CRM On Demand Recommended Practices Integration, The Oracle Advantage phần 2 pps

business IT infrastructure. Organizations that have or plan to develop a clear middleware integration strategy are able to maximize their investment by further adopting the following approach:  Define systems that will become the record of source. This does not have to be a system for all records, in many businesses product mastering may be in a different system to customer mastering.  Ensure the most appropriate systems are in control of key data. A CRM system is ideal for managing customer information, but is not a suitable platform for financial account control.  Assemble a Common Object Model – an enterprise wide data model that all application specific data types are transformed into when integration occurs.  Build processes and services such that they support and promote usability such as common error handling escalations etc  Look to standardise on existing assets, for example: out of the box Web Services from the CRM On Demand environment. Quite often the concepts and goals for delivering integration processes are understood. Leading practice books and documentation recommend the common model, abstract approach with consisten transformations and connection technology. However this underestimates the efforts involved. Building a common object model for customer information that supports hierachical relationships and the complexities of CRM data is not a simple project. Oracle/Siebel‟s experience can help in this situation. Our implementation teams and experts have documented reference models available that they can leverage. They have experience and documented transformation mappings that outline how to convert a CRM On Demand customer object for example into an SAP customer object. Just because the incumbent middleware strategy within a customer is not based on Oracle technology, it does not mean we lack the experience or know how on how to achieve enterprise level integration. With over 5000 enterprise implementations based on the Siebel CRM Data Model, (the same model underpinning Oracle CRM On Demand,) the likelihood is that within our global services organization someone has experience of an integration landscape, or value to add in a unique situation. Working collaboratively with customers existing middleware teams and resources, the Oracle CRM On Demand consulting services has approaches and methodologies that have been proven to deliver robust and rapid results leveraging existing middleware. So for many Enterprise organizations, this is an ideal starting position. If the existing middleware environment needs further enhancements to enable its use to be effective and complimentary to the CRM On Demand project goals, then many low cost Industry Standard approaches exist to facilitate this and we discuss some of these in the next section. Complementing Existing Assets with Industry Standards Based Tools There is an emerging trend of simple desktop applications that do specific tasks very well. The more familiar of these include Google‟s Gadgets and Yahoo‟s Widgets. These are simple HTML and JavaScript applications that can be embedded in WebPages, the desktop and other applications. Being built-on industry standard JavaScript libraries makes it easy to create gadgets that include tabs, Flash content, persistent storage, dynamic resizing, and more. Tools such as the Google Gadgets Editor allow you to build and distribute gadgets quickly and easily. Each gadget needs only to be written once, with minor changes it can run in multiple places. Millions of gadget developers exist in the marketplace, testifying to the ease of build, and availability of resource. Analysis of the usage patterns for gadgets show that they are now being used more frequently and are becoming a pervasive part of a user‟s daily computing experience. In the internet space, gadgets are used millions of times a week for many diverse applications attesting to the success of this format. In a business context, gadgets provide a superb vehicle for partners, and internal developers to facilitate corporate data consumption in an easy to use and non- invasive deployment method. Other industry standard approaches for data distribution include RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS is a term that describes a family of standardized web formats used to publish frequently updated data. The most familiar use of RSS is with blogs, news headlines and rich media types. But because the technology is based on the publication of (a „feed‟) a document that can include text, metadata and validity periods its use in data distribution is expanding to include enterprise integration, both within and outside the corporate firewall. RSS is supported by tools that allow rapid and automatic syndication of data and information using recognized industry standards. It also simplifies application design by supporting data aggregation. So rather than having to design an application to support multiple feeds, using RSS, data from multiple sources is automatically combined into a single local source. RSS adopts a strict re-use model by enforcing an industry standard XML format. This strict adherence to standards provides the foundation to publish once and be consumed by many different subscribing systems. RSS feeds are typically read by an "RSS reader," "feed reader," or "aggregator," these are typically web-based or desktop-based applications. Oracle‟s CRM On Demand includes a simple to use layout item that acts as an RSS reader, enabling the aggregation of a number of different RSS sources into the world of CRM. The maturity of RSS standards allows alternative sources to be considered when adopting RSS as a data feed solution. These include middle platforms, web server coding tools such as PHP and dedicated RSS tools such as RSSBUS The emergence and rapid acceptance of Web 2.0 and the association with Ajax as one of the primary enablers is somewhat of a misnomer. Certainly the social aspects of Web 2.0 are not dependant on Ajax. In simple terms Ajax is a programming approach that combines different technologies in order to achieve a level of functionality and interactivity for web applications that had only previously been possible with rich client applications. For example, through the use of Ajax an entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time a user makes a change, resulting in a smooth and interactive experience. Amongst the most popular Ajax usability features are drag & drop, in-browser text editing and zooming capabilities as seen in Google Maps. The technologies that Ajax incorporates include:  XHTML and CSS for standards-based presentation;  The Document Object Model for dynamic display and interaction;  XML and XSLT for data interchange and manipulation;  XMLHttpRequest for asynchronous data retrieval;  Industry Standard JavaScript to binding everything together Based on these rich features, today Ajax can be used to develop rich user interface applets which again can be simply consumed into the CRM On Demand environment. The development and management of standards based components for integration is greatly facilitated by adoption of Integrated Development Environments (IDE) based on the Eclipse software platform. Eclipse is primarily written in Java, and it‟s codebase origins come from the highly respected Visual Age development platform. The IDE provides software developers and administrators a complete environment, with tools and runtime solutions that are highly evolved for adherence to industry standards. In its default form it is meant for Java development, but through an extensibility framework, plug-ins allow many others to be supported. Part of the attraction of Eclipse, is that it is open source and freely available under the terms of the Eclipse Public Licence. This results in significant adoption and familiarity amongst the global developer community. There are a number of vendor specific initiatives which, because of their popularity and pervasiveness are also worthy of inclusion for consideration. These include: Adobe Flex - a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems. Adobe AIR - a cross-operating system runtime that lets developers combine HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash®, and Flex technologies to deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to a desktop and allows developers to use familiar tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver® CS3, Flex® Builder™ 3, Flash CS3 Professional, or any text editor to build their applications and easily deliver a single application installer that works across operating systems. The Oracle Approach Oracle‟s approach adopts the benefits outlined in the „Internal Development Platform‟ whilst supporting all relevant open standards and development environments. Oracle‟s customers can leverage Oracle‟s Business Platform tools to gather and deliver content locally: They use JDeveloper, ADF Components, Faces, and WebCenter for content delivery. They use Oracle Fusion Middleware to distribute data for integration overlaid with an industrial strength business process engine to deliver flexible business processes on top of a common object (consistent) data model. Oracle‟s open standards based platform is designed to work within heterogeneous environments and our Process Management functionality enables you to orchestrate business processes between applications seamlessly. With our Development Tools we provide the capability to consolidate the user experience in key areas to help improve end-user productivity and satisfaction while adhering to industry standards, providing you with the opportunity to staff developers more cost effectively, and productively speed up development time. Application Integration Architecture - The Oracle Advantage As we have discussed earlier, for many companies it can still be a challenge to understand and rationalize business processes that can scale to meet business needs today and over time. Oracle‟s Application Integration Architecture (AIA) removes this challenge by delivering industry best practice reference models. These reference models outline key industry processes and activities that provide a starting point for you to design your process flows. More importantly, these process blueprints are application independent, allowing you to create business processes that can grow and change over time, without worrying about the underlying applications. Customers that want to quickly enable business integration scenarios using industry standards can deploy Oracle‟s innovative Process Integration Packs (PIPs). PIPs are SOA-based, pre-built integrations between best of breed Oracle applications allowing you to quickly implement mission critical processes, like Order to Cash between Siebel CRM and Oracle EBS. These integrations minimize lower level integration work, provide a rapid time to value, and reduce ongoing maintenance costs because of their sustainable nature. Although a PIP may be targeted to integrate between EBS and CRM On Demand, its reference model is a useful starting block to alternative back office platforms and the included Foundation Pack enables strong reusability and business value to be delivered. Oracle‟s AIA strategically moves the integration challenge from a toolkit approach to an application solution approach and moves its perspective from data only to a process level approach. This drives a more appropriate and scalable model for integration knowledge and intellectual property. AIA is built on mature technologies utilizing open standards which together provide an enterprise capable and robust integration environment. Oracle‟s AIA is unique in that it delivers industry best practice integration models to support your key processes. It provides a starting point for you to design your own specific process flows which are application independent, allowing you to create business processes that can grow and change over time without worrying about the underlying applications. AIA quickly enables business integration scenarios by the deployment of Process Integration Packs (PIPs). Its SOA approach allows quick implementation of mission critical processes, (e.g. Lead to Quote) which enables organizations to optimize business performance by quickly deploying industry best practice processes. Other major challenges addressed by AIA include the deployment of a proven Common Object Model (COM). Oracle has identified that it is sometimes difficult to align agreements between stakeholders when creating a bespoke solution. Oracle‟s proven enterprise ready and extensible COM removes one of the key pain points encountered by our customers. AIA elegantly removes the N² mapping complexity issues encountered with point to point integration. It is extensible to meet unique customer requirements; it handles horizontal and industry specific processes and is upgradeable. All issues which custom or bespoke integration development struggles to address. AIA is designed from the outset to support reusability. The integration processes, transformations and common object models all support this requirement, as do the cross referencing and error handling services. An organization‟s real or near-real time integration requirements can be fully met by Oracle AIA, whilst creating a strategic approach for integration and removing significant cost and complexity out of the IT infrastructure. How AIA delivers value to companies With the Application Integration Architecture Oracle is revolutionizing the integration space by maturing the problem from a services and technology solution to one of a pre-built integration application. Just like applications have developed out of tools and build your own environments in the past, Oracle is taking the COTS approach for solutions such as CRM to the integration challenge. The advantage to customers is that AIA delivers integration in a much shorter time to value, enabling organizations to instantly leverage years of intellectual property. The application approach provides a business aligned solution which also then has support for upgrades. From a business process implementation aspect, existing AIA solutions for Oracle CRM On Demand enable you to connect to Oracle EBS and the Siebel On Premise platform, implementing real time data synchronization capabilities. This ensures users are not kept waiting with delays in updates to account, product and pricing information as they traverse systems in the enterprise. Ensuring systems aren‟t out of sync with each other is also key to data mastering requirement of any organization and the Oracle AIA approach addresses this. Clearly not every customer has EBS or Siebel On Premise, but the ability to re-purpose the artifacts that underpin these integrations means that they can still provide value for other integration scenarios. As the AIA product portfolio grows, additional PIPs are on the roadmap including connections to SAP and other similar platforms. If however a company does have EBS, or wishes to combine the power of Oracle CRM On Demand with the Siebel On Premise platform today, or in the future, then it is easy to see how this innovative approach to integration can deliver value. With one approach, Oracle AIA takes away the complexity of coordinating different middleware, applications, database and implementation vendors with this simplified, single vendor solution. Partnering with Oracle for Success Many organizations, strategists and CIO‟s today believe that adopting a Service Oriented Architecture will drastically reduce the costs and challenges associated with integration. At its heart, the strong re-usability model, which is only possible through the enforcement and widespread adoption of easy to use standards, has potential to enable the re- usability of existing assets in a composite manner alongside new solutions unlike any other model of the past. Moving towards the end goal of an SOA environment that is; industrial strength, adaptive and stable, takes an iterative adoption roadmap that delivers value at each step. Integration is not just about SOA though, its about using all the capabilities available in the enterprise to create a holistic data interchange environment that delivers information at the right time to the right place. In order to achieve this, organizations need to follow well defined and proven processes that lead to the ultimate business goals. Oracle‟s, Siebel‟s and now BEA‟s joint knowledge delivers unprecedented expertise and guidance that is available to all our customers. Through joint partnerships, thousands of customers have worked with all three of these leading technology companies, both independently and jointly to deliver success after success in solving the integration and SOA challenge. For Siebel CRM deployments and Oracle CRM On Demand, experience enabled us to develop blueprint methodologies that have been field proven to deliver results and the expected values. It is worth understanding the value of this approach as it applies to the integration challenge: A Blueprint (Redprint) Methodology for Integration Success The first steps of any project are critical, but this is no less important when it comes to integration. You must ensure that as an organization, and working with partners such as Oracle, you develop a baseline understanding of:  Current Integration Processes  Current integration architecture and data synchronization methods  Pain points of current integration methods  Capabilities of the Integration Platform and Pre-built Objects  Requirements for Integration  Supported Integration Servers, processes, transformations etc You also need to identify the needs for any Platform Independent Foundation, those items that will be reused on such a scale, maybe not just within the CRM domain, but across the enterprise, and the parts they will play in the overall solution. This also needs to be assessed alongside the role of any corporate ESB infrastructure and BPEL enterprise initiatives. At this stage it is important to define your vision for the future state of your Business Integration Processes (BIPs). During this process, again you will have a number of aspects that should be taken into consideration:  The future state af any Platform Independent Foundations as part of the enterprise initiative  What will be the foundation for a scalable integration architecture  How you can maximize re-use, both internally to the CRM Project and externally in other systems  Can you leverage any existing Pre-built Common Object Models and/or documented transformations  Do you have a well defined, measurable and documented success criteria If the integration process focus is purely for the CRM project, at all times consideration must be made as to what is required, procedures, approaches, documentation etc, to guarantee a smooth adoption of the proposed solution by in-house Enterprise Integration groups As you start to define your integration processes and functions it is important to have in place a methodology that takes account of these simple facts:  Time and effort for comprehensive requirements analysis is high  Securing key resources to ensure all elements that cover a process are identified can be time consuming  Several moving parts lead to unstable assumptions so have protection checks in place  Exception handling scenarios are easily overlook so ensure your definition process has steps to check these are covered off A best practices approach, and leveraging partners such as Oracle in the definition process will:  Ensure the right resources are dedicated to produce high quality requirements analysis/use cases  Help plan and guarentee the right access to business process owners and subject matter experts  Will provide access to application experts  Share processes and methodologies that tightly define scope and manage change rigorously  Enable the integration definitions to drive and leverage Platform Independent Foundation design documentation and concepts  Create a working framework which includes a special focus on the handling of key challenge areas such as error scenarios Documenting the Definition of Works effectively with targets and measurement plans is key to a successful integration project. Now starts the build and deliver stage, again expect that things will not always be as easy as you expected in the define stage and have contingencies and processes in place that de risk the project and can accommodate them. You will find missing requirements exist from the definition stage and as you develop and construct your solution, field level mapping exercises will account for significant design time. As you solidify your integration framework you will find that changes will need to be made and where these occur to any of your common objects, you will find that the most simplest of changes will have a strong impact on BIP configuration and its testing. As you start to test, you will find errors, expect them and have controlled test cases that will highlight them. Most errors typically appear during BIP connected testing. Other factors for consideration are:  Most Integration Processes logic is dependent on application data. Many issues appear when testing on real production data  Any changes in the edge applications can impact the solution so you need to have plans that control this  Testing necessitates different eyes looking at the solution  The validation stage is too late for end user involvement as changes at that stage are very expensive Again, following best practices and leveraging strong partnerships should ensure you have in place:  A Change Management Process that is well defined and followed religiously  A development approach that recognises that a change in the Integration Framework is usually less expensive than a change in the source and target applications  A project roadmap that ensures the Common Object structure is released and frozen before BIP configuration starts  Plans to perform end to end tests as early and as often as possible using different personel who are rotated to keep observation levels high.  All available Pre-documented Siebel to Platform Independent Foundation transformations so that these can be leveraged to expedite field mapping  A plan that ensures you can perform unit testing by connecting to the actual source and target applications as you should always insist on having real production quality data in the applications Now is the time to check if you have achieved your vision and measurable targets set in the define stage. This is an opportunity to confirm back to the business that the envisioned business results have been achieved. There is a likely hood in some cases that gaps will appear, this is normal in projects where the integration challenges being addressed are substantial, so at this stage the key is to have plans in place that enable you to define any remaining effort required to realize the vision At this stage there is clearly an expectation that your plans and controls have targeted an end goal where you can support and manage the solution according to your business needs, delivering capability and service levels in line with the business expectations. Developing integration is however never an isolated process, needs and opportunities will always arise that present a requirement to optimise the solution. Ensure your methodology has plans in place for continuous improvement, capabilities to evolve and enhance the solution for future business needs. In many cases this is a great opportunity to re- visit areas previously defined as “out of scope” or address new needs identified as the business grows and changes. Finally it‟s good to have goals and targets in place that seek solution improvement opportunities based on performance metrics analysis. The SOA Adoption Model To assume that all one has to be concerned about in driving a successful SOA or integration project is exposing the WSDL, is missing the largest and most challenging part of the problem that companies face today. Many approaches to SOA are uncontrolled and when deployed are failing to deliver on the initial aspirations of the project. Typically the biggest problems companies face as they start to role out on the SOA vision is understanding if all the component parts, the artifacts and supporting technologies and elements that make the service are ultimately going to be easy to consume and reuse. Also, during the development process the magnitude of services being developed escalates rapidly and soon organizations start to ask “are they duplicating on mass rather than normalizing the number of services they are developing?” It is important to ensure that during the development and growth of an SOA environment you not only consider the production side of the work and its associated products (WSDL, best practices, architectural diagrams, components, APIs, etc.) but that you also take into account the business requirements and use cases of the services and how they will all operate together. The problem with many of today‟s SOA developments is that companies have forgotten to remember about the need to manage, distribute and govern the development of the underlying services. Managing your service directory, controlling its development and the ultimate explosion of its use, all has an impact on the architectural components, adapters, legacy system APIs, data views, and other elements that support it. Putting the right management processes in place is vital in order for your SOA initiatives to be successful. Design time asset based governance is a key factor in holding every facet of your SOA environment together and connecting all the disparate stakeholders into a consolidated governance process. Expanding this governance view to include the service producers and consumers completes the story. It‟s key that you have an approach that brings together both the consumers and producers, making sure they are involved at all levels of the governance granularity. Achieving this ensures all needs and requirements are represented and managed effectively by whatever repository/registry and governance solutions you choose. Developing your approach to SOA is typically a journey of increasing maturity overtime, having the right plans in place and methodologies is critical in making sure that your SOA initiative is ultimately successful. Why Oracle, in Summary Oracle is the world‟s largest enterprise software vendor, and for some projects, especially maybe a simple SaaS CRM On Demand solution, some competitors may like to give the impression that you do not need this size of organization. But Oracles real value is that it brings unprecedented strength and expertise to all scales of companies and business problems. Oracle has the strongest product portfolio in the industry, with for example over 43,000 applications customers and nearly six million CRM Users, enabling us to combine thought leadership and unrivaled experience to drive unique CRM vision and leadership. CRM though is not just about the product and its capabilities, it‟s about the technology and how the CRM platform can become an intrinsic element of the corporate ecosystem. Oracle's leading industry technology experience enables the synergies between applications requirements and technology flexibility to be fully exploited. Coupled with this is the recent addition of BEA's industry leading experience, methodologies and tools. Today, Oracle is Number one in Middleware, CRM, Retail, Financial Services, Banking, Enterprise Performance Management and Data Warehousing, to just name a few. Every product developed within Oracle has the opportunity to leverage this market leadership and the strength of the underlying technology platforms below. Each new acquisition brings new opportunities for product enhancement and solution strength. But it‟s not just about products. Each individual consultant within Oracle has at his fingertips a comprehensive library of knowledge and knowhow that grows with each acquisition. This knowledge library can help anyone, no matter the size of the company or application problem, making sure Oracle has the capabilities and experience to tackle any problem and guarantee our customers success. Finally, Oracle has an ecosystem of over 20,000 Partners who not only leverage Oracle's capabilities and expertise but also contribute their own R&D and thought leadership. For the typical SaaS CRM On Demand customer this is an unparalleled opportunity to deal with the combination of some of the most innovative software companies in the industry, but as One Company, One solution and One support desk. It allows CRM On Demand customers to take advantage of a company pivotal in driving Industry Standards and their use, ensuring the flexibility this drives into customer decisions is seen as an advantage for both them and Oracle. This is clearly a very different approach to that taken by other SaaS CRM vendors, who appear to see open standards as a threat to their business growth and therefore deliver solutions based on proprietary platforms designed to lock the customer in. When it comes down to integration with SaaS CRM, fundamentally there are two approaches (External/Internal) for data integration. But once an Enterprise really reviews the considerations, challenges and risks associated and how it makes business sense to leverage as many local assets, technologies and standards based approaches as possible. The decision does typically polarize the choice to one approach, and at that point clearly; Oracle‟s expertise and experience is here and ready to help you deliver the envisioned business value from your project. Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 U.S.A. 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Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. . enterprise implementations based on the Siebel CRM Data Model, (the same model underpinning Oracle CRM On Demand, ) the likelihood is that within our global services organization someone has experience. additional PIPs are on the roadmap including connections to SAP and other similar platforms. If however a company does have EBS, or wishes to combine the power of Oracle CRM On Demand with the. With the Application Integration Architecture Oracle is revolutionizing the integration space by maturing the problem from a services and technology solution to one of a pre-built integration