Enterprise application integration is the use of software and computer systems architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications.
Typically, an enterprise has existing legacy applications and databases and wants to continue to use them while adding or migrating to a new set of applications that exploit the Internet, e-commerce, extranet, and other new technologies.
>> Reduce integration costs and development time
>> Increase business agility
>> Gain end-to-end visibility across systems
Say goodbye to the high cost and complexity of point-to-point integrations. Welcome a single integration solution that quickly connects any system or application without coding. webMethods brings together a complete set of integration capabilities, including an analyst-recognized Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), messaging, adapters and monitoring.
Used for: enterprise application integration; integrating cloud & on-premise applications; integrating SAP® systems; integrating Oracle® systems; integrating mainframe systems
An EAI system could be participating in multiple concurrent integration operations at any given time, each type of integration being processed by a different integration module. Integration modules subscribe to events of specific types and process notifications that they receive when these events occur. These modules could be implemented in different ways: on Java-based EAI systems, these could be web applications or EJBs or even POJOs that conform to the EAI system's specifications.
When used for process integration, the EAI system also provides transactional consistency across applications by executing all integration operations across all applications in a single overarching distributed transaction (using two-phase commit protocols or compensating transactions).
EAI may involve developing a new total view of an enterprise's business and its applications, seeing how existing applications fit into the new view, and then devising ways to efficiently reuse what already exists while adding new applications and data.
>> Object-oriented programming.
>> Distributed, cross-platform program communication using message brokers with Common Object Request Broker Architecture and COM+.
>> Modification of enterprise resource planning (ERP) to fit new objectives.
>> Enterprise-wide content and data distribution using common databases and data standards implemented with the Extensible Markup Language (XML).
>> Middleware, message queueing, and other approaches.
>> Integration market is growing due to the "best-of-breed" thinking in buying new CRMs, ERPs and other enterprise systems. Instead of consolidating everything to one big ERP, specialized systems are used to serve business better. This has led to increase in integration market as the systems are more and more heterogeneous. Another driver is currentcloud computing adoption. "Best-of-breed"-buying patterns and cloud adoption go hand-in-hand as it is easy to deliver specialized solutions via cloud.
>> Cloud also leverages the integration markets to smaller companies than before as new system can be bought as a service instead of large investment in the beginning. Cloud services are mostly multi-tenant - which allows cloud service providers to offer them with less costs per user.