The Hindu Business Line : Business dilemmas that demand decisions

WHEN the idea of a `drop-in' centre was dropped amidst IT professionals of an insurance company who were focussed on mainframe computing and OS, their response was cold.

The new centre was "to provide internal introductory training, handle the phone call support and assist users in the acquisition, installation and use of PCs and associated software and getting them networked," as the `Elise Smart' episode reads in Gerard H. Seijts's Cases in Organizational Behavior, from Sage (www.sagepublications.com) .

The book has `32 field-based cases' and is the result of collaboration with the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, which adds 200 new cases to its library every year.

But let me resume the story... Smart puts a part of her team in "a highly visible tech centre... physically located in the middle of the user community, rather than in the IT department". The team members meet `clients' who are in need of face-to-face help, and provide them with the required products, be it hardware or software. "Users raved over the terrific customer service and the team took great pride in the professional approach". How different from the experience most of us have with our IT support teams!

Another case is about OP4.com, `our place 4 everything', a youth portal that aims "to attract the attention of teenagers and provide them with a place to voice their opinion". There were three content sections, viz. "expression, entertainment and empowerment". Okay, what is the problem of OP4? Profitability. One suggestion, from Steve Goodman VP (corporate affairs), is to go in for restructuring - by putting together a magazine, and also by looking at projects in television, radio and wireless. "At this stage, it's like having a bank account with no job - the advertising revenues we have will not sustain us long-term," Goodman notes gravely.

Elsewhere in the book, meet Sonya, who is busy dealing with eProcure, a solution that allows "purchasing professionals to electronically research, evaluate, plan and negotiate the lowest total cost for both direct and indirect goods and services". The problem comes in the form of the eNegotiation module that Claire has to complete. At a presentation, the boss finds that the module designs aren't integrated, and Claire explains: "I have been trying to find time with Sonya to sit down to discuss how to integrate the design as smoothly as possible; however Sonya has been very busy working on her own designs and documentation." That's a lie, Sonya tells herself! Then...

Follow Charles Tang, a new manager in Intel, China. He studies the work of Yong Li, and finds that the basic concept behind Li's project is sound but it has expanded so much that the original goals are unattainable. The project is to create "a manual providing local software vendors with tips on running their enterprise, such as marketing various software products or how to manage or set up distribution channels." But Li's zeal had transformed the project into "a portable MBA-type book, covering essentially every topic a software company would need to know to do business in China". Tang feels the project is getting too ambitious, and halts it. Li is upset about Tang causing him to `lose face'...

Useful read!

Four elements of J2EE

B.V. Kumar, S. Sangeetha, and S.V. Subrahmanya, all from Infosys, team up to write J2EE Architecture, published by Tata McGraw-Hill (www.tatamcgrawhill.com) . "The J2EE standard is the fruit of collaboration among partners who are leaders from throughout the enterprise software arena," write James Gosling and Jeff Jackson of Sun Microsystems in their foreword.

The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) offers a single standard across systems, embracing "resources required by multi-tier applications with a unified, component-based model," they'd explain. "Java on the server side has evolved from simple web based servlets to other robust server-side components such as JavaServer Pages, Servlet Filters and Enterprise JavaBeans," notes Kris Gopalakrishnan, Infy's COO in his prologue.

After an elaborate discussion of enterprise architecture, comparing the same to a cube, the authors describe the four elements of J2EE, viz. specifications, reference implementation, blueprints, and compatibility test suite or CTS. Core specifications are EJB, servlets, and JSP; and there are services-related specifications (such as JNDI, JDBC and JMS) and supportive specifications (such as JavaMail, and JAF).

Reference implementation a.k.a. RI squared, is an operational platform, with two purposes. One, allowing the developers "to create a small enterprise application and subject it to necessary functionality testing"; and two, providing information to vendors of the J2EE platform about functionality of the technology. Importantly, "it also allows the vendors to improve upon the design of the application and helps in exploiting the specifications, to bring about improvements in the non-functional aspects of the platform."

What's the `blueprint'? A top-level guide that describes how enterprise applications can be built using J2EE technology. Included in it are "best practices, strategy recommendations, guidelines, and design and architectural patterns". CTS, the fourth component, consists of "a number of tests that an application server is subjected to"; these are of different types, viz. signature, API and integration. These tests are designed to evaluate and validate end-to-end specification compatibility for each of the enterprise tiers, explain the authors. Applications that clear all the tests (15,000 in version 1.3, please note!) are `J2EE Compatible'.

Part II of the book is about `core J2EE' where one may find a discussion of security under four heads - authentication, authorisation, message protecting, and auditing. "The web tier supports four types of authentication mechanisms," informs book. These are basic (retrieving the user name and password to verify authenticity), digest (obtaining user name and password using a secure algorithm, e.g. MD5), form-based (similar to basic but using a HTML form), and HTTPS mutual (with client and server authenticating mutually over Secure Socket Layer or SSL).

Perhaps a detailed treatment of security was not intended, so the paragraph on `auditing' stops with saying: "Auditing is not a new concept. It is the practice of recording the events as they transpire in the enterprise at various levels and points. This is important with regard to the accountability as well as the governmental rules."

The book includes a couple of case studies, and also a CD to provide a technological overview of the topic on hand. It appears that visuals for the book are captured from the accompanying soft product, and are therefore of poor print quality.

Good for starters.

Tailpiece

"I connected my profit forecast spreadsheet to a site showing current crude prices."

"So?"

"Every time I press recalc, profit keeps falling!"

Books2Byte@TheHindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page