Datapro Report

Enterprise Applications Use Web to Reduce Costs, Improve Service

Bob Anderson

Now that they've reduced costs and improved efficiency through employee layoffs and reengineering, businesses are downsizing their enterprise applications, too. To take advantage of cost savings over the lifetime of these applications compared to traditional PC/LAN environments, enterprise-level applications providers are adding Web-access and network-computing (NC) support to their accounting, banking, manufacturing, enterprise-resource-planning, and other applications.

The Web's global reach alone is a compelling factor. A big benefit of the Internet is its ability to let businesses get closer to their customers. Any enterprise-wide application that has potential for improving communications with customers or employees is a good candidate for Web integration. In recent months, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP have introduced Java- and/or Web-enabled applications. What follows is a snapshot of the major vendors' strategies and progress to date.

IBM

HR Access, IBM's Internet-ready human-resources package, is tightly integrated with Lotus Notes and the Domino Web applications server in order to supply work-flow capabilities. IBM is aggressively pushing the NC model, focusing its hardware strategy in support of thin clients and fat servers and providing secure electronic-transaction technology.

Microsoft

The company's cross-industry object strategy is based on its ActiveX Store Architecture and Value-Chain Initiative. This initiative specifies the interfaces required to develop ERP applications, while the Store Architecture specifies ways to connect a business's back office and front office. Both of these approaches are inherently Web enabled.

Microsoft hopes to build a generic, business-to-business, electronic-commerce-type infrastructure and sit clusters of industries on top of it. Hardware and software suppliers will use common ActiveX components and interfaces to build applications that use the Web to link the constituencies of a vertical market together.

Oracle

The database vendor is focused on supplying transaction-based applications over the Web that support corporate work-flow and business processes. Oracle Financials, HR, Manufacturing, Web Customers, and Web Employees were among the first Web and work-flow applications on the market.

PeopleSoft

Developers can use Spider Technologies' NetDynamics and OneWave's OpenScape to build custom Web interfaces to PeopleSoft applications and extend those applications to the Web. PeopleSoft plans to roll out its own Web-client capability this year. PeopleSoft's latest release, version 6, also has many Web-enabled modules for bills and routings, production management, cost management, and work flow . PeopleSoft is currently migrating from a two-tier to a three-tier architecture, which will allow more flexibility in the partitioning of applications across the enterprise, including the Web.

SAP

R/3 System 3.1 features easy-to-use-and-tailor Internet capabilities for all R/3 business processes. The package is Java enabled and offers improved administration and support for new platforms, including NCs and thin clients. In addition, new out-of-the-box Internet functionality is available through 25 ready-to-use application components, 10 employee self-service applications, and more than 150 Java-enabled business application programming interfaces (BAPIs). Because R/3 System 3.1 is Java enabled, system administration is simplified by eliminating the need to maintain presentation code on the client.

Datapro expects to see the widespread deployment over the next year of Web-based applications and modules for enterprise software vendors that automate simple customer interactions. From mid-199 8 on, we expect to see fairly complex transactions and work flow occurring across the Internet and on intranets using NC platforms that extend the supply chain from corporations to customers on one side and suppliers on the other.

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Bob Anderson, managing analyst, enterprise systems software at Datapro. For more information about Datapro reports, call 609-764-0100; fax 609-764-2814; or visit their website at http://www.datapro.com .