The complexity of IT has grown significantly over the past 20 years with more and more new applications being introduced into organizations to create departmental, core business, and back office efficiencies. This trend is likely to continue over the coming years as new best of breed products are introduced. In addition the commoditization of enterprise applications is expected to lead to many organizations taking advantage of cost savings and migrating to newer applications or other alternatives hosted in the Cloud.
Organizations now face an enormous challenge to manage data effectively in order to ensure that the right people have access to the right information exactly they need when they need it. The availability of up-to-date information otherwise trapped in departmental silos can dramatically increase productivity, create cost savings and create a competitive edge. Manually updating data across systems is not an option, due to inaccuracies and enormous effort that would be required.
Furthermore consumers are now conditioned to expect a fast and quality services and products at the most competitive price. If consumers do not get this from their supplier they are ready to go to the competition.
This has led to a constant demand for real-time data integration across departments, systems and disparate office locations.
How we can help
Often, what appear to be simple requests from business owners for timely information are in fact more complex due to the web of interconnected bank end systems and legacy applications.
We help our clients identify opportunities to securely free information from organizational silos and optimise business processes. We are then able to deliver powerful solutions that create measurable business benefits and maximum return on investment.
- Process improvement and full integration audit
- Architecture
- Delivery
- Testing
- Training and mentoring
- Solution support and outsourcing
Often, what appear to be simple requests from business owners for timely information are in fact more complex due to the web of interconnected bank end systems and legacy applications.
Application to Application (A2A) and Business to Business (B2B) integration
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Message Oriented Middleware (MOM / middleware) tools are typically used to facilitate A2A and B2B integration. The tools generally include adapters, transformation logic and reliable messaging modules in their core framework.
- Adapters. Adapters are generally used to exchange information with business applications such as SAP or PeopleSoft but could be used to communicate over a protocol like TCPIP or to reliably communicate with other businesses using a protocol like EbXML
- Transformation logic Is used to map transform information readable by one system into a format that another system understands.
- Messaging Fast and reliable messaging is key to integration solutions which demand guaranteed once only message delivery
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) integration
A Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a flexible set of design principles used in systems development and integration. SOA arose because of the inefficiencies of some middleware implementations that use point-to-point or hub-and-spoke architectures. Clients using integration technologies with point-to-point or hub-and-spoke architectures typically found their solution increasingly difficult to maintain as the number of systems increase above a critical point. The issues with P2P and hub-and-spoke architectures coupled with the wide adoption of XML by vendors, much easier than bespoke formats, led to the emergence of SOA.
A number of new entrants have now entered the enterprise integration market with their own SOA tools in addition to the traditional EAI vendors that tend to include a more comprehensive suite of adapters to third party systems.
It is widely accepted that SOA is the future architecture for enterprise integration and significant business value can be realised from and SOA implementation when designed and delivered properly.
An SOA can quickly expose functionality your applications as services, enabling you to can orchestrate workflow processes across system boundaries. An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is the typical platform to realize an SOA. Much like the traditional EAI tools, an ESB provides salient functionality for messaging, complex event processing, management, routing and mediation.
Using SOA and an ESB enables organisations increase agility in order to modify their business activity faster, introduce or replace technology faster, and streamline business their processes.
P2P / Hub and Spoke
Traditional P2P and hub and spoke architectures typically become crippling for businesses as every change introduces enormous effort and immense risk.
An SOA can quickly expose functionality your applications as services, enabling you to can orchestrate workflow processes across system boundaries. An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is the typical platform to realize an SOA. Much like the traditional EAI tools, an ESB provides salient functionality for messaging, complex event processing, management.
SOA / ESB
An enterprise service bus reduces the coupling between individual systems, drastically reducing risk and enabling significant code re-use. This results in an IT infrastructure, which is less expensive and enables the business to effect change quicker than the competition.
Why Integrella?
Integrella consultants’ have delivered over 100 successful SOA and integration projects to Fortune 500 companies across Retail, Utilities, Energy, Telecommunications, Manufacturing, Motorsport, Science, Finance and Healthcare industry sectors as well as the large systems integrators. Our resources are even used by SOA product vendors like TIBCO and Oracle.
If your business needs to reduce recurring costs, increase agility, or do more with less, why not book a free consultation with one of our enterprise integration experts.
