The AFT division will bring over two years of e-business experience to market, as well as various middleware and user interface products developed during its transformation of its parent company`s IT infrastructure into an e-business architecture. It will initially offer its solutions to the local market, and global opportunities will be assessed in due course.
"Two-and-a-half years ago we started preparing the Alexander Forbes infrastructure to be able to deliver e-business solutions," says Rob Wybrow, business development manager for AFT. "Initially there was a 20% to 60% overhead but that overhead soon translated itself into tangible development and support cost savings. These projects became the building blocks of Alexander Forbes` e-business strategy."
AFT supports its own nTierPrise Architecture, which takes the form of the traditional n-tier architectures that developers have been using for years, but adds modern components to the various levels, and its own middleware to translate between the back-end data layer and the business logic layer. Its user interfaces also offer something new, with WAP, WebTV and other modern delivery methods replacing the traditional client.
The middle tier consists of a switch - in the extranet sense of the word - which allows partners, clients and the business itself to access and interact with the systems data, "immaterial of whether it is housed in very old or very modern repositories," according to Wybrow.
"The middleware talks to the applications system and not the database whereby the security and integrity of the application system is maintained. Furthermore, the business logic, rules, calculations and/or processes are also easily accessible via the middleware in real- or non real-time mode." The majority of the security is shifted away from the databases and into the switch and applications.
The offerings will most likely appeal to Microsoft-centric bricks-and-mortar businesses, as AFT chose Microsoft`s Active Directory Server for its switch directory and DCOM (distributed component object model) architecture to structure its middleware solution, rather than the CORBA (component object request broker architecture) object framework supported by Unix vendors.
Most of the middleware, which AFT created when it found no other vendor could offer the solution it was looking for, is used to interact with the heterogeneous array of systems and databases the company had in its back-end systems. The switch (or application, if the user interacts with the databases directly) talks to an OLEDB database layer, which performs a handshake with the required system and then the database. This operation can be performed synchronously or asynchronously depending on the database`s availability. AFT brands this technology nIB, or "nTierPrise Integration Broker".
Despite its product offerings, AFT says its real value is in its staff and their experience within Alexander Forbes. "Some 15% of our worth is product. The rest is intellectual capital," says Wybrow.
Acting as consultants, the staff utilise the architecture to engineer solutions for the businesses to integrate the legacy application systems with re-engineered workflow processes, document management, CRM systems, NT security, and other technology, thereby implementing a strategy to protect the operational investments that most companies wish to maintain, even while moving to the new e-business paradigm.
Wybrow admits that the biggest challenge for e-business will be the cultural change required by the staff, and even the management to convince them of the benefits of this new wave. "It`s the thought process that`s radically different," he says.
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