Systems Integration has many meanings and has evolved significantly in recent years. At the strategic level, during business process reengineering, the reintegration of business processes undoes some of the division of labor concepts first made known in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Intertech Consulting will identify and create an optimal balance between integration best practice patterns and technologies to meet the needs of application, data, or process level integration.
Enterprise Integration helps to minimize point-to-point integration needs and increase the availability of enterprise data to systems in a reusable, efficient, and when necessary, a real-time manner. The emerging technologies of web services, service-oriented architectures, and message-oriented middleware greatly ease the integration issues facing most organizations.
Web Services define a standardized way of dynamically integrating applications using open standards such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Web Services Description Language (WSDL), and Universal Description and Discovery Interface (UDDI) over an intranet or internet (HTTP) backbone. Message-oriented middleware EAI tools utilize an integration broker module to prioritize, organize and translate transaction based messages to and from systems needing reliable integration.
The integration guidelines below provide direction as well as constraints on the overall selection, integration and design of technologies.
1. Implement a Unified Integration Solution
Implement unified methods, processes, and toolsets internally and externally to create a connected Application-to-Application (A2A) & Business-to-Business (B2B) integration toolkit. Minimize Point-to-Point Custom Connections by Implementing A2A or B2B Integration Patterns
o Establish a solid internal integration architecture that allows for standard external enterprise connection points
o Ensure standardization and scalability
o Reduce time to market
o Leverage existing packaged tools with proven B2B and A2A capabilities
2. Support Real Time or Near Real-Time Communications
Use real time or near real time integration between applications when instant message level communications is required.
o Provide the ability to employ solutions that invoke a procedure or send a message to a remote system with instant acknowledgement to the sender
o Allow systems to respond to business driven events as they occur
3. Secure Integration
With the implementation of Enterprise Integration, security of applications should not be compromised.
o Enable access to application functionality and data without compromising systems security and control of information
o Eliminate the exposure and connectivity points to processes and data
4. Utilize Business Metadata for Integration Purposes
The use of business metadata helps in the designing, developing, and deploying of integration solutions.
o Establish a better semantic linkage between two different applications
o Assist analysts and developers in understanding the business attributes
5. Use a Process Level View for Enterprise Integration
Integration at the process level requires careful analysis of the business process to be integrated. Once the business process is identified and all the business rules around them are documented, applications that are used to complete the process are integrated.
o Allow you to view a holistic integration picture across systems and divisions to avoid incomplete and segmented EI approach
o Expose system integration points as a whole versus partial point solutions
o Expose any manual processes that can be automated and integrated
o Capture any possible process integration improvements for consideration in future Business Process Integration (BPI) initiatives
