, you can link these into your Hyperservice as well. Allow your customers to directly access your Hyperservices, or implement a lightweight browser GUI for them to interact with the services on your Website. BENEFITS: Increase revenue by utilizing existing IT assets in new ways Add additional value and gain competitive advantages by bundling best of breed services from third parties Figure 0-7 Link Tag: Internet 3 rd Party Reuse legacy IT assets by assembling new Hyperservices utilizing the functionality provided by your enterprise software packages. Web services standards make it easy to incorporate functionality from third party business partners into your Hyperservices. Internet Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 6

10 Case 6 Complex Data Transformation, Translation, and Mapping CASE 6: COMPLEX DATA TRANSFORMATION, TRANSLATION, AND MAPPING Traditional EAI tools that support translation, transformation, and mapping of data require both parties to utilize their proprietary interfaces. Implementing transformation and mapping through code is time consuming and difficult to change. XML-based translation tools have performance problems due to the sheer volume of XML data. You share data with external parties. Each of your partners has their own rules for recording the same kind of data. To integrate external records, you must translate and map between the differences in data conventions that exist between yourself and your partners; the data equivalent of translating English to Japanese. THE SOLUTION: NextAxiom s standards-based assembly layer simplifies integration with external parties and allows the addition of data transformation functionality. Simple data transformation and mapping is handled when defining the flow of data between Web services. Map between fields, and drop in functions to translate, merge, separate, or do other transformations to data as it flows between services. Complex transformation and translation is achieved by adding additional Hyperservices into the integration implementation that automate specific rules for mapping and translating data. NextAxiom s optimized data flow between services provides enhanced performance for data mapping because it avoids the overhead of XML transformation. BENEFITS: Standards-based connections allow deployment of your solution irrespective of your partners architecture Integration and data translation is achieved faster Data mapping performs faster Figure 0-8 Link Tag: Easily add data translation functionality to integration routines. Complex data translation is implemented with powerful dropin functionality such as the data vault, which lists key word pairs. Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 7

11 Case 7 Integration of Interdependent Applications CASE 7: INTEGRATION OF INTERDEPENDENT APPLICATIONS When new software solutions are introduced to support a business process, they often require integration with existing applications. However, integration using EAI is an expensive, time consuming process. The tight budgets faced by IT departments could mean delaying a purchase decision or taking short cuts that reduce the effectiveness of the project. Your company has decided to purchase best-of-breed advanced supply chain planning software to reduce production cycle times. The new software package must work intimately with your company s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. THE SOLUTION: NextAxiom can integrate any number of software systems using its standards-based service-oriented platform at a fraction of the time and cost required using EAI software packages. Integration APIs of each software package are incorporated into the platform as component Web services. These component Web services are visually assembled into Hyperservices to create the integration between software packages without having to write a single line of code. Adding integration, such as implementing notification between applications, is as simple as joining the relevant APIs in a new Hyperservice or adding them as part of the data flow in an existing Hyperservice. BENEFITS: Share real-time information between specialized software packages and ERP systems Eliminate data replication and redundant, manual data entry 70% reduction in cost of solution and implementation time for application integration Standards-based, modular architecture eliminates vendor lock-in Figure 0-9 Link Tag: Application 1 Application 2 Hyperservices implement integration between dependent applications. A trigger from Application 1 can invoke a Hyperservice to update data in Application 2. Integrate with messaging and queuing (MQ) to guarantee that change notification is delivered to Application 2. Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 8

12 Case 8 Automated Data Fault Detection CASE 8: AUTOMATED DATA FAULT DETECTION Automatically detecting faulty data that is manually entered from multiple sources at different times and is shared between multiple systems is a daunting task. You must build customized routines that implement your fault detection algorithms and integrate them with your different software packages. The integration and basic application development is already so complex and time consuming it distracts from the development of more sophisticated fault detection algorithms. Building an automated routine using code or traditional EAI solutions is expensive and extremely inflexible. Your data inputs include several sources of manual data entry. Mistakes are unavoidable. How do you keep your data from being incomplete, redundant, inconsistent, erroneous, or fraudulent? THE SOLUTION: NextAxiom s assembly layer allows architects to automate data fault detection without having to write a single line of code! Integration API s of each software package are incorporated into the platform as component Web services. Assemble these into Hyperservices and add conditional logic to implement detection of faulty data. When faulty data is detected, route data flow to the Hyperservice s error output. Hyperservices can be used in data cleansing applications or to validate data entry in real time. BENEFITS: Allows rapid development of automated processes Simplification of integration allows more sophisticated fault detection Supports fault detection between multiple systems Figure 0-10 Link Tag: Implement data fault detection by integrating software packages with shared records into a Hyperservice and add conditional logic that searches for data inconsistencies. When inconsistent data is detected, send notification to the end-user to get their attention on the problem. Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 9

13 Case 9 Monitoring, Notification, and Automated Exception Handling CASE 9: MONITORING, NOTIFICATION, AND AUTOMATED EXCEPTION HANDLING Modifying underlying software packages to implement monitoring and notification is complex, time consuming, and difficult to maintain. These modifications are only capable of monitoring within their own domain. Monitoring and handling exceptions across multiple systems requires even more complex custom development and may not even be possible. The work you did to reduce the cycle-time of the Quote-to-Cash process from 3 weeks to 2 days has been a resounding success, but now you need to monitor the process on an ongoing basis to maintain this success. You need to create alerts based on parameterized thresholds and automatically route the cases requiring special handling to the appropriate supervisors. THE SOLUTION: NextAxiom s encapsulating layer of Web services makes it easy to add monitoring to automated processes. Add conditional logic to Hyperservices to detect events without coding. Throw an exception simply by routing data flow to a Web services error port. Error routing can invoke standard notification mechanisms such as and SNMP alerts, or begin corrective action such as system fail-over. BENEFITS: Rapid development of monitoring and exception handling without having to code Allows monitoring across multiple heterogeneous systems Figure 0-11 Link Tag: Add monitoring and notification by creating a Hyperservice and linking it into the process. Add conditional logic to invoke a notification pathway if monitored conditions are detected. Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 10

14 Case 10 Automating Business Intelligence CASE 10: AUTOMATING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Off the shelf business intelligence applications are built to analyze data within data warehouses, and only to prepare data for visualization. To intelligently analyze large amounts of incoming data on a real time basis, your group would have to custom develop sophisticated routines using code. Creating custom applications is time consuming, expensive, and inflexible. A code-based solution may not be flexible enough to support situations where external factors change often and require frequent adaptation of the identifying logic. Your department has successfully completed the step of a Six Sigma initiative and needs to implement the step. Your department is now the clearinghouse for massive amounts of information coming from many sources. Your group s mission is to sift through this heap of data to identify opportunities or problems and then alert the appropriate individuals. To make your job more difficult, the logic for identifying these cases mutates often due to external factors. THE SOLUTION: NextAxiom allows architects to rapidly assemble automated intelligent services using Web services. To create an intelligent service, use the component Web services that poll incoming data sources. Assemble these into Hyperservices and add conditional logic to implement identification. Utilize NextAxiom s parallel processing and load balancing features to increase data throughput. When identification is made, use the out-of-the-box notification facilities to raise the alert. BENEFITS: Enables rapid automation of intelligent algorithms Scalability features allow high throughput real time processing Flexibility accommodates frequent modification of algorithms Implement intelligent services by creating a Hyperservice that accesses data sources, screens data with intelligent logic, and provides notification in the event of identified matches. Rev. 2.0 NextAxiom Application Overview 11