Distributed Systems - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 72

Such a communications layer will have the following adverse effects:
• Add to the latency of the system and degrade overall performance.
• Libraries of software components (and classes) required for inter-
facing with the data bus will typically increase the size of the
application.
However, the system architects usually take these problems into account
at the time of planning and designing the overall enterprise infrastructure
and architecture. And, in the event that these problems become noticeable
(because of dramatic increase in business and transaction volumes) or fore-
seeable (because of envisaged M&A activities, divestures, etc.), the enterprise
architecture is revisited in its entirety.
3.1.2 Enterprise Component Architecture
Large corporations that have already invested vast sums of money in exist-
ing enterprise applications, infrastructure, hardware, and employees cannot
change overnight. Moreover, the software skills and techniques that are
essential for Web-based application development are different from those
prevalent in most of the companies. Consequently, enterprises need to learn
new development techniques, new methodologies, and new ways of fitting
all these solutions together if their transition to e-commerce is to be suc-
cessful. In this section, we will briefly examine why a successful enterprise
should be based on enterprise component architecture as embodied in SAP
CRM applications.
Flexible applications need to be constructed by assembling a variety of com-
ponents (functional modules) to create newer products and services. Although
the initial components will have to be developed from scratch, over time
and with accumulation of basic components, applications will be assembled
more and more from increasing reuse of the existing components. However,
to accomplish this, the software needs to be designed as component-based
applications, and there must be an infrastructure to support the component-
oriented development of applications. An organizational structure that
enables change is based on reusable elements that are reconfigurable in a scal-
able framework. In the componentized architecture, a system is considered as
a group of components sharing a common interaction framework and serving
a common purpose. A framework is a set of standards constraining and
enabling the interactions of compatible system components, where each com-
ponent is itself an autonomous system subunit with a self-contained identity,
purpose, and capability and is capable of interacting with other components.
Component architecture then is a high-level description of the major com-
ponents of a system and the relationship between them. Enterprise compo-
nent architecture defines the enterprise's infrastructure for components as
well as defines