Service-oriented-architecture (SOA) initiatives from large enterprise software vendors such as SAP's NetWeaver have, not surprisingly, attracted the lion's share of attention. But software providers targeting mid-range manufacturers are also rapidly recasting their products around service-oriented architectures. Unlike SAP, however, vendors like QAD, Epicor and SSA typically aren't trying to position their SOAs as platforms on top of which customers and other independent software vendors will deploy applications as services. Instead, mid-market providers are focusing their SOAs on more modest-yet important-benefits such as software reuse and integration.
"We're not in the business of building toolsets that others can use to go off and build another application," says Rick Bernard, senior director of solution management at SSA Global in Hyannis, MA. "That's not our core competence, and we don't see a lot of value add for us to go down that path with SOA."
Where SSA and other mid-market providers do see value is in using ervice-oriented-architecture technologies to transform their traditional, monolithic ERP applications into modular, loosely-coupled composite applications that can share and reuse business logic and more easily integrate with other systems.
Mid-market ERP vendor QAD Inc. (Carpinteria, CA) has replaced the proprietary application programming interfaces that have bound together its ERP modules with SOA-compliant Web-services-style interfaces. Called QXtend, the architecture is built on Web services standards such as SOAP and Java Message Service. QXtend also includes transaction and routing managers and data mapping templates that allow core modules in QAD's MFG/PRO ERP package to exchange messages with other MFG/PRO modules or with outside services.
On top of the QXtend architecture, QAD has added a series of what the company calls community services or pieces of software functionality that are shared by all applications. Community services provide common functions such as order management, customer self-service and vendor-managed inventory. QAD's Web services-enabled components run on application servers from third party partners including IBM's WebSphere.
Unlike SAP, says QAD president Pam Lopker, "We're not going to do the infrastructure pieces ourselves. I don't think customers are going to buy into SAP's approach. SAP's ultimate goal is to own the integration infrastructure then to move on to lower-level business services and, ultimately, replace the database."
Like QAD, mid-market ERP supplier Epicor Software Corp. (Irvine, CA) is depending on partners for Web services infrastructure pieces. In Epicor's case that includes Microsoft's (Redmond, WA) Biztalk server as well as Sonic Software Corp.'s (Bedford, MA) enterprise service bus for transaction services and security. Rather than wrapping existing applications with Web services style interfaces, however, Epicor is completely rewriting its Vantage ERP suite as Web services. Epicor is using Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET tools to rewrite the Enterprise suite. Version 8.0 of the applications will include frameworks for exposing all application interfaces as Web services plus an orchestration engine for constructing composite applications.
Microsoft, an increasingly important provider of mid-market ERP products, declined to discuss it's SOA strategy for this article.
Among mid-market ERP providers, SSA Global has perhaps the most to gain from moving to a service-oriented architecture. The company, which has been on an acquisition tear buying nine software companies since 2000, recognizes an SOA built on standard Web services technology could help ease the burden of integrating its expanding application portfolio and allowing different applications to reuse common services. But, according to Bernard, "Given all the acquisition, it's been a bit of a challenge," for SSA to roll out and implement a comprehensive SOA strategy.
So far, Bernard says, SSA has elected not to rearchitect any of its existing applications around SOA and Web services. Instead, the company has begun using Web services tools for all new development and, as of last fall, has begun rolling out services-style software modules that can be shared by different SSA applications. So far, he adds, SSA's Baan and BPCS applications have been the first to make extensive use of those common services that cover functionality such as user authentication and workflow.
So far, Bernard admits, SSA has been the primary beneficiary of the SOA strategy because, by reusing shared services, it is able to leverage software development investments across multiple product lines. Eventually, however, users also will benefit, says Bernard.
"If it's lower total cost of ownership for SSA, there's eventually a TCO benefit for the customer," says Bernard.