New
York University
Computer
Science Department
Courant
Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Session
11: Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
Course Title: Application Servers Course Number: g22.3033-011
Instructor: Jean-Claude Franchitti Session: 11
1. Description
|
|
Role |
The e-business groundswell
follows two decades in which companies have implemented a wide variety of
information systems. A typical Global
2000 organization has 30-50 applications and spends 25-40 percent of its IT budget
on application integration. The
proliferation of mergers and Internet-related applications intensifies the
need for connectivity between front- and back-office systems and across the
supply chain. Enterprise Application
Integration (EAI) creates a cost-effective integration architecture and
infrastructure to promote interoperability among applications and help the
enterprise respond quickly to changing
business conditions, without the cost of custom
point-to-point solutions. |
Features |
EAI enables interoperability between ERP systems, packaged software
applications, legacy systems, and web-based applications. During development,
business users model processes whose business events, processing rules, and
information flow span multiple applications.
In production, the EAI server executes these models, insuring reliable information flow between
applications in response to business events.
All interactions are logged for recoverability and auditability. Pre-built or
custom-developed application adapters provide event notification and
response, data retrieval and storage, and error processing. Business process models can be modified
dynamically as conditions change, and applications can be added or replaced
without changing business process models. |
Benefits |
EAI enables rapid application integration with minimal custom
development, significantly reducing ongoing IT development and
maintenance costs. Linking disparate applications throughout the enterprise
improves communication and eliminates
mistakes due to inaccurate information, increases customer satisfaction
by making information from multiple sources easily accessible, and accelerates time to market through
more efficient cooperation across functional groups. |
2. Business Impact
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|
Economic |
EAI requires a
substantial investment in technical infrastructure, with initial
implementation costs from $500K-$2M.
The return on investment increases with the number of projects that
use the infrastructure, through higher productivity and lower development and
maintenance costs. |
Process |
EAI delivers the greatest value when clients deploy it to
achieve greater cross-functional business process performance. This means
the client must design cross-functional process if they don’t already
exist. Such design usually requires
rationalization of events and notifications flowing among functional
areas. Cooperating functional areas
must also align their business data models, or at least understand how
different functional areas view such enterprise entities as customer, order,
and product. |
People |
EAI projects involve both
business resources and IT developers. Business resources will be able to
handle most of the configuration requirements and minor changes to business
process flows. IT developers will be required to create custom application
adapters, develop data mapping rules, or code customized business rules
required by business processes. EAI may alter roles and responsibilities in
cooperating organizations, sometimes eliminating tasks and corresponding FTEs like error detection. |
Technology |
Typically an integration
server and corresponding database system, plus existing applications,
hardware, and network infrastructure.
Often custom coding to create adapters for legacy applications. |
3. Selection Considerations
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|
Use When |
Real-time access to
information in multiple applications is required to complete a business
process or maintain application data integrity. Business-to-business integration is
required. |
Avoid When |
Read-only access to
multiple data sources is required for decision support (use a data
warehousing solution instead). System
migration requires a one-time, large-volume data conversion from legacy
applications (use an extract-transform-load (ETL) instead). |
4. Delivery
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|||
3 to 4 weeks · Cross-functional business
process opportunities with performance metrics · High-level organizational
impact of new processes · High-level technical infrastructure requirements · Application adapter
technical requirements · Software package
evaluation and recommendations |
4 to 8 weeks · Detailed cross-functional
business process designs including configuration requirements to underlying
applications · Deployed technical
infrastructure supporting enterprise integration ·
Design for business events and business data objects · Design for
custom adapters |
4 to 8 weeks ·
Pilot implementation of cross-functional business
processes, enabled by the underlying applications ·
Organizational changes to facilitate cross-functional
business processes · Custom
application adapters to support pilot implementation of possibly limited
functionality |
8 to 52 weeks · Fully deployed
cross-functional processes ·
Production quality implementation of EAI infrastructure
and custom adapters ·
User training |
5. Generalized Functional Diagram
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6. Application Package Summary Comparison
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Preferred |
Product |
Vendor |
Operating System |
Process Modeling Tools |
Reliable Messaging |
Data Transformation |
Transaction Mgmt |
Metadata Mgmt |
Scalability |
Security |
System Administration |
Business to Business |
Developer Tools |
Pre-Built Process Models |
Application Adapters |
Technology Adapters |
Mainframe Adapters |
|
|
|
Unified
Applications Architecture (UAA) |
CrossWorlds Software |
NS |
5 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
5 |
5 |
3 |
3 |
|
|
|
BusinessWare |
Vitria Technologies |
NSH |
4 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
0 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
|
NOTE: Product |
|
|
ActiveWorks |
Active Software |
NS |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
3 |
5 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
5 |
functionality is |
|
|
MQ Series family |
IBM/NEON |
NSHI |
3 |
5 |
5 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
0 |
3 |
3 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
rapidly evolving. |
|
|
E*Gate |
STC |
|
4 |
4 |
4 |
0 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
|
|
|
Rendezvous |
TIBCO |
|
3 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
|
|
|
Extricity |
Extricity |
|
5 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
|
5 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
|
|
H=HP UX, S=Sun Solaris, I=IBM AIX, N=MS Windows NT, 5 = strongest