Check this earlier post:
exchange2000.com
Also, here is some information about IBM's San Francisco project. They make some bold claims about ERP apps that will be based on it. This comes from Computergram (http://www.computerwire.com) who publish a daily news briefing. They are based in the UK so there is a bit of European slant.
"+ COULD IBM'S SAN FRANCISCO SQUEEZE THE LIFE OUT OF SAP?
For a few years at the beginning of the 1990s, many people
thought the applications software industry was on the brink of
a far-reaching revolution. Objects and interlinked collections
of objects called frameworks were going to replace packages.
They would arrive down the wire, perhaps metered by the minute,
as bundles of data and logic, and could be plugged into each
other effortlessly to create new applications. No one was more
interested in this revolution than IBM. With Apple Computer Inc
and Hewlett-Packard Co, it created Taligent, a company
initially set up to build an object-oriented operating system
that would support applications built in this way. When
Taligent was folded in 1995, it seemed the whole ideal was
dead. But many of the Taligent engineers moved up to IBM's
AS/400 base in Rochester, Minnesota, and began working on a
project called Shareable Frameworks, or SF a title that later
became San Francisco (CI No 2,850). The goal is to produce
frameworks, or components, that can be plugged together to
create powerful, flexible enterprise business applications
products that might be complex enough to rival the big ERP
packages such as SAP R/3 or Baan. The project is now
multi-platform, spanning Unix, Microsoft NT, AS/400 and
mainframe systems. The fortunes of the San Francisco project
were boosted by the adoption of Java, the fashionable
object-oriented and internet-friendly programming environment.
IBM does not plan to enter the applications business, but to
work with partners that use San Francisco components to build
applications. Joe Damasso, San Francisco project director of
marketing, says IBM has three goals: to promote the use of
Java, which it sees as important in electronic business; to
promote the adoption of e- commerce using IBM systems; and to
build a business providing the application components, for
which IBM will charge a royalty."
Objects versus APIs
But why is this likely to appeal to the ERP software industry,
where customers buy familiar packages, and where smaller
software companies and services companies can make a living
implementing or developing add-ons around the big packages? The
main reason is that if true object-oriented technology is used
rather than mere blocks of function, the software will be more
flexible, easier to maintain, and more interoperable. For
software partners, there is a big opportunity: they can offer
customers quick, flexible, customized implementations. Damasso
says IBM has finally got it right with San Francisco after
earlier failures with object technology. "[Before] components
were too small. They were not prebuilt walls, rather a bag of
cement," he says. The San Francisco components are not like the
components of, for example, Baan or SAP R/3. Those are really
blocks of function linked through an application programming
interface (API). San Francisco objects have the technical
characteristics of, for example, persistence and inheritance,
which means they can be re-used and tightly linked without
major programming. So far, 350 companies have signed up to the
San Francisco licensing agreement, although this does not
oblige them to develop products. Some influential software
tools suppliers are also working with IBM on San Francisco,
including Select Software Tools Ltd, Inprise Inc (aka Borland)
and Rational Software Corp. The project is now delivering its
first fruits. Objects and frameworks are being assembled into
'towers' which can be licensed by third parties. Among the
towers that are complete or almost complete are: general
ledger; accounts payable; accounts receivable; sales order
management and warehouse management. Some partners are
enthusiastic and have already begun projects with San
Francisco- based technology. The first was Camelot, of
Cambridge, Massachusetts, run by former-SAP AG executives,
which is developing supply chain management software. It
already has two or three corporate customers building big object
based applications. Damasso's view is that the ERP business is
about to change fundamentally: "At the moment there is
exceptional growth at SAP, but that will slow and new start-ups
based on SF will grow faster." |
