External Integration of an e-Services Hub

Abstract

A relatively new model for software delivery is the concept of software as a service (SaaS). That model is interesting for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) for enhancing their support by information technologies (IT). A possible approach of implementing the SaaS model is the construction of a Hub which is a platform constructed by an IT infrastructure for deploying specialized electronic services (e-services) and support, in order to leverage the capabilities of SMEs. Most of the SMEs already have an installed base of application systems known as legacy systems. These legacy systems should be integrated to the Hub platform thus forming a heterogeneous system consisting of the e-services implementation and external applications. As the number of enterprises in the Hub increases, their manual integration (coding each case) into the Hub becomes a complex task. This paper describes the implementation of a visual tool to simplify integration of enterprise applications to the Hub. The integration proposed here is based on the use of Web services and the use of an automatic software generation tool. The main areas involved are the concept of e-services Hub, enterprise application integration, web services technologies, automatic code generation, and software as a service model.