Zempel says he believes this approach will prevent runaway IT projects funded solely to justify previous investments in the technology. "It helps separate emotion from the decision process," he says.

The portfolio methodology convinced Zempel and his team they could put off the installation of an integration server to provide data flows among many of Life Time's applications--human resources, Siebel Systems' CRM (customer relationship management) package, which is going live now, and the Member Management System (MMS), to name a few.

Life Time developers had started this task by writing custom applications using Sun Microsystems' JMS (Java Messaging Service). These applications track events, such as an employee hire, and automatically update training, payroll and other systems that rely on up-to-date employee information. "It's a poor man's integration server," quips systems architect Gary Lien. "The number of points of integration is minimal, and the solution in place seems solid, so why would we move to something different at this point?"

These JMS connectors replaced a daisy chain of messaging scripts "where each integration point was its own brainwork," Lien says. "Once anything went wrong, it was a nightmare to get things fixed."

Missed Our Life Time On Location Package? Go to "And Now for the Heavy Lifting,", or catch up on their developments at the Life Time blog.

Looking ahead to a time when the CRM and MMS applications--as well as applications run by partner companies--will need to link to the employee applications for paperless contracts and other functions, Life Time spent two weeks pilot-testing a packaged application integration server from Confluent, formerly known as Corporate Oxygen. The software costs $50,000 to $80,000.

Life Time pursued the packaged and custom approaches simultaneously, reasoning that the connectors to legacy systems would have to be written anyway; Confluent's software comes with a few dozen packaged connectors but only for modern enterprise applications.

The development of custom connectors also was necessary to predict how long future connectors will take to develop. Life Time is negotiating with an HMO provider that may subsidize member dues and with a retailer that may carry Life Time's nutritional supplements. These parties wanted to know how long it would take to go live once an agreement is reached. The deals could come as soon as February, Zempel says.

A packaged integration server such as Confluent's lets foreign systems connect regardless of the Web services protocols--such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) or .Net--used. It also includes security and management functions, such as the ability to set failovers when a Web service fails and track how well the applications are adhering to service-level agreements with outside companies, according to Confluent founder and CEO Rajiv Gupta.