Are Your Customers Y2x Compliant?

Y2K was great. You remember it: stock up on bottled water and freeze-dried foods, stand around the TV waiting for the ball to drop, and hope no calls come in about your installations failing. For the majority of VARs, those calls never came. The Y2K party ended without a bang, or more specifically - a crash. While this was a relief, it was also a letdown. So much energy was expended making sure clients were Y2K compliant that the question of what to do next was never fully addressed. Immediately following the turn of the century, we saw a great deal of energy focused on Web-commerce applications. But as the dot-com craze wilted, the realization hit that e-commerce may be ahead of its time.

Putting The Horse Before The Cart
Before e-commerce can be effectively executed, the proper infrastructure must be in place. This involves high-profile issues such as bandwidth and mobile computing. However, it also involves more mundane, but no less important, matters like connecting legacy systems to e-commerce applications. The first step toward achieving this legacy connection is connecting the legacy systems to each other.

"In preparation for Y2K, a wave of ERP- and CRM-type applications were installed," says Mike Wipperfeld, VP of marketing at Ascential Software (Westboro, MA). "In the rush to install these systems, integration with legacy systems was often ignored. In addition, many businesses hastily installed e-commerce systems in reaction to the dot-com craze. These two trends have created a bunch of stovepipe systems that many businesses have no way of dealing with holistically."

Adds Stewart Ritchie, VP, sales Americas, at DataMirror (Markham, ON), "In the 1980s, everyone was installing databases. In the 1990s, it was ERP and CRM. In the next 10 years, it's going to be about integrating everything that was installed in the 1980s and 1990s."

Performing A Week's Worth Of Aggregation In Real Time
Not surprisingly, Ascential and DataMirror both offer products that help businesses aggregate their information. Both companies develop data warehousing platforms, which allow businesses to assemble a single storehouse of data from multiple systems.

"Our software can move mainframe, CRM, ERP, e-commerce, and a variety of other data into a single system," says Ritchie. "We have customers running hundreds of databases on multiple platforms that are now connected in real time. Without our software, it was taking weeks to aggregate this data. We also have customers who are connecting just two systems or two databases."

Add Depth To Your Data-Intensive Applications
It's Ritchie's view that resellers who work with ERP and CRM systems are missing out if they do not offer a data warehousing solution. "ERP and CRM applications produce a lot of data, so they are a good place to start," he says. "We also have resellers that represent major database vendors like Sybase and Oracle."

According to Ritchie, resellers can increase the depth of their applications by adding business intelligence or analytic technology on top of data warehouses. Wipperfeld adds that Ascential relies on its resellers to transform its data warehousing platform into an effective vertical solution.

"We provide a platform that allows resellers to quickly aggregate their users' data," says Wipperfeld. "This is important because it reduces the reseller's time to market. However, if a business is relying on its data for competitive analysis, it does not want the exact same system as its competitors. This is where a reseller's knowledge of their customers and their industry is very valuable for customization purposes."