Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is defined as the uses of software and computer systems architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications.
Many medium-size and large corporations use a variety of computer applications for managing data, including supply chain management applications (for managing inventory and shipping), customer relationship management applications (for managing current and potential customers), business intelligence applications (for managing internal operations), and other types of applications (for managing data such as human resources data, internal communications, etc). Unfortunately, such applications typically cannot communicate with one another in order to share data or business rules; for this reason, such applications are sometimes referred to as islands of automation or information silos. This lack of communication leads to inefficiency, in the form of the same data having to be stored in multiple locations, or straightforward processes that are unable to be automated.
Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the process of linking such applications within a single organization together in order to simplify and automate business processes to the greatest extent possible, while at the same time avoiding having to make sweeping changes to the existing applications or data structures. In the words of the Gartner Group, EAI is the “unrestricted sharing of data and business processes among any connected application or data sources in the enterprise.”[1]
One large challenge of EAI is that the various systems that need to be linked together often reside on different operating systems, use different database solutions and different computer languages, and in some cases are legacy systems that are no longer supported by the vendor who originally created them. In some cases, such systems are dubbed "stovepipe systems" because they consist of components that have been jammed together in a way that makes it very hard to modify them in any way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_application_integration
Many problems organizations have with ERP systems are due to inadequate investment in ongoing training for involved personnel, including those implementing and testing changes, as well as a lack of corporate policy protecting the integrity of the data in the ERP systems and how it is used.
Limitations of ERP include:
Success depends on the skill and experience of the workforce, including training about how to make the system work correctly. Many companies cut costs by cutting training budgets.
Privately owned small enterprises are often undercapitalized, meaning their ERP system is often operated by personnel with inadequate education in ERP in general, such as APICS foundations, and in the particular ERP vendor package being used.
Personnel turnover; companies can employ new managers lacking education in the company's ERP system, proposing changes in business practices that are out of synchronization with the best utilization of the company's selected ERP.
Customization of the ERP software is limited. Some customization may involve changing of the ERP software structure which is usually not allowed.
Re-engineering of business processes to fit the "industry standard" prescribed by the ERP system may lead to a loss of competitive advantage.
ERP systems can be very expensive to install often ranging from 30,000 US Dollars to 500,000,000 US Dollars for multinational companies.
ERP vendors can charge sums of money for annual license renewal that is unrelated to the size of the company using the ERP or its profitability.
Technical support personnel often give replies to callers that are inappropriate for the caller's corporate structure. Computer security concerns arise, for example when telling a non-programmer how to change a database on the fly, at a company that requires an audit trail of changes so as to meet some regulatory standards.
ERPs are often seen as too rigid and too difficult to adapt to the specific workflow and business process of some companies—this is cited as one of the main causes of their failure.
Systems can be difficult to use.
Systems are too restrictive and do not allow much flexibility in implementation and usage.
The system can suffer from the "weakest link" problem—an inefficiency in one department or at one of the partners may affect other participants.
Many of the integrated links need high accuracy in other applications to work effectively. A company can achieve minimum standards, then over time "dirty data" will reduce the reliability of some applications.
Once a system is established, switching costs are very high for any one of the partners (reducing flexibility and strategic control at the corporate level).
The blurring of company boundaries can cause problems in accountability, lines of responsibility, and employee morale.
Resistance in sharing sensitive internal information between departments can reduce the effectiveness of the software.
Some large organizations may have multiple departments with separate, independent resources, missions, chains-of-command, etc, and consolidation into a single enterprise may yield limited benefits.
There are frequent compatibility problems with the various legacy systems of the partners.
The system may be over-engineered relative to the actual needs of the customer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning
A Miniature Synchrotron
Synchrotrons are huge facilities that can produce intense, high-quality x-ray beams for scientific purposes. They usually span the size of a football field and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and operate. But now, researchers at Lyncean Technologies, a startup in Palo Alto, CA, have shrunk the synchrotron to the size of a room. This miniature synchrotron offers scientists a new way to perform high-quality x-ray experiments in their own labs.
Lyncean has built a prototype synchrotron and is constructing another to be installed this year at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. The new synchrotron will be used by the Accelerated Technologies Center for Gene to 3D Structure, which is part of the National Institutes of Health's Protein Structure Initiative.
The tabletop instrument is "not as powerful as the big synchrotrons," says Ronald Ruth, Lyncean's president and chief scientist. "But on the other hand, it's far cheaper, and it's very compact." He likens the national synchrotrons to supercomputers, where many users must compete for limited time on one of the beams. "[The synchrotrons] address the state-of-the art," Ruth says. "They push the envelope. But their impact is only as broad as the number of people that are willing to travel to go there." The miniature synchrotron is more like a PC, he says, shared by a few users and readily available.
X-rays are useful in probing the properties of materials, since their wavelength is about the same size as atoms and the chemical bonds between them. For example, x-ray crystallography is an important method in determining protein structure. X-rays diffract as they pass through a protein crystal, generating a characteristic interference pattern. By analyzing the pattern, scientists can deduce the arrangement of the atoms and thus determine the protein's structure.
For these kinds of studies, synchrotron radiation has advantages over ordinary x-ray sources: It's a hundred million times brighter and highly concentrated, which allows for very precise, high-resolution experiments. Synchrotrons also produce a continuous source of x-rays, instead of the short bursts generated from common x-ray tubes. And a synchrotron's light is tunable, so researchers can match the energy to the material being probed.
The quality of light from the miniature synchrotron is as good as the big machines, says Franz Pfeiffer, a physicist at the Paul Scherrer Institute and École Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland. "That's what makes it so attractive," he says. "[It] combines the benefit of having something relatively small with the advantages of the extremely brilliant beam that is available through synchrotrons. It's a very nice thing to have."
Ruth first determined that a miniature synchrotron might be possible in the late 1990s, when hewas a professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Ruth and a graduate student, Zhirong Huang, were looking for a way to cool electron beams by getting them to radiate. They found that hitting the beams with a laser not only cooled them effectively, but also generated x-rays.
This effect proved to be the key to shrinking the synchrotron down to size. Big synchrotrons use magnetic "undulators" that wiggle the electron beam from side to side as it circulates around a large storage ring. Ruth explains that that wiggle, on the order of one centimeter, generates x-rays that are thrown off on a tangent to the circle, much like a spinning searchlight shines light.
The miniature synchrotron uses only a moving laser pulse that interacts with the electron beam each time it goes around the storage ring, which fits on a tabletop. The wiggle is one ten thousandth as small--just one micrometer--and the x-rays are given off in a single beam.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/20149/
Gapped down to $1.20 on opening and rebounded back to $1.24 support turned resistance line. New battle zone is $1.24 to $1.20. Rally above $1.24 will be capped at $1.27 to $1.28 resistance zone and the black downtrend resistance line. Failure of $1.20 support will result in test of all time low support. Being a half trading day today price will probably be restricted between this new battle zone $1.24 to $1.20 . Happy New Mouse Year.
