Enterprise Application Integration

Enterprise Application Integration facilitates the flow of information and straps transactions among disparate and complex applications and business processes within and among the organizations. With the move towards market globalization, there have been mergers and acquisitions at a phenomenal pace. It has become imperative for organizations to share data and business logic with its business partners within the supply chain. This is where Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) comes into picture.

A standard EAI system provides with a broad range of services ranging from security management, protocol management, data mapping, and other related functions. These services define the functionality and flow of data in the application. EAI solutions can benefit an organization by providing end-to-end visibility and control of business operations. This control improves interactions with partners and customers; increases responsiveness to business changes; enables new market opportunities; and makes captured knowledge more widely available. Companies need integration that can be set up, taken down, and changed quickly, and that can work with a variety of partners, systems, and rapidly changing technologies. In case of Application-Integration, the focus lies largely on integrating one production application with the other, for EAI middleware is implemented in the form of connectors that handle data transformation and business logic with outside systems like the ERP Systems (SAP, PeopleSoft), Database Systems (DB2, MS SQL Server, Oracle), Message Queuing Systems (MQseries, MSMQ) etc.

Why the need to integrate applications? When we look at it, we come up with several reasons

• To respond to the ever-increasing mergers and acquisitions
• Integrate with suppliers and customers hence implementing Supply Chain Management.
• To scale with the e-business needs
• To reduce redundancy
• To integrate with high-end ERP Systems
• To increase competency by required for IT systems to perform in synergy

The benefits of Enterprise Application Integration EAI provides advantages through uniting disparate applications; reducing redundant data entry; merging diverse data sets; and reducing transaction costs. EAI proves beneficial to businesses for varied number of reasons:

• Increased Efficiency: The ability to automate business processes across the enterprise and across existing boundaries
• Value of information: Redundant databases are aligned eliminating duplicate data.
• Lower costs: The EAI strategy is to create one interface per application. This lowers the cost of upgrades or modifications/additions to applications Increased productivity
• Improved Customer Service. The ability to extend applications to more users.

The integration of applications is compelled by the Internet and the need to connect system-to-system with customers, suppliers, collaborators, and partners of all sorts within the supply chain. EAI is not just another buzzword, but it is a linchpin that lets e-business work. It is a technology in response to rapidly changing business need! Pan Asia is geared to handle the entire space.