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The neighborhood in which I live is a well-established
suburb in one of the most densely populated states in
the U.S. Yet, I have a small river (rather an
overgrown creek) running through the back of the
property and my neighborhood is fairly thick with
trees; and so, as various animals have adapted over
the years to the changes in their original habitat,
sightings of deer, raccoons, Canada geese, hawks and
even the occasional wild turkey are not remarkable
events. However, on a recent Saturday afternoon,
imagine my surprise when I saw a huge white bird,
perched atop long legs a model would die for, standing
stark-still beside the riverbank in my back yard. It
was the kind of bird you'd expect to see in Florida,
but not in my back yard. I rushed inside and grabbed
my new video camera (for no one would believe me
without photographic evidence) and breathlessly dashed
back to film this magnificent creature that had
somehow wandered into my back yard. I showed the film
to my fianc, but neither one of us had any idea what
kind of bird it was.
Back at work the next Monday, I casually mentioned
this in an editorial meeting, which led to speculation
as to what species this bird was.
Here at TMC, many of our editors can be referred to
as legacy systems, ones who have been around here a
long time, none the worse for wear, with huge
databases and operating systems that go back to the
days of manual typewriters and punchcard-fed
computers. They also have the benefit of spending many
hours in libraries; if they don't know an answer off
the top of their heads, they know where and how to
find it. So one of these TMC legacy systems went home
that night, looked in his Audubon Society Field
Guide to North American Birds, found a bird he
felt fit my rather sketchy description (in less time,
he reported, than it would have taken him to log onto
the Internet and call up a search engine and have it
download on his dial-up modem [a story for another day
is the appalling lack of universal broadband access in
the U.S.]), scanned the photograph and the description
and sent them to me as e-mail attachments. I opened
the file, and there before me was my bird, Casmerodius
albus, or the great egret.
This tale, I believe, illustrates the state of most
businesses today. So many legacy systems are still
chugging away, day after day, year after year,
flawlessly performing their tasks, a fact that so many
of us in this industry (and, I think in our culture in
general) tend to forget as we salivate over the
newest, sexiest and latest technology (proven or not).
The only major difference between legacy systems and
the TMC editors is that legacy systems don't easily
adapt to the newest systems we have installed, while
editors acquire new skills, with the added benefit of
using their past experiences to gather information
from various sources and media types to combine them
into a coherent whole.
As implementing CRM solutions is a business
transformation process that affects the entire
enterprise, and not a matter of simply installing
off-the-shelf software, a huge problem, and the cause
of many less-than-stellar reports on the benefits of
CRM, is the fact that unless a company has just sprung
up, the legacy systems already in place in various
departments, built in the days before open standards,
perform their applications in splendid isolation,
islands unto themselves. Perhaps the hardest hit in
the rush to CRM are call centers, which are often
mired in the past, locked into expensive, proprietary
systems that, while they perform their specific tasks
with the single-mined determination of an iron
automaton who, with brute force and tunnel vision,
operates ignorant of and uncaring about the rest of
the world; the left hand not only doesn't know what
the right hand is doing, the left hand doesn't even
know there is a right hand. Thus, the call center's
vast collection of customer data is walled off from
other departments, each system unable to unite with
its neighbor or with new systems to form a collective
whole, mightier than the sum of its parts.
Adding to the data and channel isolation is the
entrenched green-screen world of many call centers, a
world in which agents must log in and out of several
systems to perform more than one task. This not only
adds time to doing simple tasks (time that could be
best spent else wise), it can lead to transcription
errors and it adds costs for agent training, uses
precious IT resources and adheres to its own rules,
not business rules. The time and expense to learn,
build, customize and implement these new interfaces is
time and money that could be used to build new
application functionality and help the business be
more competitive.
To address the application interface integration
problem, Jacada Inc.
has designed its Interface Server, which provides a
universal interface layer for both new and existing
applications and allows an engineer to design the user
interface once and generate it in whatever language
and standard the business demands. The Interface
Server also provides for the selective re-engineering
of legacy applications to collect the re-usable logic
and allow it to co-exist with the remains of legacy
systems. With the Interface Server, legacy
applications can be Web-enabled, legacy and new
business logic can be exposed as XML transactions, and
there will be a unified interface for integration with
packaged applications and enterprise portals.
The heart or mind of the Jacada package is the
Jacada KnowledgeBase, a rules-based engine that acts
as a global repository for an organization's interface
standards. By using the Jacada KnowledgeBase to
automatically enforce user interface standards, all
applications automatically provide a unified front to
users. Additionally, the Jacada KnowledgeBase will
tell what screens or pages will be affected and then
make the change. It can also be tuned to conform to
popular packaged application interfaces.
The Jacada Interface Server addresses both legacy
and contemporary application architectures through
support of TN3270 and TN5250 Interface Drivers for
legacy mainframe and AS/400 applications, and Java,
COBOL and RPG Interface Drivers for new or
re-engineered applications. The next releases of the
Interface Server are scheduled support J2EE, .NET and
Web services. The Interface Server can be deployed on
NT, AS/400, iSeries, S/390, zSeries and Solaris
servers and supports dynamic load balancing, even
across multiple server types.
For companies that produce large amounts of
information, such as publishing companies,
distributors, electronics and PC manufacturers and
catalogers, a major headache of new channels of
customer interaction is providing information that is
current as well as uniform across those channels. How
many times have you seen an item in a catalog, gone to
the Web site and then to the company's store and found
different prices, versions or availability in all
three places? Or perhaps you have called the customer
service center of an electronics company and been
given totally different information about a product,
such as the piece you just bought was the new Series B
of that product and the agent only has information
about Series A of that product, so it will be several
days before they can help you solve your problem. Even
just keeping policy or procedure manuals current
across a large organization can be a major headache.
To meet the ever-changing demands of the multiple
media information world, Arbortext,
Inc. has produced its Epic software, which is
designed to capture, create and publish product
documentation and reference materials automatically
from a single source to multiple media: Web, print,
CD-ROM and wireless devices.
Arbortext has designed Epic to work with content
and document management systems to create XML directly
through the Epic Editor, convert word processing and
desktop publishing formats to XML with the Epic
E-Content Engine, manage content through integration
with systems from leading CMS vendors, extract content
to match individual profiles by merging in relational
or tabular data where necessary and publish from a
single XML source to multiple media.
Out of the box, Epic Editor works with file systems
and Documentum 4i. An optional adapter integrates Epic
Editor with the Oracle 8iFS repository. Also available
from Arbortext's partners are integrations with
repositories from Chrystal, Empolis and XyEnterprise.
To sum up, I would just say there is a lot of
valuable knowledge locked away in your legacy systems,
so tap into them and share the wealth.
Sincerely,
Rich Tehrani
Group Publisher
Group Editor-in-Chief
[ Return
To The September 2001 Table Of Contents ]
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Extending
The Enterprise
Mobile business, so far, seems not to have lived up
to its name and spread across the globe to a great
extent: Until recently, wireless-enabled applications
have languished at the consumer level, emphasizing the
delivery of relatively nonspecific information --
weather forecasts, sports scores, stock figures and
psychic insights. But now, we're beginning to see
applications that would create a kind of extended
enterprise, as well as services that would allow
mobile workers to tap into corporate resources,
culling information relevant to specific tasks. Early
examples include mobile versions of sales force
automation (SFA) and customer relationship management
(CRM).
The benefits for corporations are fairly clear.
Corporations may enhance the value of existing
applications by making them accessible to mobile
workers. And mobile workers who are granted access to
corporate resources may become more productive,
participating in corporate information and transaction
processes in real-time (or in quasi-real-time, in the
case with store-and-forward exchanges). Over the next
two to three years, many corporations -- nearly half,
according to the META Group -- will wireless-enable
applications.
Here at TMC, we noticed there was no forum where
developer and implementer can come together and
exchange ideas on the latest advances in personal
digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile business, and so
launched Planet PDA - The Global Summit on Handheld
Productivity Solutions, which will be held December
4-6, 2001 at the Venetian/Sands Convention and Expo
Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Planet PDA will provide a first-class learning
forum for anyone involved in implementing handheld
devices. The editors of TMC's leading publications
have developed a very informative conference program
that will virtually assure you of knowing how you can
use cost-saving handheld technology products and
services to improve profitability in your business and
make you more efficient.
Sessions will educate attendees about how to select
applications, maintain security, develop wireless
connectivity solutions, develop customized
applications and integrate network solutions. You'll
also hear case studies of how companies have
successfully implemented handheld devices into their
enterprise.
For complete conference information, visit www.tmcnet.com/planetpda/.
[ Return
To The September 2001 Table Of Contents ]
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