Twin Tigers Come Home

In the picture little sister Charlotte is on the left, as usual snuggling up to her bigger brother Oliver. It doesn’t seem to matter how far apart we set ‘em down, one way or another Charlotte always seems to manage to inch-worm her way over to snuggle up to her bigger brother.

My apologies to clients and vendors for whom I had to cancel and reschedule meetings on short notice — after some paternity time off I’ll be back in the saddle, and in the meantime my wife and I are reveling in our new-found (7/24!) pleasures of parenthood.

The adventure begins!

Cheers,

- bjl

Benoit Lheureux is Research Vice President of Gartner Research and Agenda Manager for the Application Platforms (Middleware) Research Area. His research focuses on application and process integration in multi-enterprise (business-to-business) scenarios. Benoit has 30 years of experience in the IT industry. Prior to Gartner he was a senior architect for BeXcom, helping to design multienterprise collaborative applications. Prior to that he was a senior consulting analyst at NCR Corporation, helping Fortune 50 corporations architect distributed computing solutions as well as to deploy and tune massively parallel database applications. Benoit also did system development on distributed database tools, database gateways, and clustered databases.

Coverage Area

·         SOA and Application Infrastructure Convergence

        o        The role of application infrastructure (Middleware) in SOA projects

        o        How various middleware is converging to support SOA, BPM and ERP

·         Multi-Enterprise (B2B) Integration & Infrastructure

        o        Strategy, technologies, trends and best practices

        o        Integrating packaged applications, trading partners, SI’s & SaaS

·         B2B gateway software vendors

        o        Market segment trends, functionality, vendors, pricing, etc.

        o        Example vendors: Axway, Sterling Commerce and webMethods

·         Integration service providers (evolving EDI VANs)

        o        Market segment trends, functionality, vendors, pricing, SLA’s, etc.

        o        Example vendors: E2open, GXS, Hubspan

Typical questions I answer from IT end-users:

·         What role does middleware play in SOA, BPM and ERP projects?

·         How is various middleware converging, and how do I choose which to use?

·         What factors should I consider in my multi-enterprise integration strategy?

·         Should I run my own B2B integration hub or leverage an evolving VAN?

·         Should I use EDI, AS2, XML, Web Services or FTP in my B2B project?

·         How much does it cost to do B2B integration myself? To outsource it?

·         How are VANs evolving – and what is Integration as a Service (IaaS)?

·         How do I choose between providers of B2B software and services?

·         How do I integration with my SaaS, marketplace or SI provider’s Apps?

·         What are successful strategies for Cloud Computing and SaaS Integration?

Detailed Research Focus

SOA and Application Infrastructure: The research area called “Application Infrastructure” focuses on the platform and integration middleware used to run and integrate applications. The research covers user trends, technologies, product functionality, product deployment, product and vendor selection, as well as return on investment, best practices and strategies for effective product selection and deployment associated with supporting legacy applications, ERP packaged applications, and new (often customer-built) SOA applications.

Multi-Enterprise (B2B) Application Integration: Requirements, trends, standards and technologies, particularly all forms of multi-enterprise infrastructure, i.e., B2B software and B2B services. Vendors I cover include providers of B2B gateway software, e.g., Axway (Cyclone Commerce), Sterling Commerce and webMethods, and providers of integration as a service including evolving EDI VANs (e.g., Sterling Commerce, GXS, Inovis), emerging internet VANs (e.g., Hubspan, ICC and SPS Commerce), industry consortia and marketplaces (e.g., Elemica, Liaison, Railinc) and specialists (e.g., BetweenMarkets, E2open and StrikeIron).

I publish the Gartner Integration Service Provider (Integration as a Service) Magic Quadrant and the B2B Gateway Software Magic Quadrant. I also publish research on these market segments, including decision frameworks for B2B projects (e.g., how to decide between in-house and outsourced B2B projects), vendor selection (what criteria users should use to short-list vendors), negotiating a good contract (e.g., pricing and SLAs), understanding the relevance of innovation on B2B projects (e.g., EDI versus AS2 and Web services), how to increase the value of B2B projects (e.g., self-provisioning, process visibility, data quality and compliance management), and the similarity (and distinction) of SaaS versus Integration as a Service (IaaS).

Adapters (or “connectors”) and Adapter Suites: Software used to implement “point-to-point” integration, to build composite applications, and to “bridge the gap” between integration middleware and application systems and data. This includes adapters for multi-enterprise integration, e.g., RosettaNet, Appliances.

Packaged Integration: Software, comparable to packaged applications, which is an “off the shelf” solution for application integration. In particular this includes packaged integrating processes and packaged composite applications. Various forms of packaged (or pre-configured) integration is increasingly used to facilitate both internal and multi-enterprise integration projects.