Where it begins...
The true revolution of "e-business" lies in its challenge to the received wisdom that business applications exist simply to automate some previously manual effort. As business moves into this new marketplace, it's clear that these applications must increasingly perform functions that have no prior manual analog -- that in some cases have never been possible before. And they must do it at high speed. Yesterday, if possible.
To meet the challenge of this market, businesses have just two options: install new applications or adapt the existing ones for e-business.
- A comprehensive solution, with built-in web-enablement is attractive, except for the costs and delay of planning, implementing, and testing a new system. That's not to mention the effort of migrating hard-won embedded business logic from existing programs. By the time the new applications are in full production, the desired market may have changed or vanished.
- A incremental solution preserves technology investment and bodes better time-to-market. But the sheer complexity of integrating disparate systems, within an enterprise or with external trading partners, may exhaust the resources of even the most sophisticated internal IT unit. If you have one.
Fortunately neither solution excludes the other, and many organizations have (and will) take a blended approach. That's the approach behind Bizevex, Sierra's middle-tier architecture that provides rapid web-enablement of existing systems with a path forward to future implementations.
