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Archive - Edition 7: Composite Applications
To
Overview of Composite Applications Edition
Introduction
Leading and General Articles
- Packaged Composite Applications: A Liberating Force for the User Interface
- Next Generation Applications – What Are They?
- Acronyms and Glossary
Theoretical Foundations
- xApps – A New Practice for Next Practice
- Process Recombination: An Ontology-Based Approach for Business Process Re-Design
- The Agile Dance of Architectures – Reframing IT Enabled Business Opportunities
- Web Services and User Interaction
- Dissolving Boundaries with Distributed Cognition and xApps
Designing xApps, Examples of SAP xApps
- Prototype-Based xApps Design Process
- SAP xApp EPM – Employee Process Management
- SAP xApp Knowledge Network – From the Idea to the Product
Links & More
Crossing Boundaries with Composite Applications
By Gerd Waloszek, Product Design Center, SAP AG – 10/20/2003
Computers are universal machines. That's the theory. In practice, however, we often find that computers are rigid. They can only do what they have been programmed for. Thus, application users are often painfully restricted to the application developer's concept of how and for which purposes the program should be used. On the other hand, we also find that users don't care much about the original purpose of products and use them in their own and creative ways. That is true not only for programs but also for any commercial product. Using a spoon to open a bottle of beer may not be the best example, but it gives you the idea. Such creativity, however, has its limits – and increasingly so the more specialized a product is. For example, nobody would use an image-processing program, such as Adobe Photoshop, for word processing, even though it would be possible to some extent; it's simply far too cumbersome.
With business applications, such as ERP applications, this rigidity is even more prevalent. These applications are typically tailored to specific tasks like goods receipt or order processing. This tailoring is a good thing on one hand because it allows users to do their work quickly and easily. On the other hand, it presumes and requires that procedures — and business practices in general — remain stable and do not change over time. This assumption is, however, no longer tenable. At the present moment, many companies are faced with the challenge of reacting quickly to their customers' needs — not only locally but around the whole world. This situation forces companies to improve communication and collaboration, for example by ad-hoc or evolving teams, in order to guarantee improved decision-making and increased productivity. So, what solutions can software companies offer to meet these challenges? Or, in other words, how can computer programs better cope with change, which has become a dominant ingredient in today's business world? This question is, to a large degree, the theme of the new SAP Design Guild edition on composite applications, of which SAP's xApps are a breed.
Composite applications represent a new kind of application and are seen by many experts as a viable answer to the challenges of an ever-changing business world. These applications are built on top of a company's heterogeneous technology landscape and enable cross-functional business processes, thus crossing traditional, rigid boundaries defined by "hard-coded," specialized business applications. Since composite applications sit on top of existing applications and integrate these, the present software infrastructure of a company can still be used, thus protecting existing investments, even if business practices change. Secondly, by their very nature — think of the service-based approach, for example — these applications are easy to assemble, and thus not only provide flexibility but also minimize programming efforts and costs.
But I just wanted to whet your appetite so I'll stop there and not give away too many details. You can find out more about composite applications in this edition, which is divided into three sections:
- The first section, particularly, the article by Dan Woods on packaged composite applications, introduces the concept of this new breed of applications. Dan Woods has also written a book on this topic.
- The second section provides articles that are more theoretical and highlight the conceptual background of composite applications. Here, I would like to draw your attention to the article by Karen Holtzblatt & Jörg Beringer xApps – A New Practice for Next Practice, the article by Abraham Bernstein on an ontology-based approach to business process redesign, and the article by John Hagel and John Seeley Brown The Agile Dance of Architectures – Reframing IT Enabled Business Opportunities.
- The third section offers articles on the xApp design process at SAP written by Michael Hatscher, a member of SAP's xApps Design Group, and articles on exemplary SAP xApps.
All in all, this new edition on composite applications offers an interesting and exciting mix of innovative concepts and applications that we are sure will appeal to our readers. After all, who doesn't want to cross boundaries and get a taste of innovation?
