To reduce the difficulty of connecting their systems with other vendors' applications, customers have pushed their primary ERP providers to adopt a more open and flexible architecture and to support standards-based computing. Most big ERP providers have responded by migrating their architectures to component frameworks based on such standards as COM and CORBA. However, in the vast majority of cases, it's still quite difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to integrate enterprise software.

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The concept of integration lies at the very heart of ERP. The original idea was to create an application that combined an integrated database, code set, and user interface to tie together essential corporate information and business processes. (See story for more on the fundamentals of ERP.) It makes sense that the idea of integration would be extended to also include software from other enterprise providers. Integrating two applications from the same vendor is a challenge, but integrating applications from a variety of vendors is much more difficult.

To reduce the difficulty of connecting their systems with other vendors' applications, customers have pushed their primary ERP providers to adopt a more open and flexible architecture and to support standards-based computing. Most big ERP providers have responded by migrating their architectures to component frameworks based on such standards as COM and CORBA. However, in the vast majority of cases, it's still quite difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to integrate enterprise software.

Still, when it comes to opening their architectures, vendors are of two minds. On the one hand, they need to respond to customer demands for easier integration. And by supporting integration with other vendors' software, they can add diverse functionality to customers' ERP systems without having to develop every new application that comes along. On the other hand, it's easier for vendors to provide efficient and reliable software when they control all the pieces. ERP vendors also make more money when they sell more modules to individual customers. While the trend is definitely toward increasing openness, it won't happen overnight. Vendors can't abruptly migrate to a new architecture because doing so would disenfranchise customers with legacy systems. Before making a decision on ERP packages, make a list of software with which you need to integrate and the specific functions, business process, and data that need to be tied together. Carefully determine how much work is involved to integrate those packages and get a clear understanding of the vendor's timetable for supporting the integration of any functions that are problematic.

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