Revolution in IT systems integration

More applications, more complications…

Successful integration of IT solutions that fuel company’s operations is one of the biggest challenges faced by leading enterprises and their IT departments.

It is obvious that new requirements and needs result  in constant increase of the number of applications used; however, the management expects always the same: everything must work and the maintenance costs must be the lowest possible.

It used to be much simpler. Both the equipment and applications often came from the same supplier and were closely related.

With time this hermetic world has opened, the number of applications has constantly been growing, and so has been the complexity of management. Integration has become a critical element of proper operations of the organization. It is true not only inside the company (which has been ensured by ERP systems), but also its environment (business partners, offices and institutions etc.).

Every new solution has had to be integrated and adjusted to the processes used in the company. The result of such actions has quite often been a tangled web of connections between applications that exchanged various and often redundant information.

…and higher costs!

Integrating those solutions to meet the company’s needs is not only a hard, but also expensive process. Additional applications must be developed or purchased, and then the company must bear the cost of their adjusting to those already in existence.

When using technologies created by different suppliers, the company must constantly train administrators in order to obtain and maintain competence.

We are forced to spend a lot of money on availability and security of particular elements of a complex architecture. To help realize the actual level of spending it is worth remembering that 70-80% IT budgets are allocated to maintaining existing systems (source: Intel Corporation report “Standardized IT Infrastructure for Higher Business Value”, 2004).

Naturally a question arises: how can we limit those enormous expenses without losing the opportunities offered by old and new IT tools?

Opportunities or expenses?

The solution to an age-old dilemma ”opportunities or expenses” is a consistent and flexible integration platform covering both technology (hardware and logistic resources) and applications,  which includes all systems vital for the company.

Unfortunately, the total cost of such a solution also includes expenses related to the platform itself, expenditure on integrating the existing applications and the costs of applications themselves.

Taking into account the changeability of business conditions, product upgrades and resulting functional changes, the potential costs are still quite high. Can we lower them somehow?

SAP NetWeaver –  revolution in integration

A solution to the above problems is SAP NetWeaver. SAP NetWeaver is a new application and integration platform, prepared by SAP. The traditional IT infrastructure often lacks flexibility, a possibility of scaling and openness that ensure its effectiveness.

SAP NetWeaver caters for such needs by proposing a whole new concept of creating and giving access to applications, by viewing organization’s operations through integrating people, data, processes and technologies into one consistent and precise mechanism.

SAP NetWeaver completely changes the concept of using IT systems. Instead of many specialized systems the users obtain comprehensive portal mechanisms based on Java, J2EE nad SOA/ESA (Service Oriented Architecture / Enterprise Service Architecture) technologies.

Thanks to this the users receive one, consistent interface of applications (an Internet browser), enriched by SSO mechanisms (Single Sign On), which give them access to all necessary functions.

To make the execution of those tasks possible, SAP NetWeaver offers a number of solutions that integrate people, processes, data and technologies.