While it was tempting to look at SaaS, Opensource, Consolidation etc. as key themes for a post on new opportunities, it appears that from a business perspective, in the next 3-4 years the biggest impact could come out of composite applications.

The enterprise application features are mostly maturing, and increasingly large enterprise users are finding less missing functionality in their applications, creating a downward pressure to spend on upgrades around these products. Software margins are suffering due to smaller average prices, flat or reduced license sales, heightened pressures on needed investment in technology changes and an increasing apathy of end user investment in packaged software. Budgetary constraints and years of expansion and overpurchasing have left many enterprises with a hodgepodge of enterprise solutions. Business finds that as the installed software base grows, routine approaches to serving new business needs are proving inadequate. The need is to clearly find mechanisms to support synthesis of new processes while supporting existing processes powered by packaged software and other applications. Value seeking enterprises are constantly looking for ways and means to enhance their differentiating processes. While IT is already
in the midst of this shock effect, business is certainly forcing CIOs to achieve cost containment, better support for growth and, increasingly, innovation. The epicenter of applications that can bring distinct value to business is now firmly centered on domain-specific application platforms or frameworks.

Today in reality, most IT applications inhibit & not truly enable business process change. To meet the business needs, IT must either build or deliver a new generation of applications that embody business processes, reuse existing applications, and are built to accommodate change with minimal effort. Composites embodying processes require less code and less time to build fit in nicely as the solution here. Composite applications consuming services, represented as existing corporate applications, packaged enterprise applications, third-party functions, or new features and functions shall become the new framework for application deployments within enterprises. A framework of service-wrapper tools, orchestration tools, process automation &execution engines, and a page generating engine could be composed to produce a generic composite application framework that could be used by business to generate a composite app. The hallmark of composite applications will be the use of standardized & consistent set of infrastructure services provided by the composite application framework based on the SOA framework of dynamic, extensible, federated interoperability and enabled by XML-based technologies. Web services and SOA emphasize coarse-grained design and standardized interfaces enabling the creation of composite applications. The assessment that with composite applications - business could get out of the coding business by just assembling everything they needs out of part - will be contentious, as complex composite applications require syntactic and semantic interoperability (standardization efforts are still low key) that can never be fully preconfigured

Enterprise applications shall begin to coalesce around open web services where users can pick and choose just the features they need, and support add ins of distinct blocks provided by other companies. This would enable business to create and modify applications more economically and swiftly. Leading edge products ( this can come from a mega enterprise or a small IT shop) shall begin to roll out simpler, more flexible and easy to modify blocks of solutions, to meet customers demand of more flexible and agile systems. Business in this globalized era faced with outsourcing, changing regulations, and rapid technology shifts, - want competitive advantage, differentiation, and most of all, speed & agility as they get more and more dependant on cutting edge information technologies to run their operations efficiently. In the current scenario, large enterprises may go in for a minimal/no investment mode support for enterprise applications. The cycle of additional investments fortifying past are showing signs of getting broken. Business wants to unlock itself out from entrenched enterprise applications providing finite output while consuming disproportionately higher quantum of resources. Composites shall enable the co-option of culture, content, technology & process binding together content centric business process definitions & supporting, architectures - all these set the stage for software effectiveness to be correlated to business results in as direct a manner as possible. The architecture effort needs to ensure support for scalability, consistency, reuse and breadth. The distinction amongst enterprises shall come through distinct style and pattern of deployments, elements of it will be off the shelf and require integration, such as infrastructure, services platforms, packaged applications, and standards based process templates interfacing possibly with legacy apps exposed as services. Obviously moving to such an arrangement is a huge decision for enterprises- a strategic one of high order magnitude.

SOA and composite applications would enable business to meet the demands of quicker response and business agility. In this framework - business process definitions and rules shall move out of code onto metadata, where the elements and the control can be elegantly defined, captured, transformed and monitored outside conventional coding environments. The operational skills needed in such an environment may be so radically different that it may be incongruous to factor the resources to IT budgets directly. Increasingly, value and differentiation move out of code to content, providing options for enterprises to examine new ways of sourcing code. Far reaching changes are needed within enterprise IT setups in the realms of governance, funding, skills, tools, and platforms to make composites operable for the enterprise. From a telescopic perspective, it can be seen that this can bring in a distinct impact in reducing the number of needed coding experts working for end customers around the world. As enterprises begin to embrace SOA and await reaping the benefits, we shall see a further slowing of investment in traditional applications and a growth of investments in composite applications and technologies. The benefits shall be order of magnitude higher - composites built for change will enable business flexibility hitherto mostly unfelt.

BPM is catching up to become mainstream inside enterprises, while application integration efforts must realign with the composite applications framework, including standards, development practices, requirements, and tools/platforms. The state of the art composites would support appropriate interfaces for all external systems - including browser-centered interfaces, rich-client apps, RFID, and VoIP etc. to enable standardized processes, rules, and services - all controlled through metadata frameworks. Different classes of composite applications exist - ranging from portals, messaging centric interfaces operable over the internet, or a cockpit application etc. - each one having different characteristics with distinct approaches towards design, development & usages. The transition to composite applications would obviously be a long & arduous journey for enterprises, but this should lead to a new degree of alignment setting in rewarding business with immense benefits. Typically a three year transition with IT leading the charge would be the recommended game plan for global enterprises to embrace the new framework holistically. Product engineering too shall also see a positive influence - facilitating development of software in modular pieces, enabling rapid delivery of new functionalities. Several independent developers could start writing specialized programs that plug into the composite apps framework. The composite application ecosystem shall comprehensively transform the enterprise ecosystem.

S. Sadagopan, heads consulting and eBusiness for Satyam in the Asia Pacific and African markets based out of Singapore. He has led several consulting and technology transformation engagements covering multiple industries cutting across wide variety of technologies around the world. His blog is focused on emerging technologies & trends.