Microsoft's Digital Nervous System

Admittedly, the name has some problems, but Microsoft is pushing the Digital Nervous System in a big way. If you're a professional who sells, recommends, maintains, or builds Microsoft-based solutions, you'd better understand just what Bill Gates means when he starts talking about the Digital Nervous System and its impact on the way we all do business.

When you first hear the name, it's hard not to think of the other, more famous DNS, Domain Name Server, but when Microsoft throws its weight behind an idea, even a poorly named one, it's vital that the NT community takes notice. In this article, we'll look at just what they mean by a Digital Nervous System and what kinds of tools and technologies we can expect to help us build them.

Simply put, a company's Digital Nervous System is like a body's nervous system, except instead of nerves carrying electric impulses, the Digital Nervous System consists of networks carrying information. The idea behind the Digital Nervous System is that all the information a company has gathered should be organized in a way that is instantly retrievable by any part of the company. In addition, the Digital Nervous System should be able to react to unexpected events, much like the body reacts to pain.

To build this system, Microsoft envisions a data network that connects the customer to the company through the Internet. Integration is the key to this network, incorporating existing applications and network infrastructures with Microsoft technologies, to build complete business solutions. Well, at least that's the plan.

To get a better understanding of what's in a Digital Nervous System, let's take a look at its component parts. Table A lists the five parts of a Digital Nervous System and a brief description of each. Next, we'll take a closer look at each of the five components.

Table A: The five parts of a Digital Nervous System

The first of the five parts of the Digital Nervous System is Business Intelligence. This can almost be thought of as the brain of the system, as it's here where the experiences of the company are stored in a data warehouse, enabling business analysis with decision support tools. Here the successes and, perhaps more importantly, the failures of a company are stored in an efficient and easily retrievable manner. Like every other part of the Digital Nervous System, a three-tier architecture, consisting of an interface (web client), a business process, and a data store are used to ease access of the data.

The next component is eCommerce. In this part, companies are connected to their customers and suppliers. This is the external appearance of the Digital Nervous system, perhaps analogous to the skin. Using client and server technologies, the eCommerce component reacts to the outside influences on the company.

Next is the heart and soul of the system--the Line of Business. It's here the orders are processed and the customer database is maintained. Technologies such as SQL, NT 5.0, COM+, Transaction Server, and SAP play a vital role in the future of this component. Microsoft sees the Digital Nervous System as being able to integrate legacy systems, such as UNIX and mainframe environments into this section, as well.

The Collaboration component, consisting of tools and technologies to integrate business teams, is the next part of the Digital Nervous System. In this section, corporate intranets and messaging infrastructures, like E-mail and news servers are developed, deployed, and maintained. Tools like Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, along with the web based servers and clients, are used to take advantage of the knowledge in the company.

The last component is Tracking. Like the eyes and ears, the Tracking component watches and listens to the flow of business. Web clients are used to monitor applications that track business processes. It's here that unexpected events, slow sales or a high number of customer complaints, should be obvious.