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Today, businesses are facing various challenges while integrating their fragmented and unconnected applications. Whether it’s the high maintenance cost of multiple applications or the inability to gain actionable insights from disconnected data – businesses need a solution that can bring all these fragmented applications together. That’s where Enterprise Application Integration comes into play – it is a technology that connects enterprise applications. Companies face many challenges when integrating their fragmented and unconnected applications, and most of them are related to data integration. While there are hundreds of solutions for specific integration needs, there isn’t one covering the entire spectrum of application integration needs. That’s why we will explore in depth what Enterprise Applications Integration is, how it can help your business, its advantages, its types, and real-world use cases for you to pick the right solution for your business.
What is Enterprise Application Integration?
When it comes to defining integration, the best way is to go with the example of a grocery store. When you go to the grocery store, you don’t buy everything you need for your kitchen in one go. Instead, you buy a couple of items at a time, depending on your needs.Similarly, when we talk about application integration, it is the way various applications can be linked or connected with each other, so that they can share data. You might be wondering if this is not already possible when it comes to different software or technologies. But the fact is that they are not designed to integrate with each other.Integrating applications is not an easy task, and it requires expert skills. It also requires a lot of time and money. That’s why companies use Enterprise Application Integration. It is a technology that connects different applications and helps them share data with each other.
Why should your business care about EAI?
First, let’s understand the challenges of integrating applications:There are several challenges when it comes to integrating applications. They could be of different types, from technical to the organizational challenges. Let’s take a look at them:- Fragmentation: Applications are developed for a specific purpose, so they are not built to fit other applications. There is no standard format for data, so it is almost impossible to integrate them.- Lack of visibility: When applications are not connected, they are not sharing data. So, even if they are integrated, they are not able to see data from other connected applications.- Siloed data: When it comes to data integration, it cannot just be a one-way process. Data has to be flowing in both directions, so that it can be shared between the connected applications.- Lack of agility: The data flow of the organization is focused on one particular data source. So, if this data source gets disturbed in any way, the whole organization is affected by it.- High maintenance cost: When there is a huge amount of fragmented applications, it is really expensive to maintain these applications.
Advantages of EAI
– It brings together the data from various applications and helps organizations to get a complete view of their data.- It helps organizations in identifying the actionable insights from the given data, so that businesses can make the right decisions based on the available data.- It helps organizations in reducing the operational costs by reducing the maintenance costs of disconnected systems.- It helps organizations in improving the collaboration between the teams and better decision-making.
Types of Enterprise Applications Integration
– Traditional Application Integration: It is the traditional way of integrating applications. It requires custom-built solutions and a team of developers to integrate applications.- Service-oriented Architecture: It is a method of designing applications where the data is not stored in the application itself. Instead, it is stored in an external data source.- Data-driven Application Integration: It is a method of integrating applications where an organization has an Enterprise Integration Hub that stores all the data, and the applications are connected to this hub and are able to access or share data as per the requirements.
Conclusion
Enterprise Application Integration is a journey that businesses need to take to get a better control over their applications. It is not only about connecting the applications but also about bringing the data together and making actionable insights from it.EAI, when implemented, brings in a lot of advantages for businesses. It helps them in seeing a complete picture of their data, makes actionable insights from it, and reduces the operational costs. Moreover, it also helps in better collaboration between the teams and in better decision-making.
