This is accomplished with new products such as the SAP Business Connector. A recent Gartner Group study indicated that midsized companies have an average of 30 disparate systems that are not fully integrated, require multiple data maintenance and change man-agement, are not Internet enabled, and whose business processes do not cross company boundaries. Business process integration across company boundaries is accomplished through the exchange of transactions between companies based on open Internet standards. Companies can now seamlessly integrate their business processes by exchanging transactions between their respective logistics and financial systems. This in itself promises significant savings in turnaround times, effort, and transaction costs.
Collaboration technologies work both across layers and across layers of multiple systems.
This is possible through a Web standards-based infrastructure. This enables companies to use customized templates as well as to automatically generate HTML pages. While we are on the topic of the presentation layer, let's take a look at how the Internet Business Framework supports pervasive computing. In addition to being cool toys, these task-centric devices play a serious role in business applications. All of these touchpoints necessitate middleware with an integrated application layer.