Finding common ground

Previously, I spoke about unifying basic infrastructure. I will now talk about doing the same for applications and solutions.

Unified applications - those that are ready to use together in an agile business solution that depends on global networks - is a controversial topic.

While there has been much talk and some good work done over the last several years to achieve common standards, the industry is a long way off making it happen.

Obviously, it is technically challenging to get software products that have been independently designed and built to work together without problems. With or without common formats or interfaces (APIs) that will connect to other software, there is still the need for a standard communication protocol.

This then becomes the “glue code” that holds the whole solution together, making it possible for the individual applications to work together - even though, independently, they would not communicate efficiently.

The best technology available at the moment to achieve this is XML. This industry standard still falls short of truly unified applications.

What is accessible today as a networked applications solution is a bit like putting up a sign warning about potholes instead of fixing the road so there aren't any more potholes.

This is where the controversy lies. Software vendors might subscribe to achieving open standards, but their profitability and revenue is partly dependent on an earlier, “silo” model of having products that work well together, but not so well with competitors' solutions.

A roadmap to achieve unified applications would start with what I call an application atlas.

Andy Brauer is CTO at Business Connexion

There is a lot of talk about SOA (services-oriented architecture), but most of it is about the service and not the architecture. The problem is there are no standard building blocks for software that can be used. Unlike cars, where the same basic components are often used in different models and brands, this just doesn't exist for proprietary software.

The impact of growing adoption of the Web as a connections infrastructure, and the cloud as the place where services and solutions reside, is to drive the processes of standardisation and achieving open standards.

Some products already exist that make rapid application development possible, using standard blocks of code, and older, well established products are moving in the same direction. The idea is to make the business more agile. In a perfect world, changes to business processes would be automatically mapped by the software that makes up the solutions on which those processes depend.

This can only happen with open standards and commitment across the whole software industry. XML is a big step in the right direction, but there is much more that can be done - and there is the adoption of cloud computing as a powerful driver. The technology exists to do this.

There is a big difference between a production “comfort” zone and a production “agility” zone. Most businesses are in the first and have a natural inclination to stay there. But, this means they are not agile enough when business processes and market conditions change rapidly. The cost overhead of getting developers to customise a solution is pretty onerous. Unified applications would bring this cost down enormously and reduce the time to get a solution up and running.

There are savings in costs, increased productivity, and considerable added value in having an overall solution across the entire business that makes all processes work together fluently.

A roadmap to achieve unified applications would start with what I call an application atlas. This would be a map of all applications being used and how they fit together. Where there are overlaps and duplications, decisions can be made about rationalising and consolidating.

The next step is application integration; based on what APIs the critical applications have to hook up with one another. It helps if these applications are truly Web-based. There are many that only work through the cloud because they have a Web front-end stitched on - they are not always built from the bottom up to be Web efficient.

The trend, driven by adoption of the cloud and business needs, is to achieve the following: flow of information without boundaries; unified applications; and agile solution development.

There is still a way to go before this can be reached, but this is the road ahead for the industry and its customers.

* Andy Brauer is CTO at Business Connexion.