How ebXML Will Transform the Software & Services Industry
Many companies are already engaged in a far-reaching transition as they automate their business processes and move to a services-oriented architecture. The business value lies in reduced complexity, time and costs asscociated with creating and modifying value chains, allowing them to significantly improve business agility.
Business Process Management (BPM) is embodying the highly strategic objective of aligning IT with business. Several initiatives have started in recent years to pave the way for the establishment of a standards-based business collaboration infrastructure, which allows business partners to connect their business processes. Apart from EDI, which represents first-generation B2B, three major business collaboration infrastructure architectures exist today: ebXML, RosettaNet and Microsoft’s BizTalk.
At present, ebXML is the only non-proprietary horizontal business collaboration infrastructure architecture that provides integration at the business process level. The ebXML initiative, jointly sponsored by UN/CEFACT and OASIS, has developed a set of specifications, which have been endorsed by major industry consortia. A number of leading software vendors as well as representatives from key industry groups have been instrumental in the development of ebXML specifications early on, thus ensuring widespread adoption.
A common business collaboration infrastructure yields tremendous synergy effects and will lead to significantly reduced costs for inter-enterprise as well as intra-enterprise business integration. It represents the common integration platform that enterprises have been looking for and which allows businesses to tie together their business processes. Jenz & Partner believes that the business value goes far beyond the level of current business process integration solutions.
The strategic integration technology choice for organizations will shift from current Enterprise Application Integration broker technology to Business Process Integration broker technology within the next two years. The move towards application architectures that exploit the power of multiple servers (application server, database server, presentation server) and the separation of application logic, data access logic, presentation logic, and process control logic facilitates this transition. In essence, the focus will shift from integration at the data level to integration at the process flow level.
Industry groups are strongly advocating the transition to a standards-based business collaboration infrastructure for obvious reasons: standards-based solutions bring down TCO and significantly shorten implementation time, which positively affects ROI.
The transition to a standards-based business collaboration infrastructure will have far-reaching effects on the entire software industry. In our research report, we have analyzed who are the driving forces pushing towards the adoption of a standards-based business collaboration platform, who will benefit from this sweeping move and who will lose.
Some of our key findings are:
- Software vendors will OEM core infrastructure components, enabling systems integrators to offer best-of-breed solutions at as yet unprecedented price points. Solutions will become available starting from $5,000.
- EAI software vendors will be affected most, forcing them to review and modify their current business strategies. EAI is a tactical issue while BPM is considered strategic. Hence, EAI vendors need to move up the “food chain”, meaning that focusing on data integration is no longer a viable strategy for EAI vendors.
- Systems integrators will experience an increase in consulting and implementation opportunities across horizontal and vertical markets. They will find a significant market opportunity if they can provide a clear concept, a convincing methodology, a convincing value proposition, and a roadmap for building comprehensive solutions based on robust technology.
View/Download Table of Contents (PDF)
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
