In large organizations, typical systems portfolios consist of a mix of legacy systems, proprietary applications, databases, off-the-shelf packages, and client-server systems. Software systems integration is always an important issue and yet a very complex and difficult area in practice. Consider the software integration between two organizations on a supply chain; the level of complexity and difficulty multiply quickly. How to make heterogeneous systems work with each other within an enterprise or across the Internet is of paramount interest to businesses and industry.
Major changes in the design process are required for Information Systems departments to make the shift from a traditional development life cycle to the user-centered methods required for the development of Client/Server systems. This type of change can be very difficult to accomplish. “Global Enterprises,” a large commodities company, headquartered in the US, is in the early phases of this shift. Their strategy has been to form a cross-functional User Interface team. The efforts underway at Global are presented to illustrate many of the typical technical and organizational issues companies face early in the process of introducing new design methods. The paper concludes by summarizing on key lessons learned.
Directly and Indirectly Synchronous Communication Mechanisms for Client-Server Systems Using Event-Based Asynchronous Communication Framework