Page 89 -

Chapter 3 • Enterprise Systems Architecture 65

•Deliver higher-quality products and ensure delivery of promised orders through optimal
planning, scheduling, and sequencing on the factory floor
•Improve visibility and transparency in real time across all shop floor processes, including
availability checking and costing

SALES AND SERVICE
•Increase the number of sales orders processed and reduce administrative costs through
automation of sales order management and the use of such profitable Internet-based
solutions as e-commerce
•Deliver greater customer satisfaction by providing easy access to accurate, timely information
•Streamline processes that facilitate cost-effective mobile access for field employees
•Improve the management of incentives and commissions to maximize productivity and
boost sales
•Reduce travel costs by using online functions for planning, booking, and expense accounting
while ensuring that company policies are applied to all processes
•Realize more effective real estate management, supported by tools that streamline and
manage every stage of the real estate life cycle
•Adhere to environmental, health, and safety reporting requirements

ERP ARCHITECTURE
In today’s business environment, ERP applications are most commonly deployed in a distributed
and often widely dispersed manner. While the servers may be centralized, the clients are usually
spread across multiple locations throughout the enterprise. ERP system architecture is organized
in layers or tiers to manage system complexity in order to provide scalability and flexibility via a
plug-n-play systems capability. This is highly essential in an enterprise-level system. Three-layer
architecture is the most prevalent today and includes Web, application, and database servers. It is
the most reliable, flexible, and scalable architecture. You can scale the number of users from
10 to 100 by adding servers. This is one example of simple hardware layering that has a signifi-
cant impact on scalability. What if the layering is done at both the hardware and software
environments? The scalability would have been 20-fold instead of just 10-fold. It is important to
understand, therefore, that layering is merely a model of dividing the hardware and software in
an information system. It is not limited to three tiers, but often supports many tiers. Hence, the
term “N-tier client–server architecture” is often used to describe enterprise system architectures.
In the term N-tier, N implies any number (e.g., three-tier, four-tier, or, basically, any number of
distinct tiers used in your architecture).

Layered Architecture Example
1
An example of a layered ERP architecture is the Info.Net architectures shown in Figure 3-3.
This architecture generalizes the functional layers to allow it to change with newer technologies.
This architecture provides a Web-based user interface (i.e., user can access the applications via
the Internet through a PC). The PC needs to be capable of running a Java-enabled Web browser

1 ERP Architecture. (2008). Intertul Web site: http://www.lamarsoftware.com/erp/index_architecture.html (accessed
March 11, 2011).