Integrate Enterprise Software With the CLI
Examine the impact of Common Language Infrastructure based software-development technologies for non-Windows platforms on enterprise software integration strategies.
by Randy Holloway
Tech Ed 2003 Issue
IT and software-development professionals face numerous challenges when it comes to enterprise software integration. Forty percent of the typical IT budget is spent on application integration. The diversity of platforms in the enterprise is the key factor driving application integration. The large number of platforms and software-development tools many organizations deal with drive integration projects' complexity, and many customers are looking for a solution that works with a common development tool or technology they can leverage across their existing infrastructures. With the advent of the .NET Framework and other Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) platforms targeted at Unix and Linux, the .NET development technologies provide another alternative for cross-platform software development and integration. Many corporate IT and software companies now recognize this development platform and are relying on it as a basis for enterprise software integration.
According to Gartner, the market for software to support application integration and middleware technologies will grow by more than 100 percent—from $5.1 billion to $10.5 billion—between 2001 and 2006. This growth will be driven largely by trends in mergers and acquisitions, the globalization of companies, and core business needs, such as enhanced customer acquisition and relationship management. It will also be driven by the development of enterprise information infrastructure (EII) applications and decision-support systems, which leverage the virtualization of multiple data sources and application platforms to deliver consolidated information to employees. Along with the costs associated with software licensing and hardware for the software to enable this integration, you must consider the significant costs associated with resources to support the development and customization of enterprise application integration (EAI) software. You incur these costs during the implementation phase for application integration projects, as well as in the maintenance phase of the software lifecycle, and they can be quite high.
EAI is complicated further by the costs of maintaining staff skills to support the use of a variety of software-development technologies on a number of platforms, including Windows, Unix variants, and Linux. Along with the expense associated with these integration efforts, the time invested in these projects is a serious concern for many companies. With many large EAI projects measured in years, instead of weeks or months, companies are seeking strategies to contain the costs of software integration without sacrificing the speed to market so important to their initiatives. Since the advent of software-development technologies based on the European Computer Manufacturers Association's (ECMA) CLI standards, a variety of groups have launched ongoing initiatives to support the CLI and the development of framework class libraries (FCL). The goal is to enable developers to target their applications to the .NET Framework running on Windows and other platforms featuring CLI-based runtime support (see Figure 1). This way, developers can create applications largely independent of platform, which allows them to support virtualization of their application logic for use across multiple platforms. The "write once, run anywhere" promise made by Java is becoming close to reality with the .NET platform instead.
Many software-development companies have engaged in strategic initiatives to deliver CLI-based runtime support to non-Windows platforms, to extend the .NET vision. For example, Ximian is working on a runtime environment based on the ECMA CLI standards, as well as compilers for languages such as C# and VB.NET, which developers can use to create CLI-based applications on non-Windows platforms such as Linux and Solaris. Ximian has also partnered with OpenLink Software on FCL development, which enables developers to leverage common class libraries within the .NET Framework and Common Language Runtime (CLR) and runtime environments on other platforms. Kingsley Idehen, president and CEO of OpenLink Software, says: ".NET is a strategic technology at Microsoft, and initiatives such as Mono serve to bolster its core value proposition. .NET is language-independent by default, and Mono simply extends this independence across platforms."
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