Siebel's Universal Application Network

Siebel Systems Launches Universal Application Network: Industry's First Standards-Based, Vendor-Independent Application Integration Solution

Industry Leaders Commit Technology and Expertise to Deliver Complete, Customer-Centric Solution that Speeds Deployment and Delivers Lower Total Cost of Ownership

Barcelona, Spain. April 8, 2002.

Siebel Systems, Inc., the world's leading provider of eBusiness applications, today announces the industry's first standards-based vendor-independent application integration solution with the launch of Universal Application Network. Universal Application Network dramatically reduces the need for custom integration, minimizing complexity, speeding deployment and delivering a low total cost of ownership (TCO). Leading system integrators such as Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Accenture, IBM Global Services and KPMG Consulting, and integration server vendors including IBM, SeeBeyond, TIBCO Software, Vitria, and webMethods, have all committed technology and expertise to deliver the Universal Application Network.

"We are delighted to extend our relationship with Siebel Systems and support the Universal Application Network," said Chell Smith, Global Managing Director, Business Solutions and Technology, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. "The combination of our Adaptive Architecture, delivery capability, focus on productivity and Siebel Systems' leadership in eBusiness, promises to deliver to our joint clients outstanding solutions with significant improvement in return on investment (ROI) and decreased TCO."

"With the introduction of Universal Application Network, Siebel Systems is the first vendor to provide a customer-focused solution that allows enterprises to quickly and cost-effectively integrate all their applications using a standards-based architecture, that is both scalable and reliable," said Alan Grometstein, VP of Technology, Quick & Reilly.

"Our customers have clearly communicated the importance of application integration," said Tom Siebel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Siebel Systems. "Rather than build a custom or proprietary solution, we responded by partnering with industry leaders to create the universal/collective/widespread standards-based, business process integration solution that reduces cost and complexity and enables customers to choose applications that best meet their business needs."

Universal Application Network Delivers a Low Total Cost of Ownership

Universal Application Network takes a standards-based, customer-centric approach to the design and development of end-to-end business processes which are executed by market-leading integration servers. In addition, these business processes are application independent and can be deployed across a diverse set of applications across multiple divisions and business units. The result is a vendor-independent architecture that dramatically reduces the need for customization, minimizes complexity, speeds deployment, and delivers a low total cost of ownership.

"As enterprises are moving beyond point-to-point integration approaches to more enterprise-spanning integration strategies, packaged application vendors are recognizing that merely providing a laundry list of APIs and adapters is no longer sufficient," said Jeff Comport, Vice President and Research Fellow, Gartner. "The next generation of packaged application integration will be based on integration broker and Web service technology, and be governed by enterprise-spanning process models that extend well beyond the traditional definitional boundaries of any single package or suite."

Siebel Systems is uniquely positioned to deliver this solution through its open architecture, industry specific domain expertise and extensive partner ecosystem. Universal Application Network solution:

Delivers end-to-end, industry-specific extensible business processes. Leveraging industry best practices and the domain expertise of leading system integrators, Siebel Systems is building a comprehensive set of prepackaged, industry specific business processes that are customizable, extensible and upgradeable. These prepackaged business processes reduce cost, complexity and risk of application integration, while accelerating time to deployment.
Provides re-usable business processes, enabling organizations to "create once, deploy everywhere." Independent of both the underlying applications and integration server, the pre-packaged business processes can be re-used across multiple divisions or lines of business -- even where different applications or integration servers are deployed. This reduces implementation time, cost and complexity.
Embraces industry standards. Universal Application Network is based on emerging Web Services and XML standards. The business process specifications are supported by the leading integration technology vendors -- IBM, SeeBeyond, TIBCO Software, Vitria, and webMethods, and offer organizations reduced deployment time and risk, dramatically lower cost of development and support, and a choice of their preferred integration server.
Leverages proven integration server technology that is robust, highly scalable, and reliable. A development effort spanning more than 15 years of combined experience by the leading integration server vendors, Universal Application Network is technically robust, highly scalable, and reliable -- supporting the integration requirements of the world's largest organizations and most complex IT environments.
Offers organizations maximum flexibility and choice. Universal Application Network is application-independent, leveraging customers' existing investments and interoperating with any underlying application. As a result, customers are no longer locked into a single vendor's proprietary product set and integration architecture, but can instead select from the industry's best application and integration technologies.

Partnering for a Standards-based Solution

Siebel Systems is partnering with the world's leading systems integrators and integration providers to deliver a complete, cost effective, standard-based approach to solving complex integration problems.

"Universal Application Network is innovative and customer-focused. Siebel Systems' customers will embrace its standards-based approach to using Web services as a technology enabler," said Eric Austvold, Research Director, Enterprise Applications & Technologies, AMR Research. "Siebel Systems has clearly partnered with the industry leaders, and if managed properly, can leverage each relationship to solve unique technology and industry requirements. Siebel Systems is leading the way, and SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft would be wise to address their clients' integration concerns as well."

System integrators have extensive experience and expertise in developing industry-specific business processes that span multiple applications. By partnering with Siebel Systems, leading systems integrators will deliver superior pre-packaged solutions to support key business processes across a broad range of industries and industry segments.

"This strategy is consistent with our view of helping clients solve their process problems, rather than spending time on the detailed work mapping various applications' data model," said Mark Lee, senior vice president, product solutions, KPMG Consulting. "Teaming with Siebel Systems presents us with another opportunity to help our joint customers decrease time to market and lower total cost of ownership."

Siebel Systems is also working closely with leading integration server providers including IBM, SeeBeyond, TIBCO Software, Vitria, and webMethods, who have more than 15 years of integration infrastructure experience. Customers can leverage their existing investments in these integration technologies and minimize deployment risks, while upgrading to a more sophisticated, efficient and cost-effective application integration solution. "Universal Application Network addresses the reality of the heterogeneous IT environment at Bose with a holistic, manageable, and scalable solution," said Tim Arnold, Manager, Process and Engagement, Bose. "Universal Application Network's application agnostic business processes and support for all leading integration server vendors will allow Bose to seamlessly integrate with our legacy, packaged, and custom applications."

Universal Application Network Components

Combining Siebel Systems and its partners' domain expertise, Universal Application Network is comprised of three major components: a comprehensive business process library, a state-of-the-art business process design tool, and a market-leading integration server.

1. Business Process Library

The business process library is a collection of prepackaged, end-to-end, industry specific business processes -- such as Customer Creation or Quote to Order. The business processes are based on XML and Web Services standards and are independent of both the underlying applications and integration server. These business processes include:

Pre-built business process flows. These orchestrate a sequence of steps across multiple applications to achieve a business objective. They are defined using an industry-leading specification based on Web Services standards.
Common objects. These objects are a composite of application data models and are compliant with industry-specific standards such as RosettaNet and OAG. Siebel Systems provides a comprehensive set of pre-defined objects, such as customer, employee, product and quote objects.
Transformation maps. These provide mappings between the application data models and common objects, and are based on XSLT standards. Siebel Systems provides pre-built transformation maps to back office applications (such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Amdocs, Kenan, Portal, etc.).

2. Business Process Design Tool

Universal Application Network provides an intuitive graphical tool for developing and configuring business process solutions -- including business process flows, common objects, and transformation maps. The design tool has import and export capabilities to accept and emit definitions of the business process solutions in XML standards. The design tool consists of:

Business Process Flow Modeler. The Business Process Flow modeler enables the user to describe business processes at various levels of abstraction. A business analyst uses the modeler to describe the business process at a level that is application independent. An application developer can further define details by providing process flows that indicate how a specific application accomplishes those steps.

The Business Process Flow modeler also provides visual representation of error conditions, transactional boundaries, and compensating transactions. The modeler accepts and emits Web services-based XML representations of the defined processes.
Transformation Modeler. Transformation Modeler is used to define transformations, which describe mappings between common objects and the application data model. The user can visually drag and drop fields and choose available function libraries to define transformations. The Transformation Modeler can also be used to define custom transformations. It accepts and emits XSD schemas and XSLT-based transformations.

3. Integration Server

The Integration Server coordinates inter-application communication. Examples of commercially available Integration Servers include IBM WebSphere Business Integration, SeeBeyond Business Integration Suite, TIBCO BusinessWorks, Vitria BusinessWare, and webMethods Platform. These products are being enhanced to specifically execute the standards-based business processes and include the following elements:

Transport layer. Transport layer is a messaging service that provides queuing, guarantees delivery of messages, and supports both synchronous and asynchronous messaging.
Adapter. The adapter connects an application to the transport layer. It relays events from the application to the integration server and has the ability to import application configurations into the integration server.
Common object model. The common object model provides a framework to define common objects. It is extensible and supports customer-developed objects.
Transformations. The Integration Server provides the transformation layer, which executes the transformation maps at run-time.
Business process controller. The business process controller provides step-by-step execution of a business process. The business process controller provides support for long-running transactions and error-handling, monitors the status of processes and collects statistics for reporting and analytics.

With the release of Siebel 7 in November 2001, Siebel Systems was the first eBusiness applications provider to recognize the highly varied, multi-application reality of customers' IT environments by introducing a next-generation "application network" integration architecture. Today, Siebel Systems has taken a significant next step to build on this approach through strategic partnerships and the development of new functionality for Universal Application Network planned for availability this summer.

About Siebel Systems

Siebel Systems, Inc. is the world's leading provider of eBusiness applications software. Siebel Systems provides an integrated family of eBusiness applications software, enabling multichannel sales, marketing, and customer service systems to be deployed over the Web, in call centers, in the field, through reseller channels, and across retail and dealer networks. Siebel Systems' sales and service facilities are located in more than 32 countries. For more information, please visit Siebel Systems' Web site at www.siebel.com.

Addendum

IBM: "Siebel Systems understands the value created by integrating IT system investments through pre-built business processes and standards based infrastructure," said Paraic Sweeney, Vice President Marketing WebSphere Business Integration, Software Group, IBM. "The strength of IBM's integration server technology partnered with Universal Application Network will resolve the complex business process integration problems facing customers and partners, today and in the future."

SeeBeyond: "Siebel Systems understands that integrating investments in technology and better managing business processes will ultimately deliver value to a customer's bottom line," said Reed Henry, Vice President of Services, Support, and Alliances for SeeBeyond. "We are excited to expand our partnership with Siebel Systems and create an application network solution that will resolve the complex business process integration challenges facing customers today and in the future."

TIBCO Software: "As the enterprise application market moves to the mainstream, customers are demanding that industry leaders provide a more cost effective, standards-based approach," said Murat Sonmez, Senior Vice President of Marketing, TIBCO Software. "By partnering with Siebel Systems to provide customers a standards-based, out-of-the-box application integration solution, we are able to deliver accelerated integration with back-office systems leading to reduced deployment risks, lower cost of ownership and faster return on investment."

Vitria: "The combination of Vitria's integration platform and Siebel Systems' deep industry expertise will help customers simplify process integration and experience rapid return on their technology investment," said Dale Skeen, Chief Technology Officer, Vitria. "Universal Application Network provides a unique, customer-centric approach to process integration challenges, and we are excited to partner with Siebel Systems to offer customers immediate value."

WebMethods: "Through Universal Application Network, customers will be able to easily and cost-effectively integrate any of the Siebel eBusiness Applications to non-Siebel applications using standards-based out-of-the-box functionality," said David Mitchell, president and COO of webMethods. "Siebel Systems is creating an incredibly aggressive and market-leading integration solution, making it as easy as possible for customers to deploy Siebel eBusiness Applications and to extract additional value from their application investments. We applaud Siebel Systems' forward thinking and find it perfectly aligned with our ongoing efforts to reduce the total costs of integration for our customers."

Contact

Siebel Systems, Inc.
Jane Paolucci
Tel: 650/477-1334
Email: jpaolucci@siebel.com

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See the news item: "Siebel Systems Announces XML-Based Universal Application Network."

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Siebel Systems, Inc., the world's leading provider of eBusiness applications, today announces the industry's first standards-based vendor-independent application integration solution with the launch of Universal Application Network. Universal Application Network dramatically reduces the need for custom integration, minimizing complexity, speeding deployment and delivering a low total cost of ownership (TCO). Leading system integrators such as Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Accenture, IBM Global Services and KPMG Consulting, and integration server vendors including IBM, SeeBeyond, TIBCO Software, Vitria, and webMethods, have all committed technology and expertise to deliver the Universal Application Network. "We are delighted to extend our relationship with Siebel Systems and support the Universal Application Network," said Chell Smith, Global Managing Director, Business Solutions and Technology, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. "The combination of our Adaptive Architecture, delivery capability, focus on productivity and Siebel Systems' leadership in eBusiness, promises to deliver to our joint clients outstanding solutions with significant improvement in return on investment (ROI) and decreased TCO." "With the introduction of Universal Application Network, Siebel Systems is the first vendor to provide a customer-focused solution that allows enterprises to quickly and cost-effectively integrate all their applications using a standards-based architecture, that is both scalable and reliable," said Alan Grometstein, VP of Technology, Quick & Reilly. "Our customers have clearly communicated the importance of application integration," said Tom Siebel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Siebel Systems. "Rather than build a custom or proprietary solution, we responded by partnering with industry leaders to create the universal/collective/widespread standards-based, business process integration solution that reduces cost and complexity and enables customers to choose applications that best meet their business needs." Universal Application Network Delivers a Low Total Cost of Ownership Universal Application Network takes a standards-based, customer-centric approach to the design and development of end-to-end business processes which are executed by market-leading integration servers. In addition, these business processes are application independent and can be deployed across a diverse set of applications across multiple divisions and business units. The result is a vendor-independent architecture that dramatically reduces the need for customization, minimizes complexity, speeds deployment, and delivers a low total cost of ownership. "As enterprises are moving beyond point-to-point integration approaches to more enterprise-spanning integration strategies, packaged application vendors are recognizing that merely providing a laundry list of APIs and adapters is no longer sufficient," said Jeff Comport, Vice President and Research Fellow, Gartner. "The next generation of packaged application integration will be based on integration broker and Web service technology, and be governed by enterprise-spanning process models that extend well beyond the traditional definitional boundaries of any single package or suite." Siebel Systems is uniquely positioned to deliver this solution through its open architecture, industry specific domain expertise and extensive partner ecosystem. Universal Application Network solution: Delivers end-to-end, industry-specific extensible business processes. Leveraging industry best practices and the domain expertise of leading system integrators, Siebel Systems is building a comprehensive set of prepackaged, industry specific business processes that are customizable, extensible and upgradeable. These prepackaged business processes reduce cost, complexity and risk of application integration, while accelerating time to deployment. Provides re-usable business processes, enabling organizations to "create once, deploy everywhere." Independent of both the underlying applications and integration server, the pre-packaged business processes can be re-used across multiple divisions or lines of business -- even where different applications or integration servers are deployed. This reduces implementation time, cost and complexity. Embraces industry standards. Universal Application Network is based on emerging Web Services and XML standards. The business process specifications are supported by the leading integration technology vendors -- IBM, SeeBeyond, TIBCO Software, Vitria, and webMethods, and offer organizations reduced deployment time and risk, dramatically lower cost of development and support, and a choice of their preferred integration server. Leverages proven integration server technology that is robust, highly scalable, and reliable. A development effort spanning more than 15 years of combined experience by the leading integration server vendors, Universal Application Network is technically robust, highly scalable, and reliable -- supporting the integration requirements of the world's largest organizations and most complex IT environments. Offers organizations maximum flexibility and choice. Universal Application Network is application-independent, leveraging customers' existing investments and interoperating with any underlying application. As a result, customers are no longer locked into a single vendor's proprietary product set and integration architecture, but can instead select from the industry's best application and integration technologies. Partnering for a Standards-based Solution Siebel Systems is partnering with the world's leading systems integrators and integration providers to deliver a complete, cost effective, standard-based approach to solving complex integration problems. "Universal Application Network is innovative and customer-focused. Siebel Systems' customers will embrace its standards-based approach to using Web services as a technology enabler," said Eric Austvold, Research Director, Enterprise Applications & Technologies, AMR Research. "Siebel Systems has clearly partnered with the industry leaders, and if managed properly, can leverage each relationship to solve unique technology and industry requirements. Siebel Systems is leading the way, and SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft would be wise to address their clients' integration concerns as well." System integrators have extensive experience and expertise in developing industry-specific business processes that span multiple applications. By partnering with Siebel Systems, leading systems integrators will deliver superior pre-packaged solutions to support key business processes across a broad range of industries and industry segments. "This strategy is consistent with our view of helping clients solve their process problems, rather than spending time on the detailed work mapping various applications' data model," said Mark Lee, senior vice president, product solutions, KPMG Consulting. "Teaming with Siebel Systems presents us with another opportunity to help our joint customers decrease time to market and lower total cost of ownership." Siebel Systems is also working closely with leading integration server providers including IBM, SeeBeyond, TIBCO Software, Vitria, and webMethods, who have more than 15 years of integration infrastructure experience. Customers can leverage their existing investments in these integration technologies and minimize deployment risks, while upgrading to a more sophisticated, efficient and cost-effective application integration solution. "Universal Application Network addresses the reality of the heterogeneous IT environment at Bose with a holistic, manageable, and scalable solution," said Tim Arnold, Manager, Process and Engagement, Bose. "Universal Application Network's application agnostic business processes and support for all leading integration server vendors will allow Bose to seamlessly integrate with our legacy, packaged, and custom applications." Universal Application Network Components Combining Siebel Systems and its partners' domain expertise, Universal Application Network is comprised of three major components: a comprehensive business process library, a state-of-the-art business process design tool, and a market-leading integration server. 1. Business Process Library The business process library is a collection of prepackaged, end-to-end, industry specific business processes -- such as Customer Creation or Quote to Order. The business processes are based on XML and Web Services standards and are independent of both the underlying applications and integration server. These business processes include: Pre-built business process flows. These orchestrate a sequence of steps across multiple applications to achieve a business objective. They are defined using an industry-leading specification based on Web Services standards. Common objects. These objects are a composite of application data models and are compliant with industry-specific standards such as RosettaNet and OAG. Siebel Systems provides a comprehensive set of pre-defined objects, such as customer, employee, product and quote objects. Transformation maps. These provide mappings between the application data models and common objects, and are based on XSLT standards. Siebel Systems provides pre-built transformation maps to back office applications (such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Amdocs, Kenan, Portal, etc.). 2. Business Process Design Tool Universal Application Network provides an intuitive graphical tool for developing and configuring business process solutions -- including business process flows, common objects, and transformation maps. The design tool has import and export capabilities to accept and emit definitions of the business process solutions in XML standards. The design tool consists of: Business Process Flow Modeler. The Business Process Flow modeler enables the user to describe business processes at various levels of abstraction. A business analyst uses the modeler to describe the business process at a level that is application independent. An application developer can further define details by providing process flows that indicate how a specific application accomplishes those steps. The Business Process Flow modeler also provides visual representation of error conditions, transactional boundaries, and compensating transactions. The modeler accepts and emits Web services-based XML representations of the defined processes. Transformation Modeler. Transformation Modeler is used to define transformations, which describe mappings between common objects and the application data model. The user can visually drag and drop fields and choose available function libraries to define transformations. The Transformation Modeler can also be used to define custom transformations. It accepts and emits XSD schemas and XSLT-based transformations. 3. Integration Server The Integration Server coordinates inter-application communication. Examples of commercially available Integration Servers include IBM WebSphere Business Integration, SeeBeyond Business Integration Suite, TIBCO BusinessWorks, Vitria BusinessWare, and webMethods Platform. These products are being enhanced to specifically execute the standards-based business processes and include the following elements: Transport layer. Transport layer is a messaging service that provides queuing, guarantees delivery of messages, and supports both synchronous and asynchronous messaging. Adapter. The adapter connects an application to the transport layer. It relays events from the application to the integration server and has the ability to import application configurations into the integration server. Common object model. The common object model provides a framework to define common objects. It is extensible and supports customer-developed objects. Transformations. The Integration Server provides the transformation layer, which executes the transformation maps at run-time. Business process controller. The business process controller provides step-by-step execution of a business process. The business process controller provides support for long-running transactions and error-handling, monitors the status of processes and collects statistics for reporting and analytics. With the release of Siebel 7 in November 2001, Siebel Systems was the first eBusiness applications provider to recognize the highly varied, multi-application reality of customers' IT environments by introducing a next-generation "application network" integration architecture. Today, Siebel Systems has taken a significant next step to build on this approach through strategic partnerships and the development of new functionality for Universal Application Network planned for availability this summer. About Siebel Systems Siebel Systems, Inc. is the world's leading provider of eBusiness applications software. Siebel Systems provides an integrated family of eBusiness applications software, enabling multichannel sales, marketing, and customer service systems to be deployed over the Web, in call centers, in the field, through reseller channels, and across retail and dealer networks. Siebel Systems' sales and service facilities are located in more than 32 countries. For more information, please visit Siebel Systems' Web site at www.siebel.com. Addendum IBM: "Siebel Systems understands the value created by integrating IT system investments through pre-built business processes and standards based infrastructure," said Paraic Sweeney, Vice President Marketing WebSphere Business Integration, Software Group, IBM. "The strength of IBM's integration server technology partnered with Universal Application Network will resolve the complex business process integration problems facing customers and partners, today and in the future." SeeBeyond: "Siebel Systems understands that integrating investments in technology and better managing business processes will ultimately deliver value to a customer's bottom line," said Reed Henry, Vice President of Services, Support, and Alliances for SeeBeyond. "We are excited to expand our partnership with Siebel Systems and create an application network solution that will resolve the complex business process integration challenges facing customers today and in the future." TIBCO Software: "As the enterprise application market moves to the mainstream, customers are demanding that industry leaders provide a more cost effective, standards-based approach," said Murat Sonmez, Senior Vice President of Marketing, TIBCO Software. "By partnering with Siebel Systems to provide customers a standards-based, out-of-the-box application integration solution, we are able to deliver accelerated integration with back-office systems leading to reduced deployment risks, lower cost of ownership and faster return on investment." Vitria: "The combination of Vitria's integration platform and Siebel Systems' deep industry expertise will help customers simplify process integration and experience rapid return on their technology investment," said Dale Skeen, Chief Technology Officer, Vitria. "Universal Application Network provides a unique, customer-centric approach to process integration challenges, and we are excited to partner with Siebel Systems to offer customers immediate value." WebMethods: "Through Universal Application Network, customers will be able to easily and cost-effectively integrate any of the Siebel eBusiness Applications to non-Siebel applications using standards-based out-of-the-box functionality," said David Mitchell, president and COO of webMethods. "Siebel Systems is creating an incredibly aggressive and market-leading integration solution, making it as easy as possible for customers to deploy Siebel eBusiness Applications and to extract additional value from their application investments. We applaud Siebel Systems' forward thinking and find it perfectly aligned with our ongoing efforts to reduce the total costs of integration for our customers." Contact Siebel Systems, Inc. Jane Paolucci Tel: 650/477-1334 Email: jpaolucci@siebel.com Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See the news item: "Siebel Systems Announces XML-Based Universal Application Network."