Patterns: Broker Interactions for Intra- and Inter-enterprise

Chapter 4. Extended Enterprise pattern 71

What's next

If you are not yet sure that your business problem can be solved by the

functionality enabled through an Extended Enterprise solution design, the

guidelines in the next section provide additional information on choosing this

Business pattern. Business and IT drivers, the e-business context appropriate for

this solution type, and additional solution details are discussed here.

If you have determined that the Extended Enterprise business pattern can

provide an appropriate solution design for your business needs, the next step is

to select an Application pattern. The Extended Enterprise business pattern can

be implemented using any one of three Application patterns discussed here,

providing solution flexibility so that the selected Business pattern can address

the specific needs of the business process being automated.

4.2 General guidelines

To help you determine if the Extended Enterprise business pattern is appropriate

for the design of your inter-enterprise application integration scenario, this

section details the business and IT scenario into which an Extended Enterprise

solution fits.

4.2.1 Business and IT drivers

Businesses developing a solution needing the following characteristics should

consider using the Extended Enterprise business pattern:

򐂰 The business processes need to be integrated with existing business systems

and information.

򐂰 The business processes need to integrate with processes and information

that exist at partner organizations.

4.2.2 Context

The general problem addressed by this pattern is illustrated in Figure 4-1.

72 Broker Interactions for Intra- and Inter-enterprise

Figure 4-1 Extended Enterprise context

Interactions between partners form a public process, or potentially, multiple

distinct public processes. Each of these must be integrated into the private

business process flows implemented by each partner. Such integration might be

as simple as passing data to a particular application, or as sophisticated as

initiating or resuming a multi-step workflow involving several applications and

user interactions.

For example, Partner A (source application) and Partner B (target application)

agree upon sharing specific business processes and a process flow. Partner A

invokes a public process flow that in turn may invoke a specific private internal

process flow within Partner B's organization. Partner A is not concerned with the

details of Partner B's private process flow. Instead, Partner A cares only about

the results it expects in response to the invoked public process.

The “golden rule” of business-to-business integration is, the less you know about

the business partner's private processes and the implementation details of their

applications, the better off you are. This loose coupling enables organizations to

evolve their applications without affecting business partner's applications.

Obviously, specific functionality supported by these applications depends on the

particular details of the trading partner agreements and service level agreements

between the organizations involved. Yet a survey of such applications in multiple

industries reveals certain common approaches that have been successful.

These commonalities of success are harvested as the various Application

patterns that can be used to implement this Business pattern.

For example, take the case of a company that wants to integrate their retail

organization with diverse external wholesalers. The Extended Enterprise pattern

Nonshared

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