Getting old IT systems to talk

Evolution favors diversity.

In nature, uniformity can be dangerous. A single viral infection, for example, could cause the wholesale extinction of uniform organisms that are also uniformly non-resistant.

The same could be said of information systems. Even with the globalization of trade and the increasing standardization of business processes, homogeneity is not necessarily an easy goal to achieve. Nor might it even be wise.

"People have different ways of doing business," said John Wood, chairman and chief executive officer of Enterworks, Inc., a US-based company that, in a nutshell, provides the framework that integrates disparate systems without having to break them down to the core.

"Why should they be forced to change when it is possible for them not to?," Wood asked. He said it would cost less and take less time to design and create the framework to bridge this gap. This way, a company that has an existing system need not junk what it already has and still be able to interface with other systems in the marketplace.

Philippine operation

Although its headquarters is based in Virginia, over 20 percent of its development work is done in the Philippines where it employs over 50 people, about 30 of whom are top-caliber programmers and systems designers.

"We do not look at the Philippines as a source of cheap labor," Wood pointed out. "We consider it as high-value labor. What we are creating in the Philippines is a technical powerhouse that would give us the foothold we need in the Asia-Pacific region."

Enterworks’ Philippine operation started out as a testing facility. Today, it does technical and development work. The Philippines is also regional hub for sales and marketing.

Enterworks’ first major project was for the US Army right after the "Desert Storm" campaign in the early 1990s. The army had various existing systems that handled information in different ways, some of them so old that they were unable to communicate with other systems.

"What we did was write the framework that integrated these systems. These systems gave our client access to all the information they wanted and to create applications that made this information useful," Wood explained.

Enterworks soon realized the problem of the US Army was also the same problem many corporations faced. Many banks, for instance, developed proprietary systems in the early days of computerization which cannot communicate with newer systems.

"Our main competitors are not really the big software providers but the homegrown system that in-house programmers write themselves," Wood said.

Easier for clients

With Enterworks’ content integrator, clients can develop applications that utilize the vast reserves of data made available through a unifying system.

Applied to electronic commerce, Enterworks becomes a process integrator that unifies various business processes.

"For example, different companies have different ways of documenting purchase orders or purchase requests," Wood explained. "Participating in a marketplace that has embedded our process integrator allows them to continue doing business the way they have always done it and still be able to participate in the market."

More important, the integrator also allows real time views of content integrated from various data sources. This means that when a buyer purchases something from an online source, he will be able to see an account of available stock updated in real time.

This is critical in making sure that online transactions do not break down from the failure of the website to track and update its information in real time. It also allows both buyer and supplier to track the actual process – from the moment a product is ordered to when it is packed for delivery, is in transit and is actually delivered.

The Enterworks application can also be packaged for specific uses. For example, Sterling Commerce has enhanced the Enterworks application to meet the specific requirements of the pharmaceutical industry.

"We have made the template so our clients need not write long codes to be able to use the product," Wood explained. "We have used the same drag and drop approach; the software is icon-driven."

Since the world has not yet awakened one day and decided to computerize everything using one uniform system, Enterworks clearly is developing its small but critical niche in the IT business.