Synchronous communications between a public electronic environment (e.g., a browser on a global computer network) and a private electronic environment (e.g., an ERP application on a private computer network) are facilitated by automatically routing a communication from the browser to the ERP application through messaging middleware, obtaining by the messaging middleware a reply from the ERP application in response to the communication while the browser and messaging middleware wait therefor, and automatically returning the reply from the ERP application to the browser. Encryption and firewalls are also used for security.