Web Services are like a bigger LEGO
Building Kit
Web services belong unquestionably to the future. In order for this technology to be able to expand further, however, it requires a standardized software product that allows so-called composite applications to be created quickly and cost-effectively with its tools. With the already industry-leading software in the enterprise portal segment, Intrexx Xtreme, web services of the future will orchestrate and put together, via mouse click, service-oriented applications just like the colorful little bricks.
Freiburg, 13 June 2007. „The future of business software lies in web services,” announced Shai Agassi, the long-time shaper of strategy at SAP, already in 2006. Since then, many providers in the ERP field have worked to create web services around their existing APIs and thereby to prepare smaller functional units of their software. These smaller building blocks can then in return, similarly to LEGO bricks, be put together with services of other producers into a so-called composite application. Such applications combine within a single interface various, and for the user no longer identifiable, software products for the enterprise. This “enterprise mash-up” combines, for example, complaints management with CRM software, or checks article availability in resource management while an employee works to create an offer for a customer.
The strategy has decisive advantages: individual applications can be perfectly adjusted for existing business processes. The loose coupling of the software products makes it possible, at the same time, to also quickly adjust existing processes to changing market conditions.
In addition to availability of services, a front end is required for users. According to Gartner analyst Andy Kyte, web platforms are virtually predestined for the creation of these mashups and the joining of a multitude of data and information from web services of various origins and producers.
The German software vendor United Planet promises with the delivery of Version 4 of its portal software, Intrexx Xtreme, an interesting solution for mid-size companies: United Planet integrates an orchestration module for web services into the middle of the portal functions. The procedure for this is astoundingly easy and effective: all web service description files (WSDL) will be centrally collected with the help of wizards, and then will be made available for use together with existing portal data, or the data from ERP systems, in the visual Application Designer. Via mouse click, the desired applications can now be composed and provided to users in the portal.
This allows services to be called up in combination and parameterized with dynamic data from formulas. Even without programming knowledge, this allows powerful applications to be created.
The equally fully integrated Process Manager in Intrexx allows all kinds of applications to be linked with one another as well, in order to model business activities and workflows. In doing so, it is steered by the integrated users and rights manager, as with all modules in Intrexx. In addition, the Process Manager makes the direct integration of configured web services possible. This allows for a vacation request process, for example, to make the required survey of the vacation account in the HRM software, which will then automatically execute further steps of the process based on the survey’s results.
What happens, however, when individual providers of software products are in no way able to offer required web services? For businesses that decide on SOA, this is a problem at the beginning that can end the entire strategy.
For these cases, foreign data access in Intrexx Xtreme allows for direct access to the databases of third-party products. The data can then in return be made available to other products via the Web Service Provider in Intrexx Xtreme. This generates web services with corresponding WSDL files, which can then be integrated by customers and partners. Perfect partnerships with great usefulness are created in this way, and the software of the third party producer need not be web-, or web service-capable.
Intrexx Xtreme 4 is planned for introduction at the end of the second quarter by United Planet. The complete system, containing the Portal Manager and the corresponding Intrexx Application Server, costs per user about 105 Euro plus VAT. A processor license for any number of users can be purchased for 44,100 Euro net.
