Enterprise Application
Integration (EAI)
Share, integrate, and automate information
flow within the educational environment.
Prepared by:
Ortega, Kent A.
• Why Enterprise Application Integration?
- Wouldn’t it be great if everyone used the same servers
with the same operating system with the same clients.
• Reality is very diverse. We can expect a mix of
mainframes, Windows, UNIX, Linux, VMS, as well as
many other systems.
- Getting them to work/share data together is the issue!
- EAI is defined as the “ the unrestricted sharing of data
and business processes among any connected
applications and sources in the enterprise.”
• Using EAI effectively will allow us to integrate without
making major changes to our current infrastructure.
An organization may use various information systems-
• Supply Chain Management – For managing suppliers, inventory and
shipping, etc.
• Human Resource Management – For managing personnel, training
and recruiting talents;
• Employee Health Care – For managing medical records and
insurance details of employees;
• Customer Relationship Management – For managing current and
potential customer.
• Business Intelligence Applications – For finding the patterns from
existing data from business operations.
All these systems work as individual islands of automation.
Most often these systems are standalone and do not
communicate with each other due to incompatibility issues
such as –
Operating systems they are residing on;
Database system used in the system;
Legacy systems not supported anymore.
What Is Enterprise Application Integration?
EAI is an integration framework, a middleware, made of a
collection of technologies and services that allows smooth
integration of all such systems and applications throughout
the enterprise and enables data sharing and more
automation of business processes.
How you can benefit from EAI?
Sharing of Information
- Information sharing is an important asset to every business organization.
Simplified IT process
- The more simplified is the IT process, the greater satisfaction the users will
derive.
Availability of Multiple Opportunities
- In the present times, it is absolutely essential for any business organization
to realize the different opportunities which can make them shift their gears to
the next level.
Greater Efficiency
- A greater efficiency is what every business organization strives for. The
greater efficiency of organization, the higher will be the amount of revenue
generated.
Reduces the Time & Effort
- Opting for EAI helps in a faster performance of any work.
Improved Functionality
- The greater the workability of employees, the faster will be the whole work
process of any organization.
Better Control
- EAI provide different mechanism for a better controlling of information flow.
Areas of EAI tools focus on:
Orchestration of Processes
Activity Monitoring
Transformation of Data
Storage, routing & filtering
Core benefits of EAI can offer:
Automation
Real-time access to Information
Scalable & Agile
Better Visibility
Reduced Complexity & Cost
Advantages of implementing EAI
Assist in Supply Chain Management and has the ability to adapt to
business changes like mergers and Acquisitions as it
unifies/integrates application in no time.
Presents user applications with an unified view of information for
better decision making thereby achieving cross system consistency.
Updating and integrating of applications is possible whenever
required.
Enhancement to standard applications can be made rapidly.
Disadvantages of implementing EAI
If the number applications connected are many this leads to inter
application spaghetti.
The approach is labor intensive and involves high cost and risk. It
also does not assist if applications needs to be changed or added.
The maintenance cost are also huge
EAI Components
• Business Rule Component: to allow the applications to
understand your business processes.
• Business Logic Modules (i.e. supply planning, sales order
processing. Methods for business process management.)
• Transformation tools (to define how to map data from one system
to another)
• Data Acquisition Component: to allow access to the Data Source and
Target Interfaces (i.e. Siebel, SAP, PeopleSoft, ODBC, Oracle, CICS, IMS) -
note that the data acquisition component is crucial to EAI success. Most
vendors refer to these interfaces as "adapters“
• Adapters understand the data structures associated with applications and the
means by which to access the data. (SAP/ABAP). map heterogenous data
formats, interfaces and protocols into a common model and format. Hide
heterogeneity and present uniform view of layers below.
• System Development Component: to allow programmers to design and test
custom requirements - Design tools (for business process design, debugging,
and testing).
EAI - Components
– Message Brokers (to control transactions, control security, and
perform event notification. The product should also include the
capability to "bridge" messages between different messaging
systems (facilitates the interaction among adapters)
– Scalability for high-volume transaction throughput. It is almost
impossible to know at implementation time what the data volumes
will be in the future – therefore, EAI must be scalable.
– Support for varying levels of fault tolerance, load balancing, and
failover for mission-critical systems. Workflow enablement is a key
requirement to reduce latency between distributed processes.
The “Ideal” Environment
Connected Integrated Empowered
EAI supports the success of teaching, learning, and
day-to-day operations within the educational community.
Real-time Access to Information
An example of Implementing the EAI
