Using ERP Mashups to Improve Business Processes

Customizing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to fit organizational needs is a complex task. Cost, difficulties with maintenance and upgrade, and loss of vendor support are just some of the factors that cause customizations to fail. Enterprise mashups represent a new way of tailoring an ERP environment in close collaboration with users. We have developed two enterprise mashups for a multinational company in the fish feed industry. The paper describes and discusses how organizations may use mashup technology to improve their processes by customizing their ERP systems. Our study suggests that the case organization indeed has a potential for such improvement.

Service-Driven Approaches to Software Architecture

Software Architecture has evolved from simple monolithic system designs to complex, multi-tiered, distributed, and componentized abstractions. Service-driven architectural approaches have been a major driver for enabling agile, cost-effective, flexible, and extensible software applications and integration solutions that support the business dynamics of today’s fast-paced enterprises. SOA and the SCA model have been the typical Service-driven architectural approaches used in enterprises today, to tackle the challenges of developing and implementing agile and loosely coupled software and enterprise integration solutions. Recent trends involve the use of Web APIs and RESTful architecture in the enterprise for agile service development and application integration. The goal of this chapter is to explore, discuss, and recommend methodologies for Service-driven Computing in the enterprise. Service versioning is detailed as a primary architectural approach for accommodating modifications to services during their life cycle. Service Mediation, Enterprise Service Bus, and Composition mechanisms including Enterprise Mashups are explored. The chapter also presents the business value of APIs in the enterprise and investigates the value-add to Social Media and Cloud enterprise initiatives. The typical phases of a Service-driven development life cycle are explained and service design patterns to facilitate the engineering of flexible service-based applications are described. The chapter concludes with thoughts on future opportunities and challenges in the area of Service-driven computing.

Enterprise Mashups: A New Approach for Business Solutions

A mashup is a Web application that integrates content from different providers in order to create a new service which is not offered by the content provider. The development of this kind of applications involves activities such as accessing heterogeneous sources, combining data from different data sources and building graphical interfaces. This factor limits non-experienced computer users to develop these applications. However, nowadays there are enterpriseoriented tools that allow non-experienced user for building mashups in order to respond business needs in an easy and rapid way. Due to this, the enterprise mashup approach has been widely adopted by a large number of enterprises. This paper presents an overview of the enterprise mashup approach, as well as a review of four enterprise-oriented tools which provide a set of features that allows non-expertise users developing mashups into an enterprise. Finally, we present the challenges to be addressed by enterprise-oriented mashup tools in order to provide an easier and faster way of developing mashups.