SNA and TCP/IP--the urge to merge

Centralized, top-down application and network integration projects are enjoying a renaissance. Ironically, this trend is being driven as much by the growth of IP-based LANs, intranets and the World Wide Web as by the longevity of legacy mainframe applications and databases. Companies are finding that they must close the gaps between their IP-centric, bottom-up networks and their SNA-based mainframe datacenters if they want to facilitate e-commerce relationships with the suppliers and customers, shorten their product time to market or improve order processing among far-flung sites and workers. Other projects with centralizing effects include Y2k compliance, business process reengineering and enterprise resource planning. Simply put, these projects spell the end of the era when one staff organization tended the legacy SNA applications and databases, while another tended the IP networks. Both must fit together, but that is a tall order, given their very different histories, architectures and underlying technologies.