Wednesday, July 04, 2007

More about OBA's and RAPs

Not sure what OBA is all about - read the intro on  the Office Business Appplication Developer Portal  -

The 2007 Microsoft Office system provides a comprehensive set of servers, clients, and tools to make it easier for enterprises, software vendors and developers to build and deploy a new class of business applications called Office Business Applications (OBAs).

OBAs connect Line of Business (LOB) systems with the people that use them through the familiar user interface of Microsoft Office. OBAs enable businesses to extend the Microsoft Office clients and servers into business processes running in LOB applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Supply Chain Management (SCM). This enables enterprises to create new value from existing IT investments by combining them in innovative ways.

 

Still not satisfied with the available information - definitely take a look at the OBA Solution Framework Index - OBA Blogathon. To get you started there are also some sample solution packs available - and recently some new Reference Application Packs (RAP) were recently released:

  • OBA RAP (Reference Application Pack) for Plant Floor Manufacturing Analytics - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb643797.aspx - This RAP contains a reference solution architecture and application that demonstrate materializing a BI centric OBA that integrates tightly with the Microsoft BI platform (Office and SQL Server) to realize the Analytics value chain of enabling operational monitoring, tactical analysis & decision making, and tactical analysis & decision making, and strategic insight.
  • OBA RAP for E-Forms Processing in the Public Sector - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb643796.aspx - This RAP contains a reference solution architecture and solution that illustrate how an OBA (Office Business Application) can be built to automate and optimize forms processing in a Public Sector organization. The reference solution framework show cased in the RAP is generic and can be adapted to enable end-to-end processing of a number of forms in the public sector

 

Related postings:

2 comments:

Mike Walker said...

Hi JOPX,

My name is Mike Walker I am on the Architecture Strategy Team at Microsoft. My team is responsible for building the OBA RAPs. I see that there is some difficulty understanding the OBA concept. I understand, this is a common issue.
I have blogged about this a bit and Mary Jo Foley from ZDNet has commented that my blog is the "must see" source for OBA. It's important to note that I talk more about the architecture concepts and a little bit on the development concerns.

You can find my blog at: Mike Walker's Blog.

You can also find my definition of OBA here:
OBAs Explained and Types of OBAs

I also built the OBA RAP for Loan Origination Systems located here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/orlos

Anonymous said...

Hi JOPX,

Your blog seems to pop up quite frequently when looking at anything to do with SharePoint. Your comments about OBA's is interesting particularly in light of my opinion that Microsoft as a whole doesn't quite get them either. Particularly as far as their marketing information is concerned.

I am the Sr. Solution Architect for OTB Solutions and until 2007 came out never used SharePoint as a basis for delivering any of our enterprise (or other for that matter) solutions. Since we joined the TAP program for Office about two years ago we have invested heavily in this area. The long and the short of it is that we have developed Code Free applications (from the database up) on the MOSS platform. If you're interested in this, check out our site at http://www.otbsolutions.com/Solutions/kdsa.aspx we'd be happy to chat about this and also would greatly appreciate any of your feedback.