Portal Integration Strategies

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Portal Integration Strategies

• Bryan Caporlette
• Executive Vice President, Strategic Technology
• Sequoia Software Corporation
• 5457 Twin Knolls Rd
• Columbia, MD 21146
• http//www.sequoiasoftware.com

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Agenda
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• Housekeeping
• Why Turn to Portal Software
• Portal Integration Options
• Implementation Methodology
• Summary

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Agenda

• Housekeeping

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Sequoia Software

• Established in 1992
• Headquartered in Columbia, MD with International
  operations North America, Europe, Asia
• Utilized SGML in late 1995 XML in 1996
• Sequoia XPS 3.0 June 2000
• 200 employees
• Deloitte Touches Fast 500 for 1997, 1998, 1999
• Publicly held company SQSW

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Representative Customers and Partners
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E-business Landscape
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Agenda

• Why Turn to Portal Software

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Portal's Role
E-Business Portals
Corporate Portal
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Portal Delivery Interface
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(No Transcript)
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Address What Problem?

• Single point of access to enterprise information
  assets
• First generation Portals - Next generation
  Intranets
• Next Generation Portals
• Aggregate
• People
• Information
• Applications
• Business Processes

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Focusing on New Problems

• Knowledge management (traditional Corporate
  Portal)
• Save time
• Gain efficiencies
• Improve productivity
• Customer acquisition or retention
• E-enable your business
• Transition to Web interactions
• I.e. Online Ordering, E-Marketplace Integration
• Fixing a mission critical problem thats broken
• Timely data
• Combining multiple business processes

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Web-enabling Applications
Customers
Suppliers
Partners
Media
Firewall
Employees
Company Network
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Implementation Challenges
IT Staff
Users

• Incompatible technology
• Duplication of effort
• Inability to define enterprise business processes
  
• Difficult deployment
• Administration nightmare

• Inconsistent user interfaces
• Multiple Log-on procedures
• Conflicting data
• Information overload
• Difficulty locating correct information or
  functions

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10K Foot Architecture
Suppliers
Media
Customers
Partners
Firewall
Employees
Single Point of Aggregation
XML Portal Server
Company Network
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Requirements

• Open architecture
• Standards based
• Extensible
• Ready for growth
• Users
• Data
• Geographic
• Application integration
• Bi-directional
• Multiple integration points

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Requirements (2)

• Content delivery
• Filtered
• Personalized
• Integrated information services
• Search Retrieval
• Taxonomy
• Content Management
• Business processing engine
• Information routing
• Flows

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Agenda

• Integration Alternatives

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Three Integration Layers

• Presentation
• Provide one-way streets that communicate directly
  with an application
• Tunnels through the portal
• Business Logic
• Communicate with applications through application
  programmable interfaces (API)
• Interact through function calls
• Data
• Pull or push packaged information into the portal
• Allows integrated portal services to act on the
  information

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Integration Matrix
Content Delivery Agent
Data Service
Data Source Adapter
Application Coupling
Tightly
Loosely
API Dependent
Transactional Integrity
Single Application
All Services
None
Data Visibility
None
Single Application
All Services
Dependent on Web-enabled API
Dependent on Business API
Dependent on Connector
Interactivity
Data Freshness
Must
Not Applicable
Latency OK
Session Dependent
Data Security
Maximum
Minimum
Application Defined Business Logic
Maintained
Maintained
Not Maintained
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Presentation Layer
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Business Logic Layer
Automated Process Flow
Notify Sales
True
?
Validate
Acct. Payable
False
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Data Layer
Extract
Package
Transmit
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Types of Applications

• Depends on the problem space
• Knowledge management (traditional Corporate
  Portal)
• Save time
• Gain efficiencies
• Improve productivity
• E-enable your business
• Transition to Web interactions
• Customer acquisition or retention
• Fixing a mission critical problem thats broken
• Customer acquisition or retention
• Timely data
• Combining multiple business processes

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Knowledge Management

• Collaboration tools
• Message Boards
• Chat
• Instant Messaging
• Productivity tools
• Email
• Calendar
• Task List
• Internet Content Providers
• News
• Financial
• Unstructured data stores
• Document management systems
• File systems

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E-enabling the Business

• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
• Peoplesoft
• BAAN
• SAP
• Customer Relationship Management
• Siebel
• Onyx
• Oracle
• Supply Chain
• I2
• Manugistics Group
• E-Marketplaces
• CommerceOne, Ariba
• Vertical marketplaces

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Mission Critical Problems

• Depends on your business and the problem
• Healthcare
• Financial Services
• Manufacturing
• Real-time systems
• Manufacturing line data
• Data warehouses
• Legacy applications
• DB2
• Screen scraping

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Communication Models

• Synchronous
• Direct processing (open a dialogue)
• HTTP, D/COM, EJB, Corba
• Asynchronous
• Indirect processing (when you get to it)
• Directory polling, SMTP, HTTP, Queuing
• Timeliness of data
• Scheduled
• Triggered (event driven)

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Building Connectors

• Spiders
• Home Grown
• Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) Tools

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Spiders

• Easiest Point and Crawl
• Good for discovering unstructured data
• Typically within Document/Content Management
  systems
• LAN/WAN, Internet
• Challenges
• Dont do much
• Limited to schedule based operation

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Home Grown

• Built from scratch
• Usually one-off applications
• Myriad of languages and architectures
• Perl, C/C, VB, Python, TCL
• Challenges
• Difficult to add new applications
• Need internal development staff
• Configuration management issues
• Deploy new versions of 3rd party applications
• Technology incompatibilities

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EAI Software

• Provide mapping GUI and transformation engine
• Jump start kits
• Build connectors using business analysts versus
  developers
• Map reuse
• Challenges
• Expensive
• Proprietary scripting environments
• Still a lot of work, not out-of-the-box
• Poor debug facilities
• Lack of XML support

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Agenda

• Introduction
• Requirements
• Integration Points
• Types of Applications
• Integration Mechanisms
• XML Messaging
• Summary

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Information Flow
Backend Application
Portal Server
Information Connector
Message Layer
Data Communication
Data Communication
XML Messages
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XML Provides

• Data neutral packaging
• Microsoft BizTalk
• Information Content Exchange (ICE)
• RosettaNet
• Protocol neutral transmission
• HTTP/s
• SMTP
• FTP
• D/COM
• Validation
• DTD
• XML Schema

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Message Structure
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Agenda

• Introduction
• Requirements
• Integration Points
• Types of Applications
• Integration Mechanisms
• XML Messaging
• Summary

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XML Advantages

• If you use XML to represent the content
• Standard transformation language (XSLT)
• Reuse
• Across different delivery devices (Web, Wireless,
  Print)
• Across different integrated services
• Greater personalization
• Improved Search and Indexing

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Summary

• Portals aggregate information, processes,
  applications and people
• Applications can be integrated within 3 layers
• Presentation
• Business Logic
• Data
• Types of applications vary depending on how you
  apply the technology
• When building connectors, understand the
  capabilities of IT, and know risk involved with
  using different EAI tools
• XML can be leveraged at various stages of
  information processing
• Questions?