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Chapter 3 E-business infrastructure 175

Oracle and Microsoft are busy trying to create coherent ‘People want to extend their business processes to
packages of software applications from the corporate get closer to customers’, says Mr Richardson at AMR.
acquisitions they have made, SAP is halfway through a To do that through the ‘loosely coupled’ IT systems
revamp of its technology that could give it a lead of two promised by SOA will require wider adoption of the new
years or more. technology architecture.
‘If they’re right, it will be a huge thing for them’, says A number of potential drawbacks stand in the way.
Charles Di Bona, software analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. Along with uncertainty about the ultimate cost, points
Underlying the arrival of SOA has been the spread out Mr Richardson, is concern about security: what
of so-called web services standards – such as the safeguards will companies need before they are willing
mark-up language XML and communications protocol to let valuable corporate data travel outside their own IT
SOAP – that make it easier for machines to exchange systems, or before they open up their own networks to
data automatically. code developed elsewhere?
This holds the promise of automating business A further question is whether SOA can fulfil one of its
processes that run across different IT systems, whether most important promises: that the technology platforms
inside a single company or spanning several business being created by SAP and others will stimulate a wave
partners: a customer placing an order in one system of innovation in the software industry, as developers
could automatically trigger production requests in rush to create new and better applications, many of
another and an invoice in a third. them suited to the specific needs of particular industries
or small groups of companies.
Breaking down the different steps in a business
That depends partly on whether companies such as
process in this way, and making them available to be
SAP can create true technology ‘ecosystems’ around
recombined quickly to suit particular business needs, is
their platforms, much as Microsoft’s success in desktop
the ultimate goal of SOA. Each step in the process
software depended on its ability to draw developers to
becomes a service, a single reusable component that is
its desktop software platform.
‘exposed’ through a standard interface.
‘We were told three years ago that we didn’t know
The smaller each of these software components, the
how to partner’, says Mr Agassi at SAP, before
more flexibility users will have to build IT systems that fit
dismissing such criticism as ‘quite funny’, given what he
their particular needs.
says was the success of its earlier software applications
SAP has created 300 services so far; that number will
in attracting developers. ‘We are more open than we
rise to 3,000 by the end of this year, says Mr Agassi.
have ever been, we are more standards-based than we
Through NetWeaver, the set of ‘middleware’ tools that
have ever been’, he adds – a claim that is contested by
provide the glue, it has also finalised much of the plat-
Oracle, which has tried to make capital from the fact
form to deliver this new set of services. The full ‘busi-
that its German rival’s underlying technology still
ness process platform’ will be complete by the end of
depends on a proprietary computing language, ABAP.
next year, SAP says.
However, even if the future SOA-enabled platforms
‘The factory is running – we have all the tools ready
succeed in stimulating a new generation of more flexible
now’, says Peter Graf, head of solution marketing at SAP. corporate software, one other overriding issue remains:

To get customers to start experimenting with the new tech- rivals such as SAP and Oracle will see little to gain from
nology, he adds, ‘we need to come up with killer apps’. linking their rival platforms to each other. Full inter-
The first full-scale demonstration will come from a operability will remain just a dream.
project known as Mendecino, under which SAP and ‘To make SOA real, you have to have a process start
Microsoft have been working to integrate their ‘back- in one system and end in another, with no testing or
end’ and ‘front-end’ systems and which is due to be certification needed’, says Mr Barrenechea at Computer
released in the middle of this year. Associates – even if those systems are rival ones from
By linking them to the widely used components of SAP and Oracle.
Microsoft’s Office desktop software, SAP’s corporate The software giants, he says, ‘have to be motivated
applications will become easier to use, says Mr Graf: for to make it work’.
instance, when a worker enters a holiday in his or her According to Mr Agassi, companies will eventually
Outlook calendar, it could automatically trigger an ‘have to choose’ which of the platforms they want to use
approval request to a manager and cross-check with a as the backbone for their businesses.
system that records holiday entitlements. The web services standards may create a level of inter-
While such demonstrations may start to show the operability between these different backbones, but each
potential of SOA, however, the real power of this archi- will still use its own ‘semantics’, or way of defining busi-
tectural shift is likely to depend on a much broader ness information, to make it comprehensible to other,
ecosystem of software developers and corporate users. connected systems.