Middleware Begets New Business Process

There was a simpler time when hitching legacy systems to retrieve data and send it elsewhere for reporting or analysis was the business of message-oriented middleware. "In the days of mainframes and dumb terminals, middleware had no smart auto routing or other functions; it was purely transport oriented," says TowerGroup analyst Dushyant Shahrawat based in Needham, Mass. With the advent of client-server architecture arrived more advanced requirements. "To get to the intelligence on the desktop, you needed application-oriented middleware that could communicate with several layers of proprietary code," recalls Shahrawat. Because computer processing was comparatively slower then, the best way to retrieve and convert desktop data was to write "one-off" types of conversion code, explains Garland Duvall, vice-president of product development for Brokat Technologies, who is based in Atlanta. "It was like a spaghetti network of point-to-point connections. It wasn't particularly elegant," agrees Nina Castro Owens of those days. A senior manager in the financial services area with Cap Gemini, New York City, Castro Owens notes that middleware vendors developed conversion specialties and used well-documented inputs and outputs, otherwise known as application platform interfaces (APIs). User centric computing Several years -- and techno-leaps -- forward, we've gotten middleware based on standards. Moreover, interfaces to the middleware are becoming rules-oriented. So, without programmers, business users can more easily interact with systems to download reports or even alter how they route data. "The big boon of today's middleware is that it supports computing that is centered around user needs," says Brokat's Duvall. "The idea is that you can have one desktop with a web interface that gives somebody access to several specialty systems." Middleware, according to Duvall, is behind the bringing of applications and data together in inventive ways. New wave connections are deployed in either Java, Micro.Net, or the now "older" CORBA-based languages. Also more prevalent is the use open source code--which can be thought of as nonproprietary, well-documented code needed to perform primary computing functions, says Dave Mele, vice-president of marketing at Great Bridge, Norfolk, Va. His company provides PostGRE SQL open source code for databases, which was derived from code developed at the University of California at Berkeley and a Computer Associates version of the code called InGres SQL back in the 1980s. Mele says other open source options, namely the far younger Linux, have gotten even the most traditionally minded thinking a bit differently about architecture. "Instead of paying a licensing fee for more expensive, 'name brand' systems, banks are considering alternatives that can drive down costs and speed up development times. Objects also litter the IT landscape. These self-contained collections of reusable business code to do specific tasks greatly simplify programming. Meanwhile, more newly minted approaches such as peer-to-peer links (see ABABJ June 2001, p. 56) using SOAP-based protocols represent the cutting edge of connection, especially in the brokerage industry. Other new languages like XML are used for standardized retrieval of business reporting information. New business process User-centric computing is certainly one happy result of middleware as deployed in some leading institutions. But at the most fundamental level, ultra modern middleware is all about making a siloed business conform more to customer behavior and expectation. What truly represents the next frontier, according to Shahrawat, Castro Owens, and others, is middleware virile enough to support workflow re-engineering for better customer service and collaboration with business partners. "What you need to be able to do is cut across silos, lift data wherever it resides--then, manipulate it before sending it to support some new business process," explains Tom Richards, research director for CRM practice at Meridien Research, Newton, Mass. …