PHOENIX -- Hoping to jump start what company officials described as a next generation of supply chain management software, i2 Technologies Inc. announced plans for a new services-oriented architecture and said Microsoft Corp., under a new partnership arrangement, will be a significant provider of the middleware on which the new SOA platform will be built.
Unveiling the initiative -- dubbed the Agile Business Platform -- at i2's Planet user conference here, new CEO Michael McGrath said the SOA platform will enable "enterprise synchronization." Specifically, McGrath said, the Agile Business Platform will enable manufacturers to more easily integrate systems that provide supply and demand management, allowing users to better initiate corrective actions when they see a problem or opportunity in the supply chain. The platform also will allow manufacturers to achieve broader supply chain visibility, including into the operations of their suppliers' suppliers and customers' customers.
And, he said, the platform will allow customers to more quickly deploy just the supply chain software functionality they need.
The Agile Business Platform consists of products -- such as i2's Master Data Management software -- that are already available. In addition, i2 said it will roll out a set of SOA-enabled services that will be shared by individual i2 applications such as Demand Manager and Factory Planner. Those services include some that are already available, such as i2's integration services and Manufacturing Data Model.
They also, however, include four new services: Plan Management, Execution Management, Visibility and Collaboration. By providing those functions as shared services that all of i2's applications can access, the company will not need to build them into each individual application, McGrath said in an interview.
The Agile Business Platform also will include a workflow engine and pre-built, industry-specific workflow software libraries that customers will be able to tap to quickly roll out supply chain solutions such as demand management, supply chain visibility and customer order fulfillment. i2 also will provide a rules-based business programming language and tools that customers can use to write their own workflows or extend those provided by i2.
The Agile Business Platform will be made available with new, upcoming releases of i2's applications, said Pallab Chatterjee, the company's president for solutions operations. i2, however, did not provide a specific timeframe for the rollout of the Agile Business Platform.
Under what i2 called a new "strategic alliance" with Microsoft, the company said its applications and the Agile Business Platform will be ported to Microsoft's .NET middleware stack. In addition, i2 said it has begun work on an effort to develop new user interface software for many of its applications that will be based on Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet software.
i2's Demand Manager and Master Data Management products will be the first to receive the Excel-based user interface by the end of this year, said Chatterjee. Others will follow, he said.
The alliance with Microsoft gives i2 customers the option of deploying supply chain applications on top of Microsoft platforms such as SQL Server, Windows Server 2003, and SharePoint Portal Server that, in many cases, will be less expensive than comparable Web services-based middleware from current i2 partners including IBM and WebMethods.
"The total package from Microsoft will be the lowest cost," said Chatterjee. i2 will continue to offer customers the option of deploying using middleware technology from existing partners such as IBM's DB2 database management system, said Chatterjee. In addition, said Chatterjee, i2 plans to work with Microsoft to enable interoperability between .NET and SAP's NetWeaver SOA middleware technologies.
Manufacturers attending the Planet event were pleased with the initiatives. Chuck Kramer, vice president for information systems development at Payless ShoeSource, for example, told conference attendees his company has been pilot testing the Agile Business Platform since late last year, using it to create what he called an iterative assortment management process. He said the pre-assembled workflows allowed the company to create the application quickly and to easily configure it.
Kramer said the company also is testing the Excel user interface. That technology, he said, has improved application usability, particularly for merchandise buyers who are familiar with Excel.
And even customers who aren't major Microsoft technology users said they had no concerns with i2's closer relationship to the Redmond, WA, software giant. "We're not worried that i2 is about to become a Microsoft-only shop," said John Mallon, director of supply chain management services at ON Semiconductor (Phoenix), which uses Oracle's ERP applications and database along with i2 applications. "i2 tends to go through expansions and contractions regarding the [middleware] stacks they support, but they've been good about maintaining support for the key technologies we need."