Great Expectations, Part 2

Creating a coherent, farsighted action plan is a critical step in any Internet technology initiative

By Tulu Tanrikorur

In Part 1 of this article (Aug. 10, 2001), I explained why having a sound e-business strategy is just a prerequisite, not the final answer, for creating competitive advantage using Internet technologies.

I also stressed the importance of managing Internet technology at the enterprise level. This need becomes even more critical for corporations that are likely to be involved in multiple, complementary e-business initiatives. If not managed carefully, the technology choices necessary for implementing these initiatives will often be made by multiple corporate managers with little or no coordination, resulting in incompatible point solutions with large integration problems. This outcome is common even in technology-savvy companies.

In this article, I'll offer an action plan that can help you avoid this result by effectively deploying Internet-based solutions on an enterprise scale.

INTERNET TECHNOLOGY FRAMEWORK

Creating an Internet technology framework is a useful way to begin this challenge. It categorizes Internet technologies into three layers - network infrastructure, software infrastructure, and application services - in order to clarify their respective capabilities. (See Figure 1.)

Network Infrastructure. This layer focuses on network architecture and related technologies. Each of these devices/systems play a different role in providing network connectivity to the organization. The choices that the technical architect makes in the overall system design directly affects your site's security and performance. Depending on the location and configuration of your firewalls, Web servers, and intrusion detection systems, you will have varying degrees of protection from the outside world.

You should carefully plan the interdependencies between network devices. For example, if a virtual private network (VPN) server is employed, your firewall should also support VPN protocols in order to accept those requests. Although it is possible for a single device to combine multiple network services into one unit (such as firewalls with VPN services, routers with voiceover IP ports, and so on), each combination has its own limitations. Furthermore, while network switches and routers control the Internet traffic between the network nodes, other systems (such as load balancers, cache servers, Web content switches, and fail-over solutions) improve site performance and availability.

When many of these networking devices are working together, the need to monitor them easily from a single interface becomes self-evident. This goal is attainable, for example, if your network devices support a management protocol standards, such as simple network management protocol (SNMP), using network management tools.

The key point here is that your network infrastructure, as a core building block, should support all your applications. For that reason, you can't make network technology choices in isolation from your e-business initiatives. Rather, you need to establish clear direction about what standards to support and vendors to select. In the absence of such direction, purchasing decisions will tend to be made from multiple vendors, possibly each supporting different interfaces or protocols. Subsequently, managing such a network will be a nightmare.

Therefore, narrowing down the number of your strategic network vendors - because it will be easier to configure and support a network when the systems are acquired either from the same vendor or few vendors that support your standards - is a good idea.

Keep in mind that while it is possible to outsource your network infrastructure (or parts of it), you should make that decision very carefully by analyzing costs, quality of service, security, performance, and expected benefits.

Software infrastructure. This layer focuses on software characteristics that are inherently built into the applications. They reveal the main software design decisions to implement domain-specific functionality.

It is not uncommon to see companies create a short-term solution and then tear it apart and replace it with another one in a year or two because the underlying technology choices have limited any chance of reusability, a common phenomenon in start-ups and corporate spin-offs.

In order to leverage the work that was done before, it helps to have a common underlying application technology. For e-business initiatives, that compatibility starts at the software infrastructure layer.

Although it is possible to integrate Internet applications designed using different architectural approaches (Java, CORBA, or COM+, for example), the cost and complexity of building and maintaining such systems increases dramatically with new business requirements. The goal should be to minimize the incompatible technology choices across a number of packages for present as well as future solutions. But this goal is achievable only if you establish an overall enterprise direction for software infrastructure.

Even if your company's existing back-office systems run on multiple, disparate systems, you should base new e-initiatives on Internet technologies because they reflect the most open and flexible approach to application design and development. Accordingly, you can maintain back-office system functionality using middleware solutions, packaged adapters, or object "wrappers."