VLBA - Very Large Business Applications

Authors

Bastian Grabski
Lars Krüger
Sebastian Günther
Sebastian Herden
André Zwanziger
Claus Rautenstrauch

Date of Publication:

17.09.2007

Business Applications and Information Systems

An application implements a process or several more logically coherent and computer-aided processes. To the contrary, Business Applications implement processes of the computer-aided of the business production of goods and services. If processes are directly successfully effective, they concern then Business Processes. If these are implemented through application software, then it comes to consider Business Application Systems [4].

Business Informatics deals with the conception, development, implementation, maintenance and use of systems of computer-supported Data Processing (Information Systems) in organizations and their public administration [3]. A synonym of the term Information System is practically often used in a false way to express Business Application System [1]. However, it is emphasized that there are a variety of Business Application Systems within a computer-supported Information System, on which functions and data of an Information System is based. The necessity of the separation in different Business Application Systems results from the variety of the Business Application Departments like accounting, human resources, logistic, distribution or marketing.

Very Large Business Applications

A VLBA deals with a Business Application, which has a strategic importance within a constituted organization. Significant features of a VLBA are:

A VLBA supports one or more processes, from which one at least is a Business Process. Consequently, a VLBA is directly successfully effective and the strategic dependency of the organization is given by an application of a VLBA because changing or turning the system away is associated with big financial, organizational and personnel-related costs.
A VLBA does not have any spatial, organizational, cultural or technical limits.
VLBAs could be implemented through Application Systems as well as through System Landscapes. It is significant that they support a (universal organizational) Business Process.

A possible far reaching ability of automation of internal processes should be achieved through the application of the most modern technologies. Supply-Chain-Management (SCM) - and Customer-Relationship-Management (CRM) - Systems are examples for this kind of software, as far as they fulfill all defined requirements.
VLBAs are similar to a Business Information System in the manner that they can support several Business Application Fields and in this case, they are based on several types of Business Application Systems. The following figure gives an overview of the classification of a VLBA in the business Data Processing.

Figure 1: Meta Model of the Business Data Processing in the context of a VLBA

VLBA as a Field of Research

VLBA is also defined as a field of research. The present-day heterogeneous and grown System Landscapes, just like they are usually discovered in the business practice, suffer from the symptom of Spaghetti-Integration. Therefore, it seems to be practical to raise principles of the Software-Engineering to the level of the System Landscapes and to establish such a Design Theory in the sense of a System-Landscape-Engineering.

However, some problems emerge through operating such landscapes, which apply to repair through research and development. Those arise for example from the necessity of the automation, missing of a theoretical consolidation and from strategic decisions, which break off the technical limits of a VLBA so that they make the execution ability under constant requirements impossible. Adjustments of a VLBA to self-changing needs of an organization and the changing environmental conditions are to be implemented with the help of a Change Management. Debit-Models originate from the solution of consisting problems. Equally, the technological limits take on a wider meaning in a way that the following generations of the VLBAs move over into the focus. Therein, the dynamic character of the development of VLBAs is to be identified.

A key-topic for the design of System Landscapes and their business concepts is the development of suitable software architectures. With the help of methods of software development, which are most suitable for large systems, such as patterns [3], VLBAs can be implemented and standardized business tasks can be supported under the application of distributed services. Concerning this, a special Information Management will be required, which creates an adequate information infrastructure upon all quality demands (among others are security and reliability) of conventional software. Also recent trends like Compliance, something out of law standards of the resultant business rules, should be added to such an infrastructure.

References

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