I have been discussing the value of Composite Applications to all of my customers and personally feel that this approach does wonders for the adoption of business systems.  We all know that business systems are not updated as quickly as newer interfaces are introduced these days.  This approach puts a fresh new face to the systems and allows you to build use cases based on multiple systems.  To the user it seems like multiple system are working together. 

Hitachi Consulting is one of our partners with local presence and have a few Composite applications under their belt.  Below is a quick write up from them and a case study around integration with Lawson.

Line-of-Business (LOB) applications are silos designed to meet a specific functional need often with no regard for external systems.  LOB applications are the source of record for information valuable to other functional departments and business processes.  What can businesses do when their particular business processes require crossing the functional boundaries of multiple LOB systems or require providing access to LOB data for users who may not have access to such information through normal LOB access?

Composite Applications are one solution that organizations are using to provide a single point for gathering information from and performing actions against multiple LOB applications simultaneously.  Composite Applications help organizations increase the power of LOB applications by providing a business capability that crosses functional boundaries through the assimilation of assets from these LOB applications.

Hitachi Consulting implemented one such composite application for Dillon Gage on top of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.  The MOSS application integrates with Lawson System Foundation 9 for procurement, inventory and order entry utilizing a flexible services layer allowing for future integration with other LOB applications (e.g. SAP).  For the full case study see http://www.microsoft.com/industry/manufacturing/automotive/casestudylibrary.mspx?casestudyid=4000002576 .