AIS Newsletter , September 2000






EDITORIAL

 

RECENT NEWS


CERN an e-Business?

We are bombarded by stories about e-Commerce, e-Procurement, e-MarketPlaces, e-anything, and here you are already reading the second issue of an e-Newsletter.

In order to keep up with the trend I would like to share this question with you: 'Can we be an e-Business?'

I think the answer is YES, we will be an e-Business one day, but the real question is WHEN.....? And what is an e-Business in the first place?

It seems that an e-Business is an organisation that does everything 'online', preferably using the web. An e-Business has implemented all information flow in electronic form. This also implies that the contacts with the business partners are handled electronically whenever possible. That means no paper purchase orders, no invoices, no salary slips, no paper procedure handbook, no paper catalogues, no anything on paper. There are few e-Businesses in the world yet, there are rumours saying today there may exist four in total.

So where is CERN with 'e-stuff'? Will we be an e-Business soon? Some of us still remember the COBOL applications like GESTOCK, written in the 60s. These batch programs had no 'end user interface'. Input was done with punched cards, output was an updated file, or a paper list. These first (home made) administrative applications were introduced at CERN many decades ago. The last one was phased out in 1995 and ran for approximately 30 years. The punched cards disappeared when we wrote data entry applications (like K7 and 16i) in the early 80s. These precursors of the client/server architecture enabled the replacement of the card punching machines with (if you were rich, 24 lines times 80 character) video terminals. These 'front-end' applications were hiding the fact that deep down below (in our 'corporate applications') nothing had changed much. The mouse was invented, the Macintosh and later the PC became credible alternatives for the dedicated word processors, the 8Inch Floppy's became 5Inch, then 3.5Inch; BUT the way we are doing our business (for instance the orders we send to the suppliers, the invoices we send to the institutes for expenses made by teams), and the supporting 'back office' application software, has not fundamentally changed.

The birth of the WEB is supposed to have enabled a 'disruptive change' in this evolving application software world. This time we are told everything will be turned upside down, and if we don't surf on this e-Wave, we'll soon drown in the e-Ocean. What are we doing to increase the 'e' in the business? Do we need to be scared?

I don't think so, since all together we have lots of e-Wave surfing experience on which many organizations are jealous. The web versions of EDH, BHT, HRT, CFU, PIE, CTA, etc... are all using real state of the art technology (very sophisticated workflow in EDH and soon CFU, common logon for identification, encryption and secured transactions, etc..).

In fact we have been on our way to becoming an e-Business for a long time. We have been doing internal e-Procurement for over 5 years. We have a WEB Stores catalogue, and users have been buying Stores articles over the past years by simply clicking an item in the catalogue. So we have the technology, and we are becoming more and more 'e'. Furthermore we are in the process of moving all our applications to the WEB.

We are testing ORACLE*HR 11i which is a web enabled version of our human resources package.
We are working hard to introduce a new web enabled version of our financial and purchasing packages in Autumn 2001. (We hope to give a demo of this new version end of this year).
So 'internally' we will be technically ready in a couple of years to become a 'certified e-Business'. Remains our contacts with the outside world, which brings us to the subject of 'e-Commerce'. Lets define e-Commerce as buying and selling over the web, including all information exchange (product specifications, orders, confirmations, invoices, etc..).

Since one year e-MarketPlaces are emerging. On an e-MarketPlace instead of a going to the WEB catalogues of individual vendors, you can get in contact with a multitude of suppliers through a single entry point. e-MarketPlaces allow multiple customers and suppliers to meet and come to an agreement on price, quantities, lead times, and other commercial conditions. The e-MarketPlaces can be fully integrated with the 'back-office' Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP systems: the heavy batch programs that do for instance the scheduling of the production lines. This has the potential of greatly streamlining, integrating, and speeding up not only the selling and buying processes between companies, but the entire 'supply chain'. This process is called 'Supply Chain Integration' or SCI*. It is the recent emergence of XML (Extensible Markup Language) which has facilitated this electronic exchange of information between different application packages. However this technology is still very young, and standards have not settled yet.

Our attitude at this moment, is 'wait and see'. We are not in a strong enough position to impose our business partners to adopt the electronic exchange of information (as is the case in certain industries like the automotive industry).

We will keep an eye on what is happening in the outside world, and are ready to react quickly if we can gain benefits from the technology when it matures. With the products we have installed or are installing, we are well prepared to surf the e-Wave whenever it will hit us.

* SCI is another Three Letter Acronym or 'TLA', which is nothing new either, since it is being done since over a decade using EDI which is the TLA for Electronic Document Interchange. The difference is that EDI was never widely adopted, the WEB and the e-Stuff are supposed to enable the global supply chain integration).

 

Reinoud Martens
Group Leader


 

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LEAVE

New Leave Management System -
1st October 2000

The current leave management system needs to be thoroughly updated to take account of the following requirements:

* Simplification and standardisation of leave management
* Improvement of information available to the users
* Flexibility

Your leave and absence entitlements and your periods of absence will now be managed in four leave accounts operating like bank accounts, irrespective of the kind of leave/absence concerned and the reason for it.

Find out more about it here!
(Published on 15/09/2000)




BHT

NEW BHT Online Help!
A new and greatly improved version of the Online Help for webBHT has been implemented. The new Online help is more intuitive, detailed and much richer in terms of screen shots, showing the actual webBHT screens. The Online Help is available from the webBHT Desktop.
(Published on 04/09/2000)




EDH

Behind the scenes of WEB EDH
Did you know that since the development started of Web EDH in October 1998 there have been a quarter of a million lines of Java Code written? In addition to this over 1000 web pages have been written in both English and French inside EDH to provide the associated layout, templates and help files for the Web EDH. There are 4800 active EDH users with 1000 different EDH users a day. An EDH document is processed every 20 seconds and the one millionth EDH document will be created some time next year. Currently EDH is in a double transition period, simultaneously moving from the EDH 2.1 version to the Web and moving from an in-house developed routing engine to Oracle Workflow. For this reason you may see the occasional inconsistency between EDH 2.1 and the Web, or the routing of one document and another, but our goal is that the transition will be complete by the end of the year. (Published on 29/08/2000)




PRESENTATIONS

Have a look!
Interesting Presentations on the AIS Website, and EDH are available here! (Published on 21/08/2000)




SYSTEMS

What's new ?
The systems group has been busy setting up the Sun cluster in order to move key AIS applications to it. The cluster is made of 2 identical Sun 450 servers with A5000 storage arrays connected to them. It will provide high availability services by automatically switching machines in case of a failure and reconfiguring the network interfaces on the fly so that the service will be available to the users with a minimal disruption. Currently the BHT database runs on the cluster but the whole of BHT will be moved by the end of the summer. After BHT, in the beginning of the autumn, the rest of the applications residing on the missl server will be moved as well. These include the Common Login, CFU, CTA, PPT, the EDH catalogue, Foundation etc. (Published on 25/07/2000)




BHT

Quicktour!
BHT
has a new Quicktour. Have a look!
(Published on 10/07/2000)




CFU

Contract Follow UP
CFU now uses TUOVI 2.0 for the management of all documents related to the follow up of CERN contracts and their up stream Purchase Procedures. Please see the TUOVI 2.0 guide for the enhancements featured by this new version! (Published on 26/06/2000)




FAQ

Any questions?
Our site offers you a list of Frequently Asked Questions related to some of our applications like PIE, HRT, BHT, CFU, PPT, HR and EDH. You might find the answers to your questions, so have a go! (Published on 12/06/2000)




TREASURY SYSTEMS

Make sure you have a safe
The Treasury Management System will provide a comprehensive and detailed picture of the cash flow of CERN. It will also enable accurate cash forecasting for short, medium and long term. Connections will be made to CERN banks, ORIAC/SIRIAC and CFU. Find out more about this...(Published on 29/05/2000)




HRT

Human Resource Toolkit
HRT is an application intended to be used for accessing CERN Personnel data in order to carry out Human Resource management, planning and follow-up. The data is extracted and consolidated on a nightly basis which allows for the creation of up-to-date reports. Currently webHRT is under development and is planned to be available by the end of the year. (Published on 22/05/2000)




WebBHT

Budget Holders
The Budget Holders Toolkit - BHT - is a utility available on the World Wide Web which provides a versatile and user-friendly way to view CERN Financial Data. The data is extracted from the CERN Financial System (ORIAC/SIRIAC) and consolidated in BHT on a nightly basis which allows for the creation of up-to-date reports of current account balances, order statutes, etc. (Published on 16/05/2000)




CERTIFICATE
Your Identity card!
A digital certificate is a way of linking an organisation or individual to a public key. It is issued by a Certification Authority (CA) and abides to an industry standard. Its purpose is two fold. First it provides a key that can be used by a third party in order to encrypt information for the certificate owner. The second purpose is to provide some proof that the holder of the certificate is actually who they claim to be since if they were not , they could not decrypt the information that was encrypted using the key of the certificate. The CA makes sure that the holder's identity is protected by digitally signing the certificate in order to avoid tampering with. It is used inside the browser and for the common login. (Published on 09/05/2000)



BUSINESS MAP

Take the tour
Our applications cover various administrative areas. Take the tour to find out which application to use and how it interacts with the whole organization! (Published on 03/05/2000)




LINKS

Check those Links!
Find out more about our related groups, structures and divisions by clicking here! (Published on 18/04/2000)