Title: SMEs in
developing Economies - Challenges and Strategies for Enterprise Systems Integration
Abstract: Many small
and medium enterprises (SMEs) run legacy applications, which need to integrate
for efficient logistic handling within an organization as also for interfacing
to the external electronic market place for effective supply chain management.
However, the solution must be affordable since these enterprises cannot buy
very costly products and services. This paper builds on our earlier
work and proposes a strategy based on services oriented architecture (SOA).
Implementation approach using open source components is outlined to realize
this strategy. We show that this approach provides a significant reduction
in total cost of ownership (TCO), while enhancing the organizational competency
to handle logistic issues. While this work primarily addresses the Indian
situation, it is directly relevant to most developing countries.