Tuesday, June 1, 2010

BAAN Announces "Open World": Business-To-Business Collaboration Over The Internet

Today, manufacturing organizations spend more than 35% of their IT budgets integrating disparate systems such as CRM, ERP, and Supply Chain applications. Yet, the level of integration most organizations achieve is a simple point-to-point data exchange which may allow the sharing of customer information between front and back office applications, or batch transfer of supply chain planning information with an ERP System.

Baan is painting a vision of true business to business collaboration over the Internet. In this vision business partners are able to seamlessly share information and collaborate on business processes to achieve new levels of responsiveness to customers and business partners.

"For companies to compete effectively in the emerging business to business Internet economy, integration across the various business domains is an absolute requirement," said Mary Coleman, Chairman and CEO, Baan Company. "As consumer expectations of service and support have changed dramatically with the advent of Internet sales - today customers expect 7 x 24 service, next day delivery and more competitive pricing - Baan believes that the changes brought about by the Internet on B-2-B commerce will be even more dramatic. To compete, manufacturing businesses will need to learn to partner with suppliers and customers to deliver custom configured solutions, while maintaining minimal inventory in reduced timeframes."

Baan OpenWorld is an integration framework built on four tiered levels of exchange:

Data Level: At this first level, applications share or exchange common elements such as customer information, part numbers, and inventory levels. This level of integration includes data migration, replication, and data connectivity.

Application Level: At this second level, applications exchange data in the form of objects at the sub-process level. This includes connectivity between applications and certified integration interfaces for 3rd party applications.

Business Process Level: At this third level, organizations are able to integrate business processes between applications using standards like XML and based on IBM MQ Series or MSMQ messaging queues. At this level, businesses are able to use common process modeling and workflow tools, common user interfaces and business intelligence systems to seamlessly solve multi-functional business problems like Available to Promise, order fulfillment, demand management, etc.

Business Community Level: This top-level of exchange enables true business process collaboration within an enterprise, and across the heterogeneous enterprises of business partners and customers. Adaptable business logic, real-time alerts, and a publish and subscribe communications model will allow organizations to work together, using XML standards-based Internet messaging to react quickly to customer demands.

The first three tiers of the Baan OpenWorld Integration Framework are included in the Baan Enterprise Solutions suite. Beta customers for new products supporting the Business Community level are planned for the first half of 2000.

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