In many companies, the information systems with the longest lifetime are the central applications handling the core business. Typical examples are central applications of financial service providers such as banking and brokerage systems or booking systems for flight tickets, telecommunication applications, etc. Usually these dedicated systems have been established with considerable financial effort and provide the technical backbone for the companies business. For this reason, the availability and stability of these systems have top priority. Grave modifications or even a replacement by new systems does not only raise enormous technical and organisational problems but constitutes a considerable business risk.

Standard-compliant interfaces as a factor of success

Systems which have not been designed for online operation in the internet usually do not provide interfaces to a direct exchange of data with other applications. If such interfaces exist in individual situations, they are often proprietary solutions; there is usually no support for platform-independent standards. Therefore exchanging data with other systems has to be achieved with inefficient methods or even manually leading to high running costs, losses of time and a higher probability of errors. Because data from such systems is usually needed frequently and in large amounts, this results in a bottleneck which has a lasting negative effect on the efficiency of the business processes.

Web Enabling means removing these barriers and making the affected systems accessible for a broad range of users by creating standardised interfaces to the internet/intranet.

Improved efficiency by 3-tier architectures

In order to offer internet services that are based on already existing systems an infrastructure has to be established which does not only meet the requirements of the Web but also allows a cost-effective integration of existing systems. These conditions are met by a so-called 3-tier architecture.

These architecture consists of:

• the frontend which provides the interface to the customer,
• the business logic where the business processes are implemented,
• the backend which comprises the existing legacy systems and the data storage.

Modern standard technologies enable broad access

A typical feature of Web Enabling is to display the user interface via the user's web browser eliminating the need for special software on the user's side. J2EE-compliant application servers which provide standard services (e.g. for persistence, clustering, monitoring) are used as a technological basis to accelerate the technical realisation. The specific business logic is realised using component-based technologies such as Java-EJB. The utilization of XML provides a simple way for the definition of platform-independent data exchange formats which can be easily processed with XML/XSLT tools that are widely available at the market. For the communication with the backend systems to be integrated, special wrapper components are implemented which provide a standard-compliant and commonly usable interface to the corresponding systems. This does not only warrant access to an application via internet/intranet but also provides a future safe interface for the exchange of data with systems to be built.

Higher profitability through Web Enabling

Web Enabling allows to leverage existing applications more efficiently while saving the investments which have been made in the existing IT infrastructure. The effort to enable the application for the internet/intranet is exceeded by the cost savings that can be realised. When offering the application as a service in the internet there is the additional chance to attract new users and generate additional revenues. Thus it becomes obvious that Web Enabling does not only provide an opportunity to save costs but also offers a chance to extend the company's service offerings to new business areas.