Enterprise Integration
Enterprises face a daunting challenge. As technology has evolved, the number of enterprise applications and data systems has multiplied rapidly. Organizations must implement new systems to keep pace with innovation yet continue to support and upgrade existing systems. As a result, most enterprise IT environments include many disparate systems not designed to interoperate. One efficient, cost-effective answer to the problem is integration.
Brandon Systems employs a variety integration methodologies – EAI, EDI, SOA/Web services, and Web integration – to deliver benefits to clients in all industries:
- Enable system interoperability within and between organizations
- Eliminate high-cost point-to-point programming for integration purposes
- Eliminate labor-intensive manual processes and associated inefficiencies and errors
- Maintain and improve returns on existing system investments
- Avoid re-engineering, migrating, or buying new information systems
- Reduce IT and operational costs – often substantially
EAI – Enterprise Application Integration
EAI is a technique whereby organizations can integrate systems and applications without point-to-point connections. EAI facilitates communication between different applications by utilizing common data formats. There is a very wide range of EAI buses, hubs, connectors, adapters, and APIs – as well as EAI platforms such as Microsoft BizTalk Server and IBM WebSphere Message Broker.
The EAI experts at Brandon work closely with clients to determine their specific integration needs and design an EAI infrastructure most suited to meet those needs.
EDI – Electronic Data Interchange
Widely used in the manufacturing and supply chain industries, EDI is a set of interoperability standards that enable organizations and their trading partners to create a faster, more reliable, less costly system for exchanging business data. In addition to streamlining data exchange between organizations, EDI facilitates record management and operational data analysis.
Non-proprietary EDI messages/documents adhere to standards such as ANSI ASC X12 in the U.S. and UN/EDIFACT internationally. These define both message type (e.g., an invoice) and content. EDI also relies upon transports including FTP, email, HTTP, AS1, and AS2.
Web Services/SOA
Web services/service-oriented architecture (SOA) emerged as an open integration standard in the late 1990s and is now widely used by most industries. Web services utilize the data/metadata model common in higher-level Web programming languages such as HTML and JavaScript. In a Web service, metadata instructs computer systems to process data “payloads” in specific ways, e.g., submitting an address or SKU number into a specific field within a database or application. So long as enterprise systems support Web services standards – SOAP, WSDL, REST, HTTP, etc. – as nearly all now do, they can communicate and interoperate.
Web Integration
Web integration is a distinct category because of the unique characteristics of Web interfaces and applications. Brandon Systems are expert in the use of Microsoft .NET for Web integration and presentation of enterprise data and business logic in composite Web applications. Organizations use these applications to create powerful new applications, capable of incorporating data from any backend systems, for employees, partners, and customers.
More information on Web integration as a means of modernizing legacy IBM mainframe applications and data can be found on the Application Modernization page.
And contact us for more information about Enterprise Integration.
