Enterprise resource planning software vendor J.D. Edwards & Co. on Wednesday announced the release of a new iteration of its eXtended Process Integration (XPI) middleware.
Essentially integration software, XPI helps companies collaborate with suppliers, partners and customers.
The latest release of XPI, which wasnt given a version number, includes two major enhancements for sharing business processes internally and externally. The first is full native support for Web services. Despite the fact that Web services have yet to be widely accepted or used, JDE officials, in Denver, believe the promise for eased integration using Web services is there and its only a matter of time until Web services are utilized.
In this spirit, JDE also announced a dozen new eXtended Business Processes – XPBs – which are pre-set, executable business processes that work with XPI to tie together applications in and outside the firewall. Because they are pre-set, executable business processes, XPBs go beyond application-to-application integration to trigger business process responses appropriate to an enterprises workflow capabilities, officials said.
The pre-defined XPBs operate in conjunction with integrated enterprise resource planning, supply chain management and customer relationship management systems to drive processes for order promising, sales order processing, purchasing, billing, invoicing and shipping.
The new XPBs, available with the latest release of XPI, include address book synchronization, general ledger updates, order promising, order notification, manufacturing work orders, inventory item balance and procurement order notification. JDE offers 85 XPBs in total, which can be deployed as Web services, officials said.