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"Made2Manage ERP is following the Microsoft development roadmap to execute an SOA initiative. We take advantage of state-of-the-art tools, such as Visual Studio 2005, to develop our SOA architecture."
Source : Consona/Made2Manage Systems
Understanding Service-oriented Architecture and Its Impact on Small Manufacturers
Service Oriented Architecture is also known as :
Define Service Oriented Architecture,
Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture,
Service Oriented Architecture,
Service Oriented Architecture Advantages,
Service Oriented Architecture Applications,
Service Oriented Architecture Basics,
Service Oriented Architecture Benefits,
Service Oriented Architecture Best Practices,
Service Oriented Architecture Book,
Service Oriented Architecture Books,
Service Oriented Architecture Business,
Service Oriented Architecture Course,
Service Oriented Architecture Definition,
Service Oriented Architecture Development,
Service Oriented Architecture Diagram,
Service Oriented Architecture Example,
Service Oriented Architecture Examples,
Service Oriented Architecture Implementation,
Service Oriented Architecture Integration,
Service Oriented Architecture Model,
Service Oriented Architecture Overview,
Service Oriented Architecture Presentation,
Service Oriented Architecture Research,
Service Oriented Architecture Service,
Service Oriented Architecture Software,
Service Oriented Architecture Solution,
Service Oriented Architecture Solutions,
Service Oriented Architecture Standards,
Service Oriented Architecture Strategy,
Service Oriented Architecture Systems.
INTRODUCTION
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) continues
to emerge as the dominant technical platform
for building next generation business applications.
The potential of SOA to transform
enterprise software applications has been well
documented within leading industry trade
publications. This white paper will attempt to
cut through the hype surrounding the technology
by (1) examining the manufacturing
pains that are driving the conversion to
service-oriented business applications, (2)
breaking down the essence of SOA, (3)
focusing on the relevance of SOA as a tool for
continuous business process improvement,
and (4) comparing and contrasting the
Made2Manage SOA product development
strategy with that of other ERP vendors.
Market Trends
Within the manufacturing community, the arrival
of the next latest and greatest enterprise software
technology is often met with skepticism. Such
doubts surrounding new technology are directly
attributable to a software industry that has had a
history of over promising and under delivering on
results. As the software industry approaches yet
another technology crossroads, this whitepaper
will examine how the right SOA business applications
can reverse this trend to positively impact
your business.
Although the concept of SOA has been with us for
some time, its more widespread use is a newer
phenomenon. According to Gartner Research, “by
2008, SOA will be a prevailing software engineering
practice, ending the 40 year domination of
monolithic software architecture.” In addition,
Gartner projects that “by 2008, more than 75
percent of then-current application packages
either will be natively SOA or will expose SOA
interfaces through a wrapping layer of interfaces.”
Software vendors, including Made2Manage
Systems, are already reusing older and external
applications and wrapping them within an SOA
framework. As Gartner sites, “composition and
integration of old and new business components
into real-time transaction patterns are a natural
fit with SOA.”
Moving SOA Forward
So what’s driving the development of SOA business
applications for small manufacturers?
Enterprise software applications must fulfill many
practical requirements in order to help small
manufacturers succeed. Core needs include (a)
mainstream, scalable and flexible technology, (b)
IT that is easy to administer and delivers consistent
performance, and (c) a common enterprise
data platform for connecting internal systems and
external supply chain partners.
Many small manufacturers have struggled with
system limitations and obsolescence. These
businesses require a long-term IT solution when
replacing legacy systems. As their businesses
change, their software solutions must be able to
adapt to new business processes. Small manufacturers
also are looking for ways to leverage IT investments—building on initial expenditures
throughout the years rather than scrapping
software and starting from scratch every five
years.
Small manufacturers lose millions of dollars each
year due to unreliable systems and costs associated
with maintaining poorly performing applications.
These businesses are looking for highquality
systems that can be maintained with their
smaller IT staffs. Lengthy down time and expensive
IT fixes can negatively impact the ability of
these organizations to compete in the marketplace.
Manufacturers are under increasing pressure to
coordinate operations more closely with their
supply chain partners. Smaller operations need to
adapt to new standards for exchanging system-tosystem
data and provide automated customer
service information to keep their customers
happy. By using technology that ties in with their
customers’ business operations, small manufacturers
can lock in key relationships. Without a
common way to share data across the enterprise
and with their partners, small manufacturers are
incurring costs to maintain redundant internal
systems and participate in electronic data exchange
networks.
Figure 1.
Summarizing the SOA Development
Process
To define SOA, it is useful to review how traditional
software is built. Today, ERP software is
commonly built in large, monolithic blocks of
code. A user interface (UI), business logic, and
data elements are wrapped within a large executable
or block. Changes made to the business logic
in one area of the code can impact processes
within the whole executable.
By contrast, SOA uses Web services (standard
protocols and languages) to distill large blocks of
software into smaller, more loosely joined segments
of code. These free-standing, self-describing,
modular units of functional code (known as
services) possess a published interface that:
- Does not require knowledge of the
programming language used to develop and
deploy it.
- Can communicate with other services about
specific activities within a business process or
IT landscape.
- Can be arranged into comprehensive software
applications.
SOA maps these capabilities and interfaces (see
figure 1), similar to a network, so that they can
be orchestrated into processes. As a result, data elements and business logic from the back office,
redundant and dissimilar systems can be consolidated
into a single interface. This common
interface enables greater system connectivity
within an organization and throughout its supply
chain.
Modeling Manufacturing Processes
With Services
Services are at the heart of SOA. Services are like
process steps within your business model and
form an outline of your operations. An ERP
vendor with strong domain expertise in manufacturing
can use services to closely mirror applications
to your business processes. The various
services within your manufacturing operation are
supported by the SOA architecture which enables
their deployment, delivery and administration.
When changes occur within a manufacturing
process, new services can be created within the
architecture of an ERP system without altering the
application code of the software. Since changes in
your software can be made independent of your
full application, the potential for programming
errors is greatly reduced while gains in quality can
be consolidated. With an SOA-enabled ERP system,
small manufacturers can continuously build
on business process improvements throughout
the years.
Realizing the Benefits of SOA
The right approach to SOA product development
will yield many practical applications for small
manufacturers. For example, current and future
Made2Manage Systems customers can expect:
- Secure IT Investments: Customers will not have
to switch platforms, re-implement software,
and/or incur additional hardware and training
costs to receive expanded capabilities.
- Connectivity: SOA provides the flexibility to
collaborate via the sharing of data across a
manufacturer’s supply chain and the ability to
view application programming interfaces (APIs)
for augmenting existing functionality.
- Enhanced Product Quality: SOA reduces the
number of areas within the Made2Manage
product where code must be manipulated in
order to deliver new functionality. By invoking one segment of code and reusing it across the
application, Made2Manage can quickly and
easily make global changes to the software
while greatly reducing the lines of code in your
application. With less code, there also is less
maintenance required to move your software
forward. Therefore, gains in product quality are
consolidated as the software is enhanced.
- Accelerated Development: The SOA architecture
greatly reduces the amount of time required to
perform quality assurance (QA) – a significant
factor in product development. With less time
needed for QA, Made2Manage Systems will be
able to accelerate development cycles for
expanding the functional depth and breadth of
the product.
- Simplified Upgrades: As new versions of the
Made2Manage Enterprise Business System are
released, customers will not have to deploy an
entire executable. Instead, they will receive only
those modules that have been impacted by
changes made in the latest release.
- Remote Access: Remote employees can easily
access data without having to connect through
VPN or use terminal server.
- Scalability: SOA will provide the foundation for
new business processes on the horizon. As
customer relationship management and supply
chain management processes evolve, SOA
business applications will be equipped to
integrate new practices.
- Flexibility: The SOA framework enables you to
tailor the way your information is grouped and
displayed so you can better support your
unique business processes.
Embracing a Practical SOA Strategy
Made2Manage Systems does not pursue technology
for technology’s sake. Although the company
has been working with the SOA product architecture
since 2000, Made2Manage Systems has been
careful to avoid committing its customers to this
technology path until it emerged as a widely
adopted standard for developing software. First
and foremost, the Made2Manage Systems SOA
product development strategy is predicated on
our existing customers’ need for quality,
scalability, and minimal business disruption. Since
development plans will not impact the software’s current UI, our customers’ existing IT investments
are protected without compromising the development
of new capabilities. The Made2Manage
Systems SOA strategy removes the common
roadblocks that small manufacturers often face
when considering a migration from an older to a
new software version by leveraging existing
applications.
Minimizing Business Disruption
The company’s principal product, the
Made2Manage Enterprise Business System, will
evolve into an SOA-enabled application within two
or three iterations of the software. By design,
changes to the software will be transparent to
existing and future customers as we strive to limit
business disruption. Made2Manage Systems is
following the Microsoft development roadmap
with its SOA initiative. We are taking advantage of
state-of-the-art tools, such as Visual Studio 2005,
to develop the Made2Manage SOA enabled product.
Since the Made2Manage solution is currently
built on the Microsoft technology platform, there
is no need to re-architect the product to meet the
new SOA standard. This is an important distinction
between Made2Manage Systems and other ERP
vendors in the industry. Manufacturers should
approach ERP solutions that are being re-built
from the ground up with caution as such efforts
often result in less functionality for the customer.
Still other ERP vendors are allocating significant
resources toward merging together dissimilar
applications. Small manufacturers considering
this alternative may incur many potential risks.
First, research and development funds may be
diverted away from enhancements that aid your
business to expand functionality for customers
and applications that serve non-manufacturing
industries like health care and government. In
addition, the outcome of merged applications for
customers may entail new hardware and training
costs and/or a full system reimplementation. Each
of these scenarios demonstrates a common
characteristic among such software vendors—a
lack of focus on the needs of existing customers.
Drawing Upon Experience
Although other software vendors are currently
touting an SOA product development strategy,
Made2Manage Systems has performed more than
four years of research and development on this
method of software engineering. The company is
an early adopter of SOA and has served as a SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol) beta participant
for Microsoft. In fact, Made2Manage Systems has
already implemented SOA applications at our
customer sites. Through the development of such
CRM and supply chain tools as M2M Sales Center,
M2M VIP and M2M EDI-XML, we have gained a firm
understanding of the security considerations and
programming protocols necessary to connect our
customers with supply chain partners using
internal and external applications.
Enabling Continuous Business Process
Improvements
Made2Manage Systems specializes in serving the
unique software requirements of small manufacturers
within such niche industries as industrial
and commercial machinery, electronics, plastics
and fabricated metal. Utilizing the Made2Manage
SOA product development strategy, we are
uniquely positioned to leverage our existing
applications while developing future capabilities
to improve your specialized business processes.
As a recent report from Forrester Research states,
“certain business processes will likely be too
specialized for large vendors to cover; therefore
small and midsized niche vendors will fill the
gaps, using service-oriented business applications.”
Made2Manage Systems has more than 19
years of experience as an ERP provider for small
manufacturers. The company is leveraging this
intimate knowledge of manufacturing operations
to build an SOA-enabled product that will deliver
continuous business process improvements for
our current and future customers.
SUMMARY
SOA Is Here To Stay
The right SOA-enabled business applications have the capabilities to provide the scalability, performance
and connectivity that small manufacturers demand. As an ERP vendor with a specialized focus on the
needs of small manufacturers, Made2Manage Systems is applying our unique expertise to develop an SOA
product that is tailored to the specific business practices of the industry. By breaking down software into
smaller, modular components known as services, SOA enables our software engineers to more rapidly
build applications for independent operational processes while consolidating quality and business
process improvement gains within the whole application.
Made2Manage Systems’ SOA product development efforts will minimize risk for our current and future
customers by evolving the application (transparent changes) over the course of the next two or three
releases. By comparison, other ERP vendors are following more uncertain strategies by re-writing products
from the ground up and/or stitching together incompatible systems. In charting a course for our
product development strategy, Made2Manage Systems has placed the interests of our customers before
all other concerns. Existing and future customers will continue to receive ongoing value as
Made2Manage moves its systems forward with minimal disruption, while delivering continuous business
process improvements and protecting IT investments.
Sources
Managing Automation: “Web Services and ERP,” Vendors must move now to embrace service-oriented architectures
or face extinction. November 22, 2004 – by Eric Marks
Forrester Research: “Evolve To SOA Using Street-Level Strategy,” September 15, 2004 – by Randy Heffner
with Carey Schwaber
Managing Automation: “How To Distinguish Web Services From SOAs,” August 19, 2004 – by Jeff Moad
Managing Automation: “Mid-Market Vendors Are Tapping Out An SOA Message Too,” August 12, 2004 – by
Jeff Moad
Forrester Research: “The Big Strategic Impact of Organic Business And Service-Oriented Architecture,” June
18, 2004 - by Randy Heffner with Mike Gilpin, Carey Schwaber
Gartner Research: “Service-Oriented Business Applications Break Down Barriers,” Enterprises will use SOBAs
to gain a competitive advantage. They will be able to combine application functions at more granular levels
in more-innovative approaches than previously feasible. February 17, 2004 – by Charles Abrams
Gartner Research: “Predicts 2004: Web Services,” Pragmatic and increasingly sophisticated Web services will
cause dramatic changes in the Web services market during 2006. Standards and service-oriented applications
will be the catalysts. November 20, 2003 – by Whit Andrews
Gartner Research: “Service-Oriented Architecture: Mainstream Right Ahead,” Service-oriented architecture is
about modularity, reuse and agility on behalf of the real-time enterprise. Mainstream status for SOA is not
far off. April 16, 2003 – by David McCoy, Yefim Natis
Gartner Research: “Service-Oriented Architecture Scenario,” Attempted SOA will cause great successes and
great failures of software projects. Understanding its role and meaning, beyond the simplistic hype, is the
imperative for every enterprise software architect. April 16, 2003 – by Yefim Natis