Jacada® HostFuse
Service Enablement for Legacy Applications
Jacada® HostFuse provides an industry-leading contact center solution for real-time, non-invasive integration of legacy applications - traditional character-based host applications such as "green-screen" systems. Within most large customer service and support organizations, legacy applications perform critical business functions. Whether developed in-house or bought as a packaged application, these systems often lack APIs to easily access the business logic within. This lack of an API typically means that these legacy applications are unable to participate within the context of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and are not easily modified to improve process flows for the user. Additionally, these applications cannot participate in an Event Driven Architecture (EDA), where it is desired to capture, and respond to, business events occurring in real-time on the underlying applications.
Jacada HostFuse allows legacy applications to be "service enabled" – that is, any and all functionality contained within an existing host application can be exposed as open standard Web services. This process of service enablement is accomplished without requiring any modification of the application and no access to the source code is required, allowing for a rapid implementation cycle with minimal risk. Even better, the resulting transactions can be used:
- To integrate the host application with Jacada® WorkSpace
- At the desktop to assist users in navigation of the application
- At the desktop to capture data and trigger events for other desktop tasks based on user navigation and actions.
Specifically, Jacada HostFuse can be deployed to perform three distinct functions:
- Service Enabling – Transform legacy application logic and data into callable Web services, which can then be invoked from another application, or can be used, for example, to build a "single view of the customer" in a new composite application, such as Jacada WorkSpace. In this configuration, the host emulator need not be running on the desktop.
- Desktop Automation – Automate redundant tasks at the desktop. By deploying Jacada HostFuse in a desktop configuration, where the target host applications remain on the desktop (through an emulator). In this configuration, the transaction that has been service-enabled is executed on the desktop. Jacada HostFuse then automates the navigation of the applications for the user, and/or 'listens' for predefined events.
- Event Publishing – Enable host applications to participate within the context of an Event Driven Architecture. Define events of interest on the underlying desktop application and publish these events in real-time as they occur, based on the user's interaction with the application.
By service-enabling any host-based application, Jacada HostFuse provides for the rapid integration of legacy systems into a unified service desktop for the contact center.