The Challenges of Today s eSystems

The Challenges of Today's eSystems

Undoubtedly, a high percentage of applications are being developed for the Internet using multiple technologies and platforms. However, is just building for the Internet the main challenge an organization faces?

Organizations recognize the benefits the Internet brings to application deployment in terms of cost, productivity, and user reach. They are also aware that Internet-based business solutions need to adhere to a proven distributed and n- tier architecture, as illustrated in Figure 1.1, where

Figure 1.1. A distributed application architecture is organized into several tiers.

• An Internet browser serves as the client or front end to an application.

• Middle tiers serve as the presentation and business logic domains, protecting the client tier from its complexities, and implementing the services required to integrate existing enterprise information systems (EIS).

• An Enterprise Information Management System tier supports the data repositories, such as relational database management systems, document management systems, and other legacy systems (Enterprise Information Systems [EIS]) required to present or store application data or information.

However, developing Internet-based distributed information systems is a mammoth shift for most organizations. Organizations can become convinced that through the use of Internet technologies they will automatically become more tactical and strategic by having data, information and knowledge more accessible. But, where there are benefits, there are always risks, and sometimes these risks can be the Achilles' heel an organization had never wished for.

In order to prepare for eSystems, organizations must address and resolve technical challenges that are tightly coupled with Internet-based technologies; for example

• The technologies employed to form the Internet platform within an organization must outlive their derived business solutions to ensure there is return on investment from technology reuse.

• The technologies must embrace a robust security architecture that can interoperate with security product vendors , which can technically and operationally bring to reality a single sign-on solution.

• The presentation, business logic, and data aspects of business solutions must be kept separate to allow the applications to evolve and be managed easily.

• The deployment of business logic must be managed and adaptable, according to an organization's changing business climate and needs ( time-to-market and time-to-share ).

• Distributed and scalable architectures must be possible, to support the current, target, and potential user traffic schemas.

• The deployed applications must have "heart-beat" mechanisms so they can be monitored .

• High availability with aggressive fail-over mechanisms must be part of the total solution for mission-critical business systems.

Another aspect of the introduction of eSystems that needs to be addressed is the consequences of using the Internet as a de facto medium for deploying business solutions; for example:

• Will there be a need to integrate legacy applications?

• Is there a need to support a heterogeneous computing environment?

• What methodologies will be required to develop the eSystems?

• Do you have the in-house skills to develop eSystems through a full systems development lifecycle?

• Do you want to avoid vendor lock-in for any of the technologies and platforms adopted?

• Will the eSystems development efforts follow standards?

• Will there be cultural issues that need to be addressed to move to a new business application paradigm?

For an organization to be successful in its e-strategy for either developing business applications or retrofitting legacy applications for the Internet, the previous touchpoints do need to be addressed, and a resolution placed into motion.

You will rapidly discover, both in this chapter and the rest of this book, that there are two keys aspects for a successful eSystem. The first is a standards-based approach to the construction of your application, which can easily be resolved through the adoption of the J2EE specification. The second is the need to implement a robust application infrastructure solution that can support J2EE applications and their associated security and the administration requirements in a scalable, platform-independent, and cost effective manner, which can be resolved through the use of the WebLogic Platform 7.0.

To learn how to derive your Application Infrastructure requirements and the WebLogic Platform, see Chapter 8.

However, there is one caveat to the previous statement ”J2EE and the WebLogic Internet platform can only address the technology-centric challenges. Organizational challenges such as the cultural acceptance, adoption of new methodologies, and training for the new paradigm of developing business applications need to be addressed immediately before veering into the Java 2 Platform.

As you will realize in the following sections of this chapter, J2EE is only a specification on how to use the Java 2 Platform for software development. It does not provide you with a business solution tailored for an organization's needs or the organizational changes required for its adoption to be totally successful ”that is the mission of Part I of this book.