Realizing the Promise of RFID

This chapter touches on some basics on RFID and covers business opportunities as well as some of the relevant challenges to be faced. Although it is a new technology, standard obstacles of organizational and technological barriers still have to be overcome and mediums crossed that were previously not traversed as on warehouse and distribution center floors yield for challenging environments from a business process as well as a technological adoption perspective. It provides a combined outlook sprinkled with key lessons from early adopters and service providers close to some of the emerging trends and implementations happening in the field. A range of benefits will evolve with the adoption of RFID within an organization and especially across the entire supply network.

A Framework for Information Systems Integration in Mobile Working Environments

This chapter introduces a framework for designing; distributing; and managing mobile applications that uses and updates information coming from different data sources (databases and systems from different organizations) for helping mobile workers to perform their job. A summary of the state of the art in relation to mobile applications integration is presented. Then; the authors describe the appropriate organizational context for applying the integration framework proposed. Next; the framework components and how the framework is use are explained. Finally; the trials performed for testing the mobile applications architecture are discussed; presenting the main conclusions and future work. Furthermore; the authors hope that understanding the concepts related to the integration of mobile applications through the presentation of an integration framework will not only inform researchers of a better design for mobile application architectures; but also assist in the understanding of intricate relationships between the types of functionality required by this kind of systems.

Business Process Integration in a Knowledge-Intensive Service Industry

Knowledge-intensive administration and service activity has features favouring a particular architectural approach to business process integration. The approach is based on a process metamodel that extends the familiar input-process-output schema, and embodies the principle that the essential WHAT of a process is prior to any empirical and/or physical HOW. A structure of interrelated concepts can be derived from the metamodel. These can be used at logical level to define and analyze processes. They can also be implemented at a physical level—as an achievable and ideal integrated process architecture, or as a continuum of incremental control and integration improvements. Overall, the approach is to process what double entry is to accounting and the relational model is to data.

Dissolving Organisational and Technological Silos

Over the last few years, the importance of enterprise integration has grown significantly. As organizations expand, become more distributed, and rely more on technology, there is a need to ensure both business processes and technology systems are co-coordinated in a strategic rather than ad-hoc manner. In the early days of IT, integration was viewed largely as a technical activity. Today, there is a much stronger business focus. In fact, many of an organisation’s strategic initiatives such as e-business, customer relationship management and supply chain management depend upon enterprise integration. There are four basic integration architectures, namely, batch integration, point-to-point integration, broker-based integration and business process integration. Each integration architecture represents varying levels of enterprise integration maturity. Enterprise integration is a significant undertaking, and carries with it significant technical and managerial challenges. Managing enterprise integration projects requires, among other things, a strategic framework, senior management support and risk management. A clear understanding of enterprise integration requirements is also crucial.

Success Factors and Performance Indicators for Enterprise Application Integration

The effectiveness and efficiency of information systems are closely related to the degree of integration between applications. In order to support the management of application integration, five success factors are analyzed. For each success factor, appropriate performance indicators are proposed. Since the analysis indicates that the success factors are closely interrelated, these dependencies are discussed and hypotheses are derived.

Web Services Hybrid Dynamic Composition Models for Enterprises

Web services are used in enterprise distributed computing technology including ubiquitous and pervasive computing and communication networks. Composition models of such Web services are an active research area. Classified as static, dynamic, and semiautomatic composition models, these models address different application areas and requirements. Thus far, the most successful practical approach to Web services composition, largely endorsed by industry, borrows from business processes’ workflow management. Unfortunately, standards subscribing to this approach fall under the static composition category, therefore the service selection and flow management are done a priori and manually. The second approach to Web services composition aspires to achieve more dynamic composition by semantically describing the process model of the Web service and thus making it comprehensible to reasoning engines and software agents. In this chapter, we attempt to bridge the gap between the two approaches by introducing semantics to workflow-based composition. We aim to present a composition framework based on a hybrid solution that merges the benefit of practicality of use and adoption popularity of workflow-based composition with the advantage of using semantic descriptions to aid both service developers and composers in the composition process and facilitate the dynamic integration of Web services into it.

Enterprise Application Integration from the Point of View of Agent Paradigm

The agent paradigm in general underlines the interaction phenomenon in a collaborative organization while respecting the autonomy and self-interested features of individual components. Relevant use of the agent paradigm will be one of the key factors to success in application integration projects in the near future. This chapter describes the basic notions of intelligent agents and multiagent systems, and proposes possible types of their application to enterprise integration. The agent-based approaches to enterprise application integration are considered from three points of view: (a) using an agent as a wrapper of applications or services, (b) constructing a multiagent organization within which agents are interacting and providing emergent solutions to enterprise problems, and (c) using the agent as an intelligent handler of heterogeneous data resources in an open environment.

A Systematic Approach for the Development of Integrative Business Applications

Modern business applications consist of many subsystems (or components) potentially developed and maintained by diverse organizations. Generally, there are three different points of view. First, organizations using business applications are interested in the unified look and feel of composed applications, the maximum interoperability and synergetic features among subsystems, the high availability of all subsystems, and quick and seamless updates after new releases or bug fixes. Second, organizations providing single subsystems want, on the one hand, of course, to satisfy their customers and business partners, but on the other hand, to minimize their overall effort. Third, organizations integrating single subsystems aim at a uniform and cost-efficient integration architecture. This chapter takes the two latter viewpoints and describes a methodology for organizations integrating their subsystems with many business applications and all relevant types of subsystems, as well as with the whole family of subsystems from different vendors. The methodology is a product-line approach optimally tailored to the needs of such organizations. It views subsystems delivered by a single organization with all corresponding integration contexts and requirements as a family of similar systems, and engineers this family by taking systematical advantage of common characteristics and proactively considering differences in anticipated future scenarios. The methodology is based on Fraunhofer PuLSE™ (PuLSE™ is a trademark of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft), a customizable product-line approach validated in practice by many industry organizations since 1997. The integration methodology has been developed in the German research project UNIVERSYS by tailoring Fraunhofer PuLSE™ together with industry partners to the integration context described.

The Changing Nature of Business Process Modeling

Business process modeling (BPM) is a topic that is generating much interest in the information technology industry today. Business analysts, process designers, system architects, software engineers, and systems consultants must understand the foundational concepts behind BPM and evolving modeling standards and technologies that have the potential to dramatically change the nature of phases of the systems development life cycle (SDLC). Pareto’s 80/20 rule, as applied to the SDLC, is in the process of being drastically altered. In the past, approximately 20% of the SDLC was spent on analysis and design activities with the remaining 80% spent on systems development and implementation (Weske, Goesmann, Holten, & Striemer, 1999). Today, with the introduction of the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), Web services, and the services-oriented architecture (SOA), the enterprise SDLC paradigm is poised for a dramatic shift. In this new paradigm, approximately 80% of the SDLC is spent on analysis and design activities with the remaining 20% spent on systems development and implementation. Once referred to as process or workflow automation, BPM has evolved into a suite of interrelated components for systems analysis, design, and development. Emerging BPM standards and technologies will be the primary vehicles by which current systems portfolios transition to Web services and service-oriented architectures (Aversano, & Canfora, 2002). The Business Process Management Initiative’s business process modeling notation (BPMN) subgroup is currently finalizing a standardized notation for business process modeling. Although the notation is still in working-draft format, system architects and designers should consider incorporating the concepts of BPM into their current and future systems analysis and design procedures.

Case Study

The primary objective of this case study is to discuss a retail business information system illustrating an e-business integration example among a biometric attendance system, a surveillance system, and a point-of-sale system. Using a service-oriented architecture allows businesses to build on top of legacy applications or construct new applications in order to take advantage of the power of Web services. Over the past years, Web services have finally developed enough to allow such basic architectures to be built. Each of the components in the system will be designed and developed using a service-oriented architecture that clearly illustrates how such cutting-edge systems can be put together. By designing these components in such a fashion, this example will focus on applying service-oriented development and integration techniques to the retail sector. The result of this project will be an integrated system that can be used by businesses everywhere to learn how their organizations can benefit from service-oriented architecture. Also, the application of the service-oriented development and integration to systems that were previously stand-alone and heterogeneous is discussed. All previous experiences in object-oriented architectures and design methodology are naturally streamlined with the service-oriented architecture, supporting the loose coupling of software components.