PROBLEM: After the rapid rate of change in business technology over the last ten years, many businesses and organizations find themselves with a hodge-podge of databases and applications that work only in isolation. They were purchased or designed to address a pressing need of the moment, often with little thought given to integrating these systems with the existing infrastructure.
Unfortunately, every new application brings with it new access points that must be secured to prevent malicious attacks or the accidental leak of sensitive information. For applications that communicate with other applications, an intrusion in one system means every system with which it communicates is also vulnerable. Integrating and subsequently securing applications in such an environment can feel like more trouble than it is worth, especially for smaller businesses with fewer IT resources.
Likewise, replacing existing applications and data platforms with newer, more secure technologies can be prohibitively expensive. While retail software can solve some problems for those on a budget, they are frequently too restrictive in their feature set and may still require an expensive migration to be a feasible solution.
Meanwhile, the expectations of users and customers have grown to voracious proportions thanks to the ubiquity of the web. It is becoming truer with each passing year that to compete in business means to make your products or services available online.
SOLUTION: As it does so often, however, technology eventually provides solutions for the problems it creates. Recent trends have seen movement in favor of standardized communication methods and centralized security services.
In addition, an enlightened, incremental approach to the replacement and integration of legacy applications and databases can be used to keep even small businesses from falling behind the curve:
- Efficiency -- No one likes to deal with piles of paper unless there is no other way. A web-based solution not only streamlines established business practices, but makes services and information available from any web-enabled PC. As people become accustomed to mobile technology, they will find it increasingly unacceptable to be tied to their office in order to do business, or to be forced to make a phone call or send a paper invoice to request goods and services.
- Centralized security -- Providing a single sign-on point for users of diverse applications limits the number of access points into a system, thereby limiting the security vulnerabilities. Existing permissions -- such as those stored for users of a local area network -- can be used to permit or restrict access for a user based on his or her login credentials, automatically hiding applications the user is not authorized to use. Virtually any application can use such a front-end access point to control its own access on the back-end.
- Incremental system replacement -- Too often, businesses opt for a complete makeover of an application that is past its prime when a simple facelift will get the job done. For those that can afford it, a shiny new system is always nice to have; for the rest of us, a piece-by-piece replacement is a great way to control costs with more precision, while still getting the most troublesome aspects of the legacy application replaced.
- XML -- Though it has been around for a few years, XML (Extensible Markup Language) is really coming into its own as a means of transferring data from application to application. It can be easily understood and processed by a wide variety of languages for a wide variety of purposes. Because it is so friendly to basic HTML code, it lends itself well to the integration of diverse applications designed on a web foundation.
- Central Authentication Service (CAS) -- In a CAS-based solution for authenticating users, credentials passed through a web-based login page are handled in one place for many different applications. This means logins and passwords need only be maintained in one place, making administration far easier. It also limits the access into any CAS-integrated application to one point, the central login page, meaning greater security. The language-nonspecific nature of CAS means it can be used for virtually any type of application. As an added bonus, the CAS solution developed by Yale University is open source; integrating the solution is the only cost involved.
- Rapid application development (RAD) -- Applications that required hundreds or thousands of man-hours to create initially may be redesigned for the web significantly cheaper thanks to the sophistication of RAD platforms such as Visual Basic .Net. While the relative ease-of-use of such packages has encouraged sloppiness on the part of some neophyte developers, an experienced and professional developer can use the advantages of RAD to keep down costs.
- Object-oriented design -- While not particularly new, an object-oriented approach to web application design makes the process of integration and upgrading existing systems far more flexible. Compartmentalizing business rules within the objects that depend on them means a change in those rules won't require a massive amount of coding. Moreover, incremental development is aided by the reusability of objects; once a rule has been created for one project, it won't need to be re-created for the next project that uses it.
Ultimately, acknowledging and responding to the demands of web-savvy users and customers is the first step toward ending up on the right side of the increasing divide between the winners and the losers.
Solid Blue Development provides application development for businesses and organizations, with a special focus on integrating legacy applications and developing web-based solutions for educational institutions. Please contact Solid Blue owner Peter Binkley for more information.
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