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Application Integration
Overview:
Application Integration is a business
computing term for the plans, methods, and tools aimed at
modernizing, consolidating, and coordinating the computer
applications in an enterprise. 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. 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.
Problem with Legacy Systems:
The legacy system problem has many
symptoms: systems that don't work together, too much data and
not enough information, incompatible and incorrect data, and
excessive maintenance costs. 70% to 90% of an organization's
IS budget is spent typically on current applications. There
are lots of reasons for this, but the primary cause is the way
the applications were developed.
Solutions:
The most common solutions tried over
the years have been developing interfaces between the
applications. This worked fairly when only few interfaces were
needed.
Other organizations are trying to solve
their legacy application problems using a number of relatively
new approaches including:
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Replacing legacy systems with
integrated COTS packages (like BAAN,SAP,PeopleSoft)
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Developing data and information
warehouses.
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Reengineering all applications to a
single architecture.
Enterprise Application Integration
is the solution:
EAI reduces maintenance overhead while
providing better customer service and qualify information
systems.
EAI is flexible enough to work in any
Information Technology environment, yet rigorous and
disciplined enough to produce results consistently.
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