[OBA Solution Framework Index] I'm posting this from Singapore where I did a couple of sessions at their Strategic Architect Forum yesterday on Office Business Applications, composite business solutions, and how to build them. Lately a number of folks that I've talked to, have been wresting with the...

[OBA Solution Framework Index] Consider composition of information in the Office Client. People are used to thinking of Word, Excel and Outlook as desktop productivity tools, but they can now serve as containers for data coming from back end servers (e.g. ERP and other Line of Business applications)...

[OBA Solution Framework Index] What is a composite application? In the simplest sense, it is a cross-functional solution assembled from pre-existing building blocks. These building blocks could be services, workflows and activities, documents, application blocks (e.g. portal web part), rules etc. What...

[OBA Solution Framework Index] [ UPDATE : For more info on the "OBA RAP for Price Management" (OBA type #5 below) announced yesterday, read the blog posting by Moin here .] Traditional business applications have mostly either provided collaboration (focus: information sharing), decision support (focus...

[OBA Solution Framework Index] Consider a team that is trying to deliver an OBA for a particular business process (e.g. to manage procurement). This could be an internal in-house IT development team building a standardized business process for enterprise-wide deployment, or it could be a solution provider...

[OBA Solution Framework Index] Office Business Applications (or OBAs) represent a good way to provide solutions for cross-functional business processes. Office Client applications allow users to interact with systems from using familiar interfaces. Office servers bring together structured and unstructured...

[OBA Solution Framework Index] An OBA is an emerging class of business application that bridges the gap between productivity tools like MS Office, and back-office systems such as ERP and other line-of-business applications. My colleague Mike Walker discusses this in more detail in blog postings here...

[OBA Solution Framework Index] The set of blog postings tagged OSF will provide architectural guidance on how to build / package / deploy / deliver business applications on the Microsoft Platform, using Microsoft Office (Client / Server) and other platform technologies. These solutions are called OBAs...