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Archive - Edition 7: Composite Applications
To
Overview of Composite Applications Edition
Introduction
Leading and General Articles
- Packaged Composite Applications: A Liberating Force for the User Interface
- Next Generation Applications – What Are They?
- xApps Acronyms and Glossary
Theoretical Foundations
- xApps – A New Practice for Next Practice
- Process Recombination: An Ontology-Based Approach for Business Process Re-Design
- The Agile Dance of Architectures – Reframing IT Enabled Business Opportunities
- Web Services and User Interaction
- Dissolving Boundaries with Distributed Cognition and xApps
Designing xApps, Examples of SAP xApps
- Prototype-Based xApps Design Process
- SAP xApp EPM – Employee Process Management
- SAP xApp Knowledge Network – From the Idea to the Product
Links & More
Next Generation Applications – What Are They?
By Ramona Winkler, SAP AG – October 20, 2003
Before taking a closer look at next generation applications – termed composite or cross applications (and called xApps by SAP) –, let's first examine the market needs that fostered their emergence, and take a look at the "traditional" application types that no longer fulfill these needs. We will then go on to specify the characteristics and functionalities of composite applications.
The Need for Composite Applications
At present, many companies are faced with the challenge of having to react quickly to their customers' needs – not only locally but around the world. This situation forces companies to improve communication and collaboration, for example, by ad-hoc or evolving teams, in order to guarantee improved decision-making and increased productivity.
Traditional applications can no longer keep up with this development as they are designed for specific functions and users. Traditional applications were built to:
- Fit and fulfill particular business functions or processes
- Fulfill a generic need, such as managing, storing, and creating documents, sending messages, or searching for information. Traditional applications can handle only the generic needs of particular users and their roles in specific business processes.
The challenge for new applications was to steer away from the tendency toward single processes, functions, and users. New applications should:
- Serve business processes that cross multiple functions
- Target multiple users even across inter-enterprise boundaries
- Integrate functions that were previously supported by independent generic applications
Characteristics of Composite Applications
Composite applications represent a new breed of applications. They are built on top of the company's heterogeneous technology landscape, thus enabling cross-functional business processes. Composite applications are composite as they integrate various existing applications. Moreover they are collaborative and content-driven. Let's take a closer look at these four predominant characteristics of composite applications:
Cross-functional
Composite applications "sit" on top of a company's existing applications. They rely upon underlying existing systems and cannot function as applications on their own (see figure 1). Composite applications are apps-on-apps. This new breed of applications is able to drive end-to-end business processes not only across different applications, but also across heterogeneous IT systems and organizations. Thus, composite applications cross technological intra- and inter-enterprise boundaries.
Figure 1: Composite applications, such as xApps, "sit" on top of a company's existing applications
Composite
By integrating all of a company's applications and systems, cross applications help to maximize the value of the existing IT investments. Composite applications flexibly integrate new functional components into business processes in compliance with a company's strategy. Should the strategy change, the company can easily configure its processes with the help of composite applications, which are highly adaptable.
Collaborative
Creating effective teams across the enterprise plays a great role in ensuring vital business processes and in facilitating intelligent decision-making. Composite applications help to empower teams by enabling ad-hoc team collaboration, both synchronous (for example, chat, instant messaging, application sharing), and asynchronous (for example, calendar, bulletin boards, threaded discussions, ratings, feedback).
Content-driven
An application that is content-driven enhances business processes by relating knowledge and structured information. Because composite applications are content-driven, the business can be run with corporate-wide business intelligence instead of disaggregated information. Figure 2 visualizes the difference between corporate-wide intelligence provided by composite applications and disaggregated information provided by traditional applications. Composite applications enable a 360° view of the corporation.
Figure 2: Difference between disaggregated information and corporate-wide intelligence
Summary
Now let's sum up all the benefits of composite applications. First, they are built to run in heterogeneous, distributed environments, and thus extend the value of existing applications. Composite applications aggregate and interconnect information and business knowledge, and promote collaboration and transaction. Disregarding technical, organizational, and functional boundaries, and driving end-to-end business processes across these levels, composite applications, such as SAP's xApps, deserve their title of "next generation applications."
Sources
- New Applications Emerge - Business Process Fusion, by Simon Hayward, Gartner Research
- SAP Seeks To Straddle Business Process Spectrum With xApps, by Kavita Nair
- Integrating intelligence. Cross functional business applications enable organisations to streamline and automate interactions tied to business functions, by Melanie Liew
