Next-generation E-Biz platform: avoid stovepipes as EAI, B2B converge

Software Magazine, Spring, 2002 by Mike Rosen

THE B2B AND EAI MARKETS ARE converging into a new category of enterprise middleware, the e-business platform. This e-business platform promises to provide an end-to-end solution, going from Web services to B2B collaboration, all the way to legacy and application systems.

The convergence of B2B and EM is a logical extension of the technology. However, this combination also makes it easy to create B2B application stovepipes that violate the hard-learned principle of the separation of presentation and business logic. To avoid these stovepipes, organizations need to understand the similarities and differences between the two markers.

Convergence is coming from two directions. EAT vendors such as IBM, Mercator, and Tibco are transforming themselves into B2B vendors by extending their EM environments to support business documents. And B2B vendors such as IONA, Sterling Commerce, and WebMethods are extending their platforms through the acquisition and integration of EM capabilities. Each approach creates an e-business platform founded in the strengths of the underlying EM or B2B products.

External Vs. Internal Focus

Business analysts view the issue from the business problem being solved. Technologists look at the issue from the technology used to implement solutions. From each viewpoint, there are some aspects that are unique to B2B or EM, as well as a large overlap.

B2B transactions focus on the interaction of trading partners. The B2B technology and specifications target the issues of traversing administrative boundaries (although there are obviously many other problems addressed). In other words, B2B is externally focused.

These concepts are represented by trading partner agreements and business documents, for example. The industry consortia and organizations that specify these standards, such as ebXML, and RosettaNet, do not delve into how organizations process the documents internally, but address only the interaction between partners. Security tends to take on added importance due to the nature of partner interactions. While the internal processing of these documents is clearly quite important, this area falls within the overlap of B2B and EAI, rather than being a distinguishing characteristic of either,

EAI solutions, in contrast, focus internally on the integration of applications within the enterprise. Typically, this integration does not cross administrative boundaries, but is instead characterized by complex data integration and manipulation issues such as data flow, fan-in, fan-out, filters, and transformations. Integration involves the combination, division, collection, and dispersal of data across multiple systems within the enterprise. Thus, EAI deals with the internal details of carrying out business processes, rather than on the presentation or invocation of those processes.

However, both B2B and EAI integration efforts involve complex processing tasks that can best be described by workflows of business activities, which are based on Business Process and Information (BPI) Models. These workflows describe sequences of business activities that consist of data transformations, business process invocations, and connections to other systems.

B2B and EM workflows solve essentially different business problems. In the B2B case, the problem deals with processing business documents across administrative boundaries. In the EM case, the problem deals with data integration across different application systems. However, the technologies used--business process workflow execution, transformers, and adapters--are essentially the same.

The figure at right illustrates the differences and commonalities of the B2B and EM markets from both the business information (top) and technology (bottom) perspectives. The top describes the business information needed for a solution. Both B2B and EAI have business process workflows in common, but there is also information unique to each. The bottom describes technology capabilities. Both use workflow as the heart of the execution environment.

Don't Build B2B Stovepipes

By concentrating too much on the technology, however, organizations may get blindsided and fail to understand the fundamental differences of the two problem spaces, particularly the external vs. internal difference in focus. This tendency can result in an inadequate architecture that creates a new B2B technology stovepipe, which fails to deliver reusable business processes, and actually reduces the ROI for the application.

Instead, by identifying the differences, and following fundamental architectural principles learned from previous application paradigms, organizations can create enterprise applications with reusable business processes that increase competitive agility, decrease time to market for new functionality, and maximize ROI across multiple applications.

A fundamental lesson learned in the move to n-tier architectures was to separate presentation from business logic. As organizations moved to more sophisticated, Web-based interfaces, the implementation of the presentation became more complex. Nonetheless, this important architectural separation was maintained.