| Businesses has been transforming themselves into 'e-businesses, a term that describes organisations who are using the Internet for business interaction. The transition from business to e-business has been described as turning 'employee-facing' applications into 'market-facing' applications. These critical, market-centric systems are known as Extranets.
But what makes an extraordinary Extranet?
1.THEY SPEAK 'USER'
Instead of simply exporting an existing application over the Internet, an Extranet should offer your users the information they need, in a format they want. Data abstraction and business logic not only provide the flexibility to fix existing enterprise data to any user interface but to create information that may not exist in your corporate systems.
2.ALL APPLICATIONS MUST SHARE THE SAME INFORMATION
In order to work with live data from anywhere in the enterprise, Extranets must be integrated with other enterprise systems and processes. This integration requires an adaptable technology framework to manage access to multiple data sources and bring all the resulting information in a common format.
3.DON'T JUST PROTECT INVESTMENTS, LEVERAGE THEM
An adaptable integration framework allows Extranet information to be sourced from, and posted back into, existing information systems, ensuring accuracy and integrity across the Extranet and the enterprise, as well as speeding up developments and time-to-market cycles.
4.INVEST IN ADDING VALUE
Focus your development costs - not on creating and supporting a management intensive, low level application infrastructure, but on creating applications, in an adaptable framework, that adds value to the business. An adaptable integration framework not only complements and becomes part of the infrastructure, but high-level data abstraction lets business analysts focus on creating outstanding Extranet applications.
5.THE ONLY CONSTANT IS CHANGE
Adding new functions or new data sources, modifying applications and integrating with other business procedures keeps your Extranet relevant to your business. The key is re-usable abstract data components, which allow changes to be made only once and then propagated to every Extranet application that uses them.
6.RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY, SCALABILITY
A well tested, robust Extranet application framework that executes much of the application infrastructure and runs components on demand only is the basis of a solid, yet scalable Extranet application
7.SECURITY
With a combination of technology and risk management techniques, users are authenticated, access to resources is controlled and transactions are safeguarded. A solid Extranet application framework will work seamlessly with your preferred security measures. |