Government Computer News
ERP meets SOA
Enterprise resource planning vendors move toward a plug ’n’ play compatibility
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“So if you want to create a new composite application, we’ll give you a Web service-based way at getting at that information.” Michael Grim, SAP
Oracle Corp. is rolling out its Fusion platform, which updates the PeopleSoft HR software with Web services interfaces. Already, its Fusion Middleware allows users to build their own composites, or applications that reuse already-existing functionality in other programs, according to Wayne Bobby, vice president for solutions for finance and administration at Oracle Federal.
Likewise, SAP AG of Waldorf, Germany, has migrated its MySAP ERP software to a new Web services-based platform called Netweaver. It is now exposing all the core functionality as Web services. So far, more than 1,500 functions are available. “We are going to expose every single element of our solution as a Web service,” said David Ditzel, director of public services technology solutions for the company.
In a similar move, CGI Inc. of Montreal has migrated its federal ERP software, called Momentum, to a Java 2 Enterprise Edition-based platform, allowing developers to easily hook their own J2EE applications into CGI’s software, according to Heidi Green, who runs the ERP practice for the company's state and local group.
ERP systems traditionally have been known as large, monolithic applications that tend to be difficult to install, maintain and upgrade. SOA promises to make software more responsive, namely by making it easy to reconfigure functions to meet changing needs. Could these two identities work well together?
A government agency might buy an ERP system “every 10 years or so,” Green said. A component-based approach could allow agencies to add new functionality over time “at a reasonable cost.”
Bits and pieces
In many ways, the federal government has already been trying to simplify ERP deployment by breaking the job into smaller chunks. For instance, when the Social Security Administration wrote the business case for building a new core financial-management system in 2001, it looked toward breaking fiscal duties into discrete functionalities, following Clinger-Cohen Act tenets to mitigate risk, according to Tom Bianco, who manages the Social Security Online Accounting and Reporting System.
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