Technology plays a critical role in the implementation and support of the network control tower in the retailer collaborative network as result of the requirements that must be met to support the demands. This control tower application must support the internal communication process and controls while also supporting the interaction and integration requirements of the external partners. The integration with the external partners provides the greatest challenge to the control tower capabilities and this depends on the technology capabilities and support required to meet the wide variety of standards and practices that will be encountered. The network control tower must support these varieties of integration technologies from the newest integration methods to the legacy integration methods and this is no small task.
The difficulty brought about by the support requirements of the network control tower come as the result of the broad expanse and technology capabilities and requirements of the collaborative network partners. This requires support for the gamut of integration technologies from the last twenty years and you can imagine the difficulties that can and will be encountered in supporting the various and sundry integration technologies. This challenge also highlights the strength in the network control tower framework that can provide the external face that supports any integration technology while insulating the partner internal systems from the the array of technologies employed.
The network control tower requires a great deal of planning and coordination to support the demands from the wide array of partners and the technologies these partners may employ. This expanse of integration technologies will not be reduced over time and will only increase as new integration technologies are advanced. This is because there is so many integration points across the the extended collaborative network that both the risk and the cost of a conversion as massive as this would be would overshadow any advancements and support of new consumer and network demands.
The partners instead must focus on retiring the legacy technologies as they are adding new capabilities and revising existing technologies. One point of interest and also demand is the security demands on a network and integration related to the collaborative network. These security requirements cannot be delayed by the partners because the risk is too great for a breach and the cost of a breach can be devastating from both a financial and reputation perspective. This though gives the network partners an opportunity to swap out legacy and less secure technologies with new and more secure technologies. All this while the internal networks are isolated from the external attacks. This network control tower will go a long way to helping the network partners to support the security demands to protect their interests and most importantly customer and business private data.
I do not think that it will be possible for partners in the collaborative network to support all of the demands without the robust integration and security technology that can be supported by the network control tower. The technology enables the partners to quickly and efficiently support new demands securely. This is no small feat and requires a great deal of focus and priority in order to go to the promise of the control tower as quickly as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment