ONGOING ANALYSIS
Packaged applications have historically targeted specific departmental or functional needs of enterprises. However, composite applications address more complex business scenarios by combining two or more discrete functional application or service modules and encompass business processes that typically cross departmental silos and often target "information workers" who tap into a wide variety of information to effectively conduct their daily jobs. A packaged composite application (PCA) provides a pre-assembled configuration for a specific solution and often extend pre-existing application modules into new solutions. Composite applications can thank business process management and portals as the proving ground technologies that have led to this fundamental change in how enterprises will approach applications going forward - and these core technologies will continue to act as the onramps for composite applications.