My name is Sacha Schlegel born in 1971 in Switzerland, grown up in the Principality of Liechtenstein (in the heart of Europe).
After obligatory school I finished a commercial apprenticeship in a Bank in Liechtenstein followed by a Bachelor in Computer Science (CS) and Business in Switzerland.
Came to Australia in 2001 for a postgraduate diploma in CS and a masters by research in CS.
Hobbies are Soccer, Windsurfing, Linux and lately (9 months) my little daughter Tawha.
Business is hundreds of years old (so is architecture, mathematics, physics, philosophy etc).
Computing is still very young (first computers in the 1940's).
Business is similar among different companies.
(page 4)
Business
Companies look similar such as:
Legend:
P - Product/Service SCM - Supply Chain Management L - LifeCycle M - Maintenance
B - Buy M - Make CRM - Customer Relationship Management (Marketing, Sales)
(page 5)
electronic Business
Doing common business with the support of computing systems.
Different software systems support different activites.
Resulted in problem of "island" applications, individual applications distributed within the company.
A centralised databases/application was needed. e.g. Customer address should only and only be stored in one place. Otherwise address maintenance gets out of hand.
(page 6)
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
ERP systems can be seen as backbone of electronic business. Typical activities among most companies are:
accounting
finance
marketing
production (operations)
human resouces
and more.
Big commercial players are SAP, PeopleSoft/JD Edvards, Baan, Oracle
SAP system licence for for 10 users is about US$ 125'000
A small sample company using Free Software / Open Source Software with the following applications:
GnuCash (Accounting)
Central Database (Customers, Suppliers, Product Descriptions)
OpenOffice (Invoice templates)
SalesStatistics (custom made)
WebServer with online store (Sales)
MailServer
(page 8)
EAI (cont.)
Without EAI:
A customer does log in with its ID (in sync with the database) on the webpage, browses the products and places an order. A person gets the message from the webserver with the details of the order. He/she has then to
a) do the accounting,
b) write and send an invoice,
d) update the sales statistics.
c) send the product,
(page 9)
EAI (cont.)
How to integrate different applications?
How to automate these internal business process?
One possibility:
Message Brokers
Based on the idea of publish and subscribe. An application must provide a message interface (eg incoming, outgoing messages)
Accessing an application through an API (Application Programming Interface) needs some expensive programming.
(page 10)
EAI (cont.)
The picture:
All applications are connected to the MessageBroker, networked.
SalesStatistics tool subscribes to "order" message.
OpenOffice tool subscribes to "order" message.
Each time an order is placed by the webserver, the order is published and the subscribed applications will receive the order message in their specific format (XML, binary, exotic).
The Message Broker supports rules to compose an outgoing message from an incoming message (think XSLT).
(page 12)
EAI (cont.)
With EAI:
GnuCash receives the "order" message and triggers a function which will credit the "sales product x" account and debit customer y.
SalesStatistics updates statistics.
OpenOffice (isnt there a SDK?) generates a new invoice (address is retrieved from the database) and prints it or even better emails (including security) it to the customer.
Ooops, dont forget to bring product x to the post office.
(page 13)
Next logical step forward.
The next logical step is to
exchange business documents electronically.
example customer (can be company) receives the invoice by post or email and has to re-enter it into their gnucash system (data entry)
See where this leads to ... ???
Software systems communicate beyond company boundaries.
(page 14)
EDI
In the 1960's EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) got momentum.
ANSI (American National Standards Institute) X12
UN (United Nations) TDI (Trade Data Interchange)
Both got merged into
EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport) as ISO Standard 9735
The "paper" based business documents got translated into electronic business documents which got exchanged over a private network.
(page 15)
Pitfalls of EDI
A couple of reasons hindered the widespread of EDI.
EDI message setup between two companies mostly bilateral
On the other hand, companies (very big ones) who could afford the high entrance costs seemed to be happy with EDI.
(page 16)
ebXML Introduction
ebXML is a joint initiative by the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT).
Initially a 18 months project ending in May 2001. Some groups keep working on ebXML.
Some call ebXML the next generation of EDI.
ebXML is based on proven technologies such as XML and HTTP
"To provide an open XML-based infrastructure enabling the global use of electronic business information in an interoperable, secure and consistent manner by all parties."
(from ebXML website)
(page 18)
ebXML Introduction (cont.)
Collaborative Business Processes are very important to ebXML.
What is a business process (also a buzzword)?
A precisely choreograped sequence of activites (actions) from a start state to an end state. Business rules control the sequence of activities.
(from ebXML Professional)
What is a collaborative business process?
Business process which happens between different partners (companies).
(page 19)
ebXML and XML
ebXML uses the Extensible Markup Language (XML) heavily because XML does structure documents very well and because XML parsers are widely available (free and commercial).
ebXML is not just an XML vocabulary for electronic business, but more like a framework for electronic business.
adapted from the ebXML Technical Architecture Specifiaction
(page 21)
The ebXML scenario (cont.)
comments:
1) Company A browses the ebXML registry to see what is available online. At best, company A can reuse all the existing business processes, documents, and core components common to its industry that are already stored in the ebXML registry. Otherwise company A designs the missing parts, stores them in the ebXML registry and makes them available for its industry partners.
(page 22)
The ebXML scenario (cont.)
comments:
2) Company A decides to do electronic business the ebXML way and considers implementing a local ebXML compliant application. An ebXML Business Service Interface (BSI) provides the link between the company and the outside ebXML world. The company has to create a Collaboration Protocol Profile (CPP) which describes the supported business process capabilities, constraints and technical ebXML information such as choice of encryption algorithms, encryption certificates and choice of transport protocols.
(page 23)
The ebXML scenario (cont.)
comments:
3) Company A submits its CPP to the ebXML registry. From that point on, company A is publicly listed in the ebXML registry and is likely to be discovered by other companies looking/querying for new trading partners.
(page 24)
The ebXML scenario (cont.)
comments:
4) Company B is already registered at the ebXML registry and is looking for new trading partners. Company B queries the ebXML registry and receives the CPP of company A. Company B then has two CPP's: Company A's CPP and its own. The two companies have to come to an agreement on how to do business. This is called a Collaboration Protocol Agreement (CPA) in the ebXML terminology. Company B uses an ebXML CPA formation tool to derive a CPA from the requirements of the two CPP's.
(page 25)
The ebXML scenario (cont.)
comments:
5) In this scenario company B communicates with company A directly and sends the newly created CPA for acceptance to company A. Upon agreement of the CPA by company A both companies are ready for electronic business.
6) The companies then use the underlying ebXML framework and exchange business documents conforming to the CPA. This means that both companies follow the business processes defined in the CPA.
(page 26)
The ebXML specifications
The outcome of the ebXML effort were several specificiations such as:
