Overview of Enterprise Computing: The Business View

Agenda What is an enterprise? What constitutes an enterprise? What drives an enterprise? How does an enterprise meet its goals? What is enterprise computing (EC)? What is the nature of an EC environment? What are key enterprise development roles? What makes a good enterprise application?

An Enterprise is... any organization with set goals Mexican Manufacturing Asian Manufacturing Asian Engineering Asian Warehousing Australian Warehousing U.S. Engineering North American Warehousing South American Warehousing African Warehousing Finance Headquarters Sales & Marketing

An Enterprise is... its physical, human, corporate and intangible resources/assets Physical: Buildings, land, equipment, etc. Human/corporate: Employees, customers, partners, etc. Intangible: Patents, processes, trade secrets, good will, data, knowledge, etc.

Enterprise Goals Make and save money –Grow and expand operations –Grow and expand human/inter-enterprise associations –Share information throughout enterprise –Leverage existing infrastructure Manage change and risk –respond to customers, technology, climate

Activities that Support Goals Preserving resources/assets Durability/Maintenance Protecting/granting accessibility to resources/assets Security Growing/expanding resources/assets Development Improving efficiencies Performance/Scalability Detecting and responding to changes Flexibility

Enterprise Computing (EC) “Enterprise computing involves the development, deployment and maintenance of the information systems required for survival and success in today’s business climate.” Yen-Ping Shan & Ralph H. Earle, Enterprise Computing with Objects, Addison-Wesley, 1998.

EC Environment computers are typically dispersed over a wide area old (“legacy”) applications need to be used/maintained very large databases (e.g., tens of databases (DB), hundreds of tables per DB, thousands to millions of records per table) hundreds to thousands/millions of clients heterogeneous computers, client devices, networks, applications constantly-changing business requirements mission-critical applications requires reliability and performance

Handling Complexity Planning and Architecting Analyzing and Organizing Measuring/Tracking and Adjusting/Tuning Reusing Reviewing and Reiterating Applying Object-Oriented Principles

Enterprise Developer Roles Architect overall design and integration with environment Application domain expert imparts knowledge of domain: business logic Application assembler assembles and tests components of application Deployer distributes, tailors and configures application System administrator manages development, deployment and production environments

Enterprise Application Qualities extensible -- allows for future changes with minimal impact scalable -- gracefully handles expansion/contraction in number of clients usable/reliable -- functions as advertised, including error-handling available -- can be used whenever needed configurable -- can be adapted to diverse environments deployable -- can be easily distributed to users durable -- necessary information lasts/persists over time efficient/responsive -- uses minimal resources/performs well for clients unobtrusive -- doesn’t get in the way of getting things done secure -- only authorized clients can access reusable -- many parts can be reused rather than re-created maintainable -- can be fixed with minimal impact timely -- is ready to use productively during window of opportunity