Business Layers eProvisionware
Business Layers makes provisioning customer services a cinch.
By David Greenfield

From Network Magazine.com

June 14, 2000
Until recently, getting new employees up and running was a hit-or-miss operation. A myriad of manual tasks was required-from supplying employees with PCs and phone extensions to adding them to the payroll and providing them with security passes. More often than not, new employees waste precious time waiting for the right tools. These same employees leave gaping security holes when they leave the company.

Now Business Layers (www.businesslayers.com ) thinks it has the answer. Its new eProvisionware environment, coupled with its eProvision Employees module, enables companies to automate the routine operations of setting up employees. Instead of maintaining multiple phone-number databases, PC hardware, and all other employee tools, Business Layers provides a single platform for automating the requisition and provision of those tools. "It's an incredible product," says Gary Habermann, director of technical resources at Widener University (www.widener.edu ). Habermann is using eProvisionware to automate account generation for the roughly 2,000 students that the university welcomes every fall and loses to attrition each spring. With eProvisionware, Habermann expects to save the full cost of an account-maintenance staff person.

FORMS AND DIRECTIONS
Here's how it works: eProvisionware ships as a collection of forms, a rules engine, and a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)-compliant directory on a Windows NT server. When first installed, network managers designate whether eProvisionware should use the internal directory to store user information or whether it should use an external LDAP-compliant directory, like those from Novell, Netscape, and Microsoft. The network manager must also define the set of business rules that will drive eProvisionware. These high-level rules match the business requirements of the organization. A rule might, for example, define that all salespeople should receive PCs and a certain percentage of network capacity. When a new eProvisionware user is created or modified, the rules determine the kinds of resources that need to be delivered and the processes that need to be executed. There are two ways this can be initiated: Customers can add and modify user profiles to the system through eProvisionware's personnel module, or eProvisionware can enable the creation and modification of user profiles in real time through an external software package, such as PeopleSoft.

However, eProvisionware goes far beyond simply populating a database with user characteristics. Business Layers ships with built-in libraries of Automated Task Modules (ATMs) for driving IT systems such as Microsoft Exchange, NetWare, Lotus Notes, and Checkpoint Firewall-1. With those ATMs, rules actually generate the necessary accounts and configurations in the different environments. A rule for access rights can configure the Firewall-1 accordingly, while a rule stipulating an e-mail address can set up those accounts for Notes or Exchange.

Today, phone-switch configuration is noticeably absent from shipped ATMs, but that will change shortly. Business Layers says it's currently developing an ATM for AT&T;'s Definity telephony switch, as well as several Voice over IP (VoIP) switches. Habermann says he's getting ready to test eProvisionware with 3Com's MBX-100 VoIP switch.

All of that automation comes at a price, though. The software platform costs $30,000. Each ATM runs an additional $10,000, and then there's a $9 charge for each profile per ATM module. Business Layers also offers Profession Services for configuring and enhancing the environment, which runs about the cost of the software plus the profiles.

Wrap it all up, and the total cost of eProvisionware comes to around $180,000 for a company of 1,000 users (assuming 300 employee changes per year). That sounds like a lot, considering that administrative costs aren't factored into the equation. However, when you consider the savings in efficiency and head-count, it's easy to see why networkers like Habermann think eProvisionware has such a bright future.

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