Enterprise application integration

Enterprise application integration

Enterprise application integration (EAI) software is set to change the way modern companies are running their operations. According to estimates from IT research company Dataquest, the new market for EAI software will be worth $2 billion in 2003.

EAI software can connect older legacy applications with newer systems

Enthusiasm for EAI software began to take hold in the early 1990s, when companies recognized its enormous potential. The need for EAI arose as companies started to switch first from mainframes to client/server systems, and then to enterprise resource planning (ERP) backbones and Internet-based computing. Companies needed a way to connect older legacy applications with newer systems, without paying huge sums of money to systems integrators.

The functionality gained by linking applications and viewing real-time information is essential for success in sectors such as financial services. The need to connect software packages has become far more widespread, however, as businesses in every industry are becoming e-businesses. These businesses must integrate their accounting and distribution systems with web storefronts and e-procurement systems in order to operate efficiently. EAI enables back-office accounting systems to communicate with e-commerce applications. It connects companies' internal applications and intranet portals to external web services and sends data and alerts to appropriate users.

Today, there are a number of approaches to EAI that are gaining credibility for linking, integrating, and extending the life of old, but useful applications, while offering a flexible platform on which to develop new e-commerce-oriented applications. The process isn't simple, but the next few years should see developments that make the job easier.

Bridging the gap

Integration remains one of the most complex and elusive issues with which organizations grapple

Although EAI is an attractive strategy, it is not always possible to implement the required technology right out of the box. Integration remains one of the most complex and elusive issues with which organizations grapple.

Businesses are seeking to give customers the ability to check on their orders, determine product availability, and obtain support, each with a single mouse click. This requires incredibly complex integration at the back end. Information from multiple databases needs to be passed between several applications and connected to the Web to execute even the simplest customer order or request.

Few ERP vendors offer a fully integrated e-commerce solution, and the vendors that claim to offer integration don't provide all the functionality e-businesses need. To offer customers pricing and inventory-availability data in real time, for example, a web storefront must retrieve this information from the company's ERP inventory module. After the storefront accepts an order, it must pass the transaction to the ERP order-entry module for processing, and it might have to simultaneously transmit a shipping request to a drop shipper to send the goods on their way. This demonstrates the scope of collaboration that storefronts and ERP packages must maintain to support e-commerce. An organization that wants to link its ERP and supply chain management systems faces even more complex integration challenges.

Connecting with the Internet

Bridging the gap between ERP suites and e-commerce applications is just one function that collaboration, aggregation, and notification software performs. This software also excels at connecting internal applications to services and software on the Internet.

The continually expanding array of web services is leading more and more companies to include web site searches in their business process workflow. For example, some e-procurement systems comparison shop on the Web to find the best price for items that employees requisition. To perform such a search, a system must access the Internet and find items and prices in web pages coded in both HTML and Extensible Markup Language (XML).

Technology has evolved from merely performing batch transactions on mainframes to filling the mission-critical needs of integrating applications and spanning heterogeneous systems across the Internet. Now, messaging is meeting up with XML to provide a way for developers to map data from one XML schema to another. This allows applications to exchange disparate data across corporate boundaries via public networks.

Until now, messaging has been difficult to use and deploy and most mainstream application developers have not known how to leverage it. This has prompted some of the computing industry's largest vendors - Microsoft, IBM, and Sun Microsystems - to try to automate messaging with XML so that it will become a nearly invisible layer inside the development environment.

Business-to-business integration

A new breed of integration software is providing a new type of employee and customer self-service functionality by delivering information and alerts that are personalized to the recipient.

B2B EAI solutions offer end-to-end management of operating resources

Business-to-business (B2B) EAI solutions combine two components: one automates a vendor's internal processes while the other connects buyers and their suppliers. These components combine to offer end-to-end management of operating resources, ranging from requisitions to payments. The tools can support supply chain integration and can assist organizations with collaborative planning and engineering, work-in-process tracking, channel assembly, and vendor-managed inventory.

Companies are being attracted to new B2B EAI products for several reasons. Vendors maintain these products can enhance customer service and asset utilization across multiple companies and reduce inventory, product cycle times, and administrative costs. These products also allow companies to design integrated business models that mimic complex business transactions. Moreover, EAI tools can be suitably adapted to the specific needs of a company, so users can alter the processes of the EAI product to take advantage of the Web and provide customers with more self-service options.

In many companies, purchasing functions have typically been decentralized and paper-based. Using EAI systems, however, makes the ordering of goods and services easier because they often include desktop interfaces. This allows users to make instant orders based on onscreen information, facilitating a just-in-time process and eliminating the delay and errors associated with paper transactions.

The new systems also help companies generate larger and more efficient company-wide markets and automate the acquisition of operating goods and services. Automation, in turn, enables companies to apply business controls more consistently.

EAI tools help companies provide more timely information to suppliers and customers

Essentially, EAI tools help companies provide more timely information to suppliers and customers. Proactive delivery of this type of content connects employees and customers to a wide range of systems, including ERP, e-commerce, and customer relationship management applications, without requiring the information recipients to access those systems directly.

For now, using EAI tools to build e-business solutions takes a lot of time and money and businesses with small internal IT staffs are likely to experience limited success integrating complex software suites.

Despite this drawback, however, EAI software is making full, real-time integration of important business systems possible for companies with the necessary resources by integrating internal systems and reaching out over the Internet to services and applications outsourced to application service providers. Within the next few years, this software will probably become standard in every company.