{"id":4608,"date":"2022-06-01T20:25:16","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T20:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/enterprise-resource-planning\/?p=4608"},"modified":"2024-05-03T20:48:53","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T20:48:53","slug":"enable-a-new-generation-of-business-by-using-flow-architecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/enterprise-resource-planning\/enable-a-new-generation-of-business-by-using-flow-architecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Enable a New Generation of Business by Using Flow Architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As part of Solutions Review\u2019s\u00a0Contributed Content Series<\/a>\u2014a collection of articles written by industry thought leaders in maturing software categories\u2014Jesse Menning, an architect in the Office of the CTO for Solace<\/a>, explains how “flow architecture” is helping forward-looking organizations expedite the movement of business-critical data across their partner ecosystem.<\/span><\/b><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Organizations across industries have dealt with unprecedented disruption in the last two years. To meet these challenges, businesses have had to change the way they think about the flow of critical data across the complex ecosystem of suppliers, shippers, distribution partners, and retailers that makes their business tick. <\/b><\/span>Given the complex interdependencies of modern enterprises and surrounding partner ecosystems, businesses need a way to share real-time information across enterprise boundaries.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The recent pandemic highlighted how remaining competitive sometimes requires swiftly and radically changing ecosystem components. To achieve this, businesses have had to discover, send, and receive real-time data from new partners that are more resilient, more resourceful, or more innovative. <\/span>In many ways, it’s comparable to how the “gig economy” is transforming how we live, travel, and work. <\/span><\/p>\n

People are shying away from long-term commitments like owning a car and having a full-time job in favor of Uber-ing everywhere and selling their skills and time either as Uber drivers themselves or via freelance sites like Fiverr and Upwork. Companies will benefit in today’s constantly evolving business landscape by developing into a series of functions and services that they invoke from or provide to a shifting set of trusted partners. <\/span>The business value of working like this is easy to imagine, but from software architecture and integration perspectives, realizing this business-level vision is more complicated than it sounds.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Enter Event-Driven Thinking and “Flow” <\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

One of the most authoritative ideas for solving this challenge comes from software development expert James Urquhart. MIT Technology Review and the Huffington Post have called Urquhart one of the ten most influential people in cloud computing. <\/span>Urquhart <\/span><\/a>explains<\/span><\/a>: “Software development today is embracing events and streaming data, which optimizes not only how technology interacts but also <\/span>how businesses integrate with one another<\/span><\/i> [emphasis added] to meet customer needs. This phenomenon, called <\/span>flow<\/span><\/i>, consists of patterns and standards that determine which activity and related data is communicated between parties over the internet.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Flow is defined as an event-driven integration between organizations that uses standard ways of:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n