THE PATH AHEAD

If you're like most companies, you're having a hard time keeping up with changes in hardware, software, or business policies. Inflexible information systems hold you back -- they can't adapt or expand to meet increasing business demands and deliver new services across the enterprise.

What to do? You've invested too much in your current IT systems to turn back. Instead, you have to revitalize what you have. While your current development tools may be useful for creating new applications, these applications don't adapt easily to time-critical changes -- business decisions that keep up with tough competition and market trends as well as new technologies.

Traditional client/server applications tie business logic directly to user interface screens on the client or corporate data on a server. As a result, making simple changes or scaling applications to serve more users involves huge efforts in revamping critical applications.

With OPENSTEP Enterprise, you can easily

Create business objects that integrate business logic with business data.

Modify and deploy business objects that are independent of data and the user interface.

You can easily customize or replace pieces of OPENSTEP Enterprise applications without replacing whole applications.

Your OPENSTEP applications are easy to scale because you can distribute business objects among additional and more powerful enterprise application servers as the need arises. By placing logic where it works best--for example, on a dedicated server or close to the data it manipulates--you can fine tune performance.

Unlike any other solution, OPENSTEP Enterprise does much of the work of scaling and modifying your applications, leaving you free to create real business assets to gain a competitive advantage.

STEP 1 ASSEMBLE

"The results were very impressive, a major gain in productivity. I'd estimate the new object development process is a fivefold improvement."

--AT&T Wireless

With OPENSTEP Enterprise, you can focus on building your business logic rather than on creating and maintaining low-level features. The key is reusing logic across your enterprise that's either prebuilt by NeXT or built once by you.

Use and reuse prebuilt objects
The best code is code that's been tested and proven to work. At the core of the OPENSTEP Enterprise development environment are prebuilt objects that come ready to use for common tasks. Modify these objects, if you like, and reuse them in applications across your enterprise to greatly reduce the coding, debugging, and testing needed to develop your solutions.

These objects have been tested and honed in products shipping commercially for nearly ten years. Their consistent design and task-oriented documentation make them easy to learn -- and expertise you gain with one applies to them all.

Keep pace in a dynamic environment
In the OPENSTEP Enterprise environment, your applications consist of dynamic business objects that each provide a set of services. For example, a customer object might create new customer records and provide information about existing customer accounts.

You program business objects to perform tasks based on the specific rules of your business logic. Instead of being hardwired to specific data or user interface screens as in traditional applications, all your objects--those you build and those prebuilt by NeXT -- communicate dynamically to find the services they need.

With such flexibility, you can quickly adapt applications to meet changing business needs. You can modify objects, create new ones, or move objects to other servers without recoding, recompiling, or even restarting the application. To change how a customer is created, for example, just edit the customer object. To add a new kind of service, build a new object. Objects that subsequently look for this service automatically use the new information.

Such changes take minutes or hours instead of days or weeks. And there's no interruption in service while you work on critical applications.

Assemble prebuilt application objects
You won't need to write starter code to access common low-level features, such as thread management, file management, memory and user management, and international support. OPENSTEP Enterprise objects come wired and ready to use across all your applications. Quickly assemble the functionality you want and get on with building your core business logic.

OPENSTEP Enterprise also provides transparent distribution by encapsulating low-level network protocols into ready-to-use objects. No special coding is required to create remote objects, so you can develop business objects without worrying about where they'll be deployed. Distribute your objects whenever and wherever you want among diverse clients, servers, and databases. You can even redistribute objects to try out different physical layouts, without changing or modifying them. And if you like, you can plug in another transport mechanism.

Create your business logic on Windows NT
Once you've assembled the basic functionality of your application, it's time to build custom business logic. OPENSTEP Enterprise provides an integrated suite of graphical development tools to use on Windows NT with any of several standard programming languages. These tools include:

a source-level debugger

a class browser

a project management utility

compilers for client and server environments

You assemble objects graphically, dragging and dropping prebuilt objects, your custom business objects, and objects from third parties. The OPENSTEP Enterprise development tools maximize reuse so you can build business logic quickly, greatly reducing your time to market.

OPENSTEP Enterprise supports fully compiled code for enterprise-level performance. Objects are written in Objective C, which is simply C with built-in object support. If you like, you can instead use C, C++, or Java to work with prebuilt objects and to create and assemble your custom objects. You can easily reuse and integrate existing C and C++ code into your enterprise applications as well.

STEP 2 INTEGRATE

"We had 60% object reuse across our applications. [OPENSTEP] saved us untold millions in development costs."

--Fannie Mae

OPENSTEP Enterprise protects your technology investments by seamlessly integrating existing corporate data and applications with your core business logic. Leverage your investments in relational databases, mainframes, Windows applications, and CORBA-compliant objects.

Plug into relational databases
To build dynamic business applications, you need more than access to data. You need to integrate data with business logic so your applications are independent of any fixed data infrastructure. With OPENSTEP Enterprise, you can

Integrate core business logic with relational databases, including
Oracle, Sybase, Informix, DB2, and ODBC-compliant databases

Integrate with object-oriented databases and online data feeds

It's easy, too. Using a graphical tool, you just drag and drop to map your business object model to your existing data model. OPENSTEP Enterprise does the rest, making the data components in these objects persist in the database.
Your business logic is insulated from the semantics of how data is stored and retrieved. So you can rearrange objects to interact with different databases without recoding any business logic. And you can make changes to the database schema without having to modify your business logic.

Revitalize legacy mainframe services
Your business logic also integrates easily with legacy mainframe data and applications to create dynamic business objects. At run time, these objects interact transparently with mainframe data and services, viewing them as just another database.

You continue to access legacy data through your host applications, preserving the business logic, audit trails, and security inherent to the legacy environment. You can even use TP monitors. Enjoy the benefits of dynamic multi-tier applications while fully protecting your critical business investments.

Integrate applications and services
Organizations currently use a wide variety of shrink-wrapped applications, such as Excel and Word. Many also rely on departmental applications developed using traditional client/server tools, such as PowerBuilder and Visual Basic. You can seamlessly integrate Windows applications with your dynamic business objects via OLE Automation, greatly reducing the cost of integrating new business components with these proven solutions.

OPENSTEP Enterprise also supports the CORBA 2.0 standard, allowing all your objects to interoperate easily with CORBA objects.

STEP 3 DEPLOY

"NeXT's products will help our technology capabilities stay ahead of the rapid changes in the financial markets."

--Merrill Lynch

Once you've captured your core business logic and integrated it with your existing services and data, you can deploy it to hundreds or thousands of users. Begin small by servicing a department and scale easily across your enterprise and beyond as you grow. Maximize your investment by targeting specific users with your business expertise, whether they're using the Web, Windows, or Solaris. You can deploy your expertise across Windows NT and UNIX servers, transparently locating objects as needed.

Deploy to any web browser
Organizations everywhere are publishing information and services on the Web. OPENSTEP Enterprise makes it a snap to vend your business objects to any web browser--across the Internet or on a corporate intranet. Using a graphical web development tool, you just connect your business objects to HTML user interfaces.

OPENSTEP Enterprise also supports popular web technologies, such as Java and ActiveX, as well as industry security standards. You can use any standard HTTP server, including the Netscape Commerce Server and Microsoft Internet Server. Once you've created your business objects, you can vend them to users worldwide.

Build a GUI with your existing tool
If you already have experience using a particular Windows GUI builder, you can keep using that tool to develop an OLE-enabled interface. Through support for OLE Automation, you can easily connect business objects to a Windows user interface using your favorite tool.

Create a custom Windows interface
Enjoy the same power and flexibility creating a user interface for your business applications as you did building business logic. OPENSTEP Enterprise includes a comprehensive set of reusable user interface objects that provide the look and feel of Windows 95. You can also deploy these objects on Solaris.

Like other prebuilt objects from NeXT, these user interface objects have been proven and tested for years. You'll use a graphical tool to transparently connect them to your business objects. Once you've mastered building business objects, working with user interface objects is simple.

LET OUR EXPERTS GET YOU STARTED

To take full advantage of OPENSTEP Enterprise and get to market fast, let our Professional Services group help you plan and build your ultimate business solution. Combine proven, reliable technology with training, consulting, and support from a team of experts backed by over ten years of experience -- experts dedicated to ensuring that you enjoy all the benefits of dynamic business applications.

Today's business faces tremendous challenges, from serving a growing number and diversity of users to keeping up with frequent changes and ahead of the competition -- all while protecting critical technology investments. If these challenges are holding your business back, make a smart and safe investment in OPENSTEP Enterprise, the leading solution for delivering dynamic applications across the enterprise and beyond.