110 Broker Interactions for Intra- and Inter-enterprise
6.1 Customer overview
This section provides some background information on our imaginary client,
ITSO Electronics, including:
? Business profile and goals
? Existing environment
? Non-functional requirements, or Quality of Service requirements
6.1.1 Business profile
ITSO Electronics is a retail electronics store that specializes in both consumer
and business goods. Founded 30 years ago, the company has grown from a
small local storefront to a large regional department store featuring televisions,
computer equipment, stereo equipment, and household electronics. The
company has a large wholesale business as well, supplying computer
equipment, fax machines, copiers, and other business electronics to merchants
throughout the region.
6.1.2 Business goals
By integrating their retail ordering and wholesale inventory processes, ITSO
Electronics plans to:
? Reduce costs by reducing the staff workload associated with ordering parts
from wholesale departments. This should be achieved by integrating the
ordering system with the wholesale inventory system.
? Increase customer satisfaction by reducing latency between the retail
ordering process and the wholesale inventory process, thereby decreasing
the likelihood of an item being out-of-stock.
After the internal processes have been integrated, ITSO Electronics plans to
enable their Retail systems to order parts from external partner wholesale
suppliers.
6.1.3 Existing environment
This section describes the existing environment at ITSO Electronics.
Chapter 6. Business scenarios used in this book 111
Business perspective
From the business perspective, the existing environment includes:
? The wholesale ordering process shown in Figure 6-1. This process uses the
Wholesale department’s inventory business process, which is accessed
through manual channels by using paper-based forms and manual
processes. The Retail department selects a Wholesale supplier based on a
part number and, if multiple Wholesale suppliers carry the part, on the earliest
delivery date provided.
? The internal Retail department, which orders parts from Wholesale
departments.
? A number of external wholesale business partners, who supply parts to the
Retail department.
Figure 6-1 ITSO Electronics wholesale ordering process flow
IT perspective
The existing IT environment, shown in Figure 6-2, includes:
? An existing Wholesale inventory system. This important legacy system
implements the core business processes of the wholesale department.
? An existing Retail ordering system. This system is used by retail staff and has
recently been upgraded to a Self-Service browser-based J2EE application.
? External wholesale suppliers with their own, heterogeneous IT infrastructures.
? Limited existing application integration infrastructure.
External
Wholesale
Supplier
Retail
Department
Wholesale
Department
2. Part number
ordered by phone, fax,
or mail
3. Delivery date
1. Retail Orders
112 Broker Interactions for Intra- and Inter-enterprise
Figure 6-2 ITSO Electronics current IT infrastructure
6.1.4 Non-functional requirements
ITSO Electronics requires that all solutions provide a standard Quality of Service
(QoS) set. The following specific criteria must be met:
? Autonomic:
– Solutions provide suitable system management tools, procedures, and
logs.
? Availability:
– Solutions meet both the defined unplanned and planned downtime
requirements.
– Meaningful messages are provided to system users during downtime.
? Federation:
– The responsibilities of the stakeholders are clearly defined and agreed to
by all parties.
? Performance:
– Solutions meet the defined throughput and response times.
– Solutions scale to provide for future growth.
? Security:
– Sensitive systems and data is protected from unauthorized access.
– Non-repudiation of the end user for all commercial transactions is
provided.
Retail
Ordering
System
Organization boundary
Wholesale
Inventory
System
Wholesale
supplier
Partner
Infrastructure
W holesale
supplier
Partner
Infrastructure
W holesale
supplier
Partner
Infrastructure
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