Seeking simplicity

Mario Andretti he's not, but Eliot Solomon has been speeding around the e-commerce fast track longer and faster than just about any other dot-com executive out there.

As the vice president and a distinguished technologist at the Securities Industry Automation Corp., in Brooklyn, N.Y., Solomon heads an organization that builds, maintains and operates some of the largest networks and systems in the world—the trading systems used by the New York and American stock exchanges. Not only has SIAC been enabling e-business a lot longer than anyone else, the company has been doing it over a diverse range of networking and system architectures—everything from mainframes linked via SNA to Unix servers running on TCP/IP networks.

As the pace of e-business accelerates, however, supporting all of that architectural diversity is getting tough, so Solomon has begun to seek simplicity. He is examining the idea of one type of network architecture, where all systems share a common set of services, such as security, authentication and system management.

He's beginning by unifying disparate network and system components and integrating Web-based technology into SIAC's core legacy back-end systems. Right now, for example, he's blending into SIAC's core trading-floor networks Web technologies that will allow traders to check quotes and communicate with customers on the outside.

These days, more and more IT managers are discovering that, in the age of pedal-to-the-metal e-business, architectural complexity doesn't work. Historically, many organizations have, like SIAC, created multiple networks, each with its own firewall and security system. To get e-business efforts off the ground, for example, many enterprises ended up supporting two network architectures: a legacy network supporting internal processes—finance, inventory management, etc.—and another for extranet operations that link to customers, suppliers and partners. However, that kind of complexity makes it difficult for companies to transform themselves into e-businesses. Multiple layers of security and authentication, for example, make it all but impossible to open inventory and other back-end systems to customers, partners and suppliers online. And maintaining all that architectural complexity is becoming increasingly expensive, IT managers say.

So, like Solomon, many organizations are seeking to simplify. They're trying to build unified IT architectures that provide common, enterprisewide security, authentication and data exchange services using Web-oriented technologies such as LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), metadirectories, XML (Extensible Markup Language), the CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) distributed object framework, PKI (public-key infrastructure) security and authentication schemes (see chart, Page 74.) That means giving users—whether employees, customers or partners—a single way to get to corporate information. And it means a single, less expensive approach to system management.

There are still plenty of roadblocks between enterprises and unified architectural simplicity. Standards such as LDAP, XML and PKI must be more completely defined and implemented in products. Many IT managers also admit that they still have concerns about security, concerns that loom large as they contemplate building simpler, unified architectures. And, as some IT managers are finding, business managers can become impatient with the expense and time it takes. For those reasons, the simpler, unified architecture is still a few years off for most companies. However, according to experts, many are moving in that direction.

"From a trend standpoint, we've seen a number of companies who've begun the process of collapsing and standardizing their architectures," said Andrew Kelemen, an analyst with CNS Group, in Norwalk, Conn. "All of a sudden comes this blurring of the lines between intranets and extranets."

Shifting investments

One such organization is Franklin Covey Co., a Salt Lake City-based provider of management tools and professional services. Eighteen months ago, Franklin Covey CIO Niel Nickolaisen decided to stop investing in the company's internal network architecture—a combination of Windows NT and Unix systems—and instead direct spending to Web-based applications that would enable his organization and its partners to more easily tap into disparate information over the Internet.

Nickolaisen sat down with his retail point-of-sale software provider, Tomax Technology Inc., also of Salt Lake City. Tomax understood the benefits of converging retail applications and the Internet architecture and agreed to develop a Java-enabled version of its system that would take advantage of the distributed intranet infrastructure. Using that version, running on his CORBA-based Internet architecture, Nickolaisen's plan is to be able to deploy a system that lets various parts of his organization tap into the same, up-to-date customer information.

From a browser, for example, Franklin Covey call center reps can tap into customer purchase history records, and suppliers can access their sales history information. By connecting and integrating with customers and suppliers over the Web, Nickolaisen said, his IT department can move away from constantly integrating applications and work on developing tools that provide value to the company.

"I put the current network into maintenance mode and decided that all investments, projects and initiatives would be built on an Internet infrastructure that we can leverage in the future," he said. "Single-point management would be ideal. Ideally, it wouldn't matter what format the data is in. It could be standardized and subscribed to by everybody who needed that data."

As more packaged applications become Java- and CORBA-enabled, Nickolaisen said he would like to use them to connect his current legacy systems to exchange information.

Since, like Franklin Covey, most enterprises aren't prepared to throw out the networks, directories and firewalls they already have in place, many will start by building Web-oriented technologies into current networks and legacy systems, experts say.

Many large enterprises, in fact, are beginning to apply increased pressure to get vendors to support such cross-platform standards.

Some vendors are taking note of IT managers' desires for simple, unified architectures based on Web technologies that can run across multiple platforms. Companies such as Entrust Technologies Inc., Netscape Communications Corp. and Novell Inc. have touted versions of key services that will run on a number of operating systems. Entrust's PKI products, for example, can work with directory services from Netscape, Novell and a variety of vendors via LDAP.

"The maturity of newer technologies will have to happen before enterprises fully deploy such an infrastructure," CNS Group's Kelemen said. "But as users begin to push for this infrastructure, they will in turn push vendors to adopt standards by requiring compatibility, integration and support."

At Duke Energy Corp., in Charlotte, N.C., for example, Bruce Anderson, the manager of technology planning and application services, has a goal of standardizing on a network architecture capable of handling both intranet and extranet capabilities. Anderson knows, however, that such a move will not happen overnight. That's because at Duke there is already a legacy environment that operates effectively. The company is running a complex network that includes a number of platforms, including Oracle Corp.'s manufacturing software running on Unix and some IBM mainframe applications running DB2. Duke also has a couple of hundred EDI (electronic data interchange) connections in place. The company won't be replacing those systems any time soon.

A single network

In building a new intranet architecture, Anderson is using tools that will allow him to eventually move to a single network infrastructure. He is currently implementing XML where possible, with an eye toward replacing some EDI connections when business partners are ready. He's also deploying directory services in various parts of his intranet in an effort to build an architecture that will eventually allow him to increase reliability and accessibility while lowering support costs.

"Everyone is trying to provide the most value to their customers," Anderson said. "One of our IT principles is to really try to leverage a single data network. That does not mean that it's either one physical standard or nothing at all; it means that there are certain physical characteristics users from inside and outside of the company will be able to see [that] will be standardized."

But why change something that already works? Anderson said the cost benefits of a more unified network architecture are too high to overlook. Staff and training expenses alone could be trimmed significantly if Duke could deploy unified, centrally managed architectures, he said.

So, Anderson is leveraging what he's learned from building business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce applications to rebuild his internal network infrastructure.

Duke, for example, has already built Web-based call center applications that handle calls during disaster situations anywhere in the world. The company has learned how to use directory services and other Web technologies to make those systems scalable and reliable. Now, Anderson said, Duke will use that experience and some of the same technologies to enhance its intranet, which supports 25,000 employees worldwide. Anderson and Duke employees are evaluating metadirectories, certificates and PKI in a lab environment.

"Using an extranet application like our call center allows us to see how we can build a stable intranet accessible on a worldwide scope that is not only scalable but also reliable," Anderson said.

Political risks

However, focusing resources on creating a simplified, unified IT architecture can carry poli