InformationWeek

Interoperability: First in a four-part series

Bringing Harmony To Business Systems

Why interoperability is critical to businesses and their strategic computer systems

By Bob Violino
Issue date: Oct. 2, 1995

T he proliferation of computer operating systems, networks, and applications has created a virtual Tower of Babel that information technology managers are struggling to decipher. In the drive to creat e an efficient and robust computing infrastructure, these managers must string together diverse, multivendor computer systems into a seamless whole. But computer vendors make this nearly impossible with their proprietary file formats, programming interfaces, and protocols. Technology users and managers are fighting back--demanding technologies that transcend the limitations of the single-vendor environment. They're asking: What good is an electronic-mail application that can't communicate over the Internet, or a desktop business application that can't access information from a variety of back-end databases? Systems interoperability is one of the biggest challenges facing technology managers today. The goal is to give any worker access to all business data needed for critical, competitive decisions. Failure to do so can mean lost productivity, inability to seize on a business opportunity, and, ultimately, financial loss. In a four-part series starting this week, InformationWeek explores the majo r interoperability issues facing users of Windows, Unix, NetWare, mainframes, and AS/400 systems. This first article looks at the business benefits of interoperability.

Technology managers overseeing the vast domain of corporate computer systems know how critical interoperability is.

Each type of system component speaks its own language. That can offset the gains technology brings to any organization. Behind the drive to link multivendor operating systems, hardware, networks, and applications is the desire to improve information access to corporate decision-makers and better prepare organizations for the global economy. Today's organizations need better data communications not only among their employees, but also with their business partners and customers. In the future, collaboration will be more vital than ever. Companies that lack adequate means to exchange information across disparate computer systems and networks will find themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage.

In fact, a compan y's inability to integrate its diverse systems will lead to productivity losses and, ultimately, to financial loss, says Joe Campbell, senior VP of information services at Home Insurance Co. in New York. (For a list of key interoperability standards click here)

Client-Server Shift
Why do organizations have multivendor environments in the first place? A lot of it has to do with the shift over the past five years to client-server computing. The client-server model puts unprecedented power on the desktop by giving PC users access to applications and huge amounts of data stored on servers. But this diversity also brings unprecedented complexity--far more than technology managers had to deal with in the days of centralized mainframe computing. Back then, organizations dealt with one vendor and a single computing platform.

"In the 1970s and 1980s, MIS had complete control of the mainframe environment," says Doug Trotter, managing principal for strategic technology at EDS in Dallas. "But there's been a revolution against centralized control, and now individual departments often control the purchase of PCs and software."

Users buy hardware and software based on their needs, often without regard for interoperability. What many organizations have ended up with, Trotter says, is a distributed computing environment in which components are incompatible with each other. "There's anarchy in the technology sector of most companies," he says.

That was the case at Home Insurance. In the 1980s, the insurer allowed business groups and individuals to select PC hardware and software on their own. "People were doing their own thing, creating islands of processing," says Campbell. "We had software packages being bought that didn't allow us to move information between LANs."

Campbell recently fixed that by implementing a new policy. Now, all IT purchases must be approved by his department. Home Insurance buys products only from pre-approved hardware and software ve ndors, which helps to reduce incompatibilities.

In addition to setting their corporate standards, technology managers began calling for open systems over the past decade. Vendors complied with enterprise applications that sport common programmatic interfaces and standard protocols that allow applications to interoperate over multiple types of networks, operating systems, and networks.

But some IS managers complain that vendors haven't gone far enough to ensure compatibility. "Vendors have a long way to go to make their products work together better," says Jean Miller, managing director of PC software development at brokerage Bear, Stearns & Co. in New York.

Bear, Stearns recently suffered compatibility problems when installing Microsoft Windows NT on Compaq PCs. "We tried to install from a diskette, but it couldn't recognize the devices in the Compaq machines," says Miller. "We had to go to some of our more experienced technicians who read bulletin boards on CompuServe to solve the problem. "

Compatibility with existing platforms is now a major criterion in the selection of new products, Miller says. "We don't want to be in a position where we convert to a new operating system that causes us a lot of grief," she says. But in some quarters, the cause of open systems and interoperability is taking a back seat. Technology managers charged with making diverse corporate systems interoperate realize it's difficult, time-consuming, and costly.

Some users opt for the single-vendor solution. Katherine Holland, VP and chief information officer at Peco Energy Co. in Philadelphia, believes many vendors prefer this scenario. "Vendors in general are getting very proprietary again," Holland says. "They're more motivated to be the sole provider."

Outside Help
The growing complexity of corporate computer systems has prompted many organizations to seek outside help getting their diverse systems to work together.

Engineering giant Bechtel Group Inc. in San Francisco is in the midst of migrating from Digital Equipment VAX minicomputers running DECnet to a client-server environment that includes servers running Windows NT, a TCP/IP backbone network, Windows 95 clients, and Unix servers for financial applications. Bechtel is not only trying to achieve interoperability among the new systems, but must also ensure that the systems can interoperate with the old during the transition.

For off-the-shelf applications, it's simply a matter of porting them to new platforms. But for internally developed applications, interoperability is more complex, says Chris Zeck, manager of infrastructure architecture at Bechtel. "Change is a given when you develop software with an expected life span of five years," he says. "You really can't develop the software with a specific architecture in mind."

For years, Bechtel has used Digital systems almost exclusively to avoid the problem of multivendor incompatibility. "But that wasn't a perfect scenario," says Zeck. "We were tied too much to a single supplier , and we found that even with a large company like Digital, there were some limitations to their technology."

So when Bechtel signed an outsourcing agreement with EDS in April, it gladly turned over systems integration chores for the migration project to its new partner. "We'd learned the hard lessons of integration ourselves before we hired EDS," Zeck says. "They've been a huge help, mainly because they've done this type of migration before."

Furthermore, Zeck says, "as an outsider, EDS has more leverage to enforce standards within the company than does Bechtel's own IS group. It's analogous to believing a doctor when he tells you that you're sick. EDS, by bringing in expertise and resources, has credibility."

Although Bechtel doesn't use Novell NetWare network operating system, many of its clients do, and Zeck says EDS is working to create better links between Bechtel's NT servers and the NetWare servers operated by its clients. "From an interoperability standpoint, this is a big issue for us b ecause so many of our clients use NetWare," Zeck says. And vendors Microsoft and Novell have been slow to address the issue, he adds.

Also on the move to client-server is Wachovia Corp.'s First Wachovia Bank in Winston-Salem, N.C. The bank hired IBM's Integrated Systems Solutions Corp. (ISSC) outsourcing unit to deploy and integrate client-server technology in its branches across three Southern states.

Among the software components of the new branch systems are Microsoft's Office suite, IBM's OS/2 operating system, and Argo Data Resources Inc.'s branch teller automation software. On the hardware side, Wachovia is installing teller workstations from Hewlett-Packard and IBM, servers from AT&T, routers from Bay Networks, and printers from Lexmark.

End Of The Line
Wachovia is moving off IBM 4700 Series banking terminals and controllers. While the older system involved minimal interoperability requirements because it involved essentially one vendor, "the products were obsolete and we couldn't go any further with them," says Frank Robb, senior VP and group executive for systems development at First Wachovia Operational Services Corp., which oversees IT for the bank.

"We needed to get to a PC platform to bring more functionality to the branches, including things like loan documentation and preparation, forms generation, workflow with graphical user interfaces, and in the future, two-way video and check imaging," Robb explains.

ISSC was enlisted because "we felt they could handle the large number of branch deployments we had," Robb says. ISSC is providing a lab to test interoperability between systems, and acts as a liaison with other vendors for the planning and shipping of products.

Three months into a five-month project to move 500 branches to the systems, Wachovia's Robb rates the effort as "excellent so far. We have multiple software releases and pilot installations. There have been a few bumps along the way--all minor. It's really going smoothly," Robb says.

Systems m anagement is the key to a successful client-server implementation and interoperability, says Bill Wike, a senior manager at Anderson Consulting in Chicago. This means having end-to-end management of all systems components ranging from databases and applications to underlying networks and operating systems.

"Tools to monitor how systems are running and tools that support applications are almost as important as the applications themselves," Wike notes. "The problem is, most vendors put out products that solve a single problem, as opposed to monitoring an entire enterprise."

Market demand for comprehensive management is intensifying, and some vendors are beginning to respond. Tivoli Systems, Computer Associates, HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems all are developing platforms for running everything from the corporate network to database applications. But few of these companies have complete solutions on the market yet.

Tivoli offers the Enterprise Console application, which gives managers one clear view of systems from a variety of vendors. Tivoli has forged partnerships with other vendors to ensure compatibility among products such as Unicenter from CA and OpenView from HP.

Vendors have attempted to build interoperability into products such as databases, E-mail, and LANs through applications programming interfaces (APIs), but these often are low-level links that eat up computing resources and slow processing. True interoperability that's built into operating systems has yet to appear.

Object component architectures hold the promise of this type of interoperability. Vendors are designing object technologies that will allow IS managers to buy and build applications that share common software code across various computer systems. Technologies such as Microsoft's OLE object technology, IBM's SOM (System Object Model), and DSOM (Distributed SOM) and the multivendor OpenDoc object model are in their infancies today. But a decade from now, many of the incompatibilities that exist in software today will be go ne.

OpenDoc, backed by IBM, Apple, and Novell, is an object technique for creating compound documents. It can, for example, integrate a spreadsheet object into a word-processor document. IBM and Apple plan to make all of their operating systems and workgroup applications OpenDoc-compliant. Novell is working to make its Windows, Windows 95, and NT applications OpenDoc-compliant. Novell is also working to foster compatibilities between OpenDoc and Microsoft OLE.

IBM's SOM allows objects to interoperate on a single PC. DSOM, one of many components of OpenDoc, will allow SOM objects to communicate between different workstations, servers, and networks. All of IBM's operating systems are expected to support SOM and DSOM.

Interoperability Key
While companies struggle to improve business processes and the computer systems that support them, interoperability remains a key facilitator of change. While some vendors and even some technology managers may resist the tide of interoperable systems, observers say the shift is inevitable.

The "networked" economy requires that technology managers put in place a computing infrastructure that will support global communications and collaboration for years to come. Savvy corporations realize that interoperable computer systems is a key part of that infrastructure.

For the second part of this series click here

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