Sterling Commerce this week made available the first two of a series of packaged composite applications (PCAs) aimed at retailers, their suppliers and companies that distribute their products.
"We believe we are the first in the software industry to introduce a packaged composite application," said Scott Pulsipher, vice president of product management at Sterling, in an interview.
Sterling's PCAs extract logic from two or more existing systems or applications within a services-oriented architecture (SOA) to form a new application without having to start from scratch. Composite applications automate specific business processes, such as order management or fulfillment, the Columbus, OH company said.
"Composite apps bring functionality from different sources into a single application," Pulsipher explained.
The distinction with Sterling's new packaged composite applications, he continued, is they arrive preconfigured with 60% to 70% of the needed functionality rather than requiring a great deal of custom programming work, as a non-packaged composite app theoretically would.
"It minimizes the implementation work the customer has to do," he said, though he acknowledged it would be impossible to fully eliminate the need for customization, as each business has its own way of doing things.
Think of a composite application as a set of Lego blocks that companies assemble to create composite applications. With Sterling's new PCAs, those blocks arrive neatly snapped together to create two applications, one for customer order management (called Customer Order Management PCA) and the other for network-to-warehouse management (called nWMS-Distribution PCA).
Though companies can always custom-configure certain processes in the overall application, much the way children might add a few blocks to a pre-built Lego tower, these PCAs are ready for use without any customization, according to Pulsipher. "You don't have to add anything. Just load the item data, set up the users and go. [These PCAs give you a] production-ready environment."
The SOA removes the heavy-lifting of data integration, using business process definitions to bring together the snippets of application logic that join to create a composite application. The Sterling PCAs comes with some links to disparate data sources (such as ERP and WMS applications) built in, he added, and Sterling will continue to add those "standard integrations" over time.
Sterling is on the right track with its PCA approach, though its claim to be the first to market may be more marketing talk than reality, noted Judith Hurwitz, president and CEO of Hurwitz and Associates, a Waltham, MA market research firm. "They have created a modular architecture with clearly defined interfaces that allow you to connect in other applications to create a composite application. It's really good they are doing that but I don't think it's unique," Hurwitz pointed out.
SAP, for example, has been working recently to "componentize" its applications so companies can put together modules of code that perform specific functions.
Still, Sterling is hoping for a first-mover PCA advantage over giants like SAP. "We see competitors like SAP positioning themselves to enable more of this functionality. We believe we're already there," said Pulsipher. "We're helping customers pursue new strategic initiatives in how they make and sell and fulfill products and services."
It is no surprise Sterling has chosen to focus on retail with its first PCA offerings. Sterling, a subsidiary of SBC Communications Inc., has a history of retail industry domain expertise, as does Yantra Corp., upon whose technology the new PCAs are based. (Sterling acquired Yantra last December.)
The customer order management PCA is targeted at consumer-direct retail processes that affect retailers, distributors and the manufacturers that supply them. Though every retailer does things a bit differently, there are some standard processes that reflect the most efficient way to source and fulfill orders. The Customer Order Management PCA encompasses those practices while still accommodating variability.
The nWMS-Distribution PCA is aimed at the distribution operations of wholesale manufacturers who are shipping finished goods into the retail environment. This PCA could be useful to consumer packaged goods manufacturers and wholesale distributors, according to Pulsipher. The PCA can handle different facility types, such as those that do large-palette shipping or those that add special services (such as gift-wrapping) and ship in small quantities direct to the consumer.
Sterling will have one or two more PCAs on the market by the end of the year, according to Pulsipher, with more early next year. The Sterling PCAs will all fit into the categories of multi-channel customer order management, store/branch operations, WMS for distribution and supplier-facing processes. Pulsipher said some customers are already using or evaluating Sterling's PCAs but declined to identify them.