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The Mother of All Inventions

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DQI Bureau
New Update

First there was deployment of acronym applications like SCM, CRM, ERP etc.

and now there is a need to allow these applications to talk to one another

without changing the underlying application code or overhauling infrastructure.

It is called the enterprise application integration (EAI) technology that

proposes to put together disparate applications and data systems for an

organization. Earlier custom made software programs like sales automation, human

resources, and database management systems were built to run independently. But

now as organizations grow the need to transfer and share information between

these systems is also growing. EAI entered the picture to help these custom-made

applications, built on disparate legacy systems, to communicate.

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Data integration using

EAI

What is an EAI package?



EAI has evolved from traditional methods of EDI. There are various tools
incorporated within an EAI package to deliver their promise of B2B and A2A or

integrating business functions. It typically constitutes a message pass,

adapters/connectors, a development kit, and an in-built architecture. A message

is passed between functions of disparate applications like an alert between a

SAP and a CRM for which open standards technologies must be used like JMS.

Adapters that are used for data level integration (as described below) are

generally specific to the technology while connectors are specific to an

application package. For example, SAP comes with a J2CA compliant connector that

allows transfer of data.

The development kit that comes with an EAI package allows customers to create

their own adapters/connectors with the tools available and according to needs.

" But for each SAP implementation the connectors will have to be different

for different customers as their needs and infrastructure would be different. In

almost every case only 30% of the connecting work using adapters/connectors are

customized," says Atul Saini, CEO, Fiorano. Fiorano’s Tifosi comes with

as many as 300 adapters to meet different requirements.

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"As much as 30% of the costs associated with implementing a major

packaged application will be consumed by integration. So using a adapters and

connectors will reduce these integration costs by almost one-third," claims

Sanjay Khendry, VP, GE Business Development at Sierra Atlantic, Hyderabad.

Peer-to-peer



To help customers solve integration problems, work is on by application

vendors to re-architecture and incorporate open standard connectors or

components while EAI vendors are focusing on encompassing middleware and

business processes for various packaged solutions using open standard

architecture. In a span of 12 years since EAI first originated, EAI solutions

have evolved from point to point integration solutions to the hub and spoke

integration solutions and today finally to a peer-to-peer architecture, and some

to a hybrid. In a peer-to-peer architecture there is no single integration

server but most processing happens at the source and target systems. There are a

lot of middleware companies that have aggressively moved into peer-to-peer

architecture. Fiorano for example, has a hybrid of a peer-to-peer EAI solutions

and hub-to-spoke help to integrate enterprise applications, e-commerce

applications, Internet applications, and traditional EDI and inter-enterprise

applications. So depending on the need and the infrastructure in place EAI

requirements will vary from one enterprise to another.

An EAI package in general must support the following:

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  • An EAI solution must be able to adapt to the changing IT

    infrastructure that constitutes various classes of databases, middleware by

    various vendors, and file types etc; and

  • The software must not be bound to a single integration

    topology or architecture. It must support multiple topologies, as no single

    topology would help meet all needs.

Driving down costs and risk



One of the reasons why an EAI implementation has been an expensive

proposition is because getting these varied applications from across an

organization to talk to one another required knowledge of propriety technology

and skilled programming. In today’s market most of the EAI packages are

standardized. The market trend is toward application vendors providing open

standard connectors so that EAI vendors can use them when connecting

applications together and helping to build open standard adapters. Some

standards used during application integration are EDI, XML, SWIFT, and HIPAA.

"The usage of standards helps in making the integration

scalable as once an object is in a standard form it can be shared with one or

more application with no additional effort using a middleware platform,"

says Khendry.

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The customers in the EAI space must look toward more

standardized solutions to lower their cost of EAI initiatives and risk of vendor

lock-ins. So the more standardized the EAI solution is the better. The trend

toward standards is evident in the following example. Previously connectors to

SAP and Siebel were available only when bundled with a proprietary integration

broker. Now these connectors or adapters are in compliance with the Java 2

Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Connector Architecture standard so as to allow them to

work as plug-and-play adapters with J2EE application servers. So buyers or

customers must look for those solutions that are built around standards and

select those that best suits their needs.

"Definitely, the adoption of standards has reduced the

development costs," says Atul. "The client does not need to know the

implementation specifics of the service, thereby reducing the development

cost." Most solutions offered by application vendors have support for

standards and have developed using languages like Java, C, and VB etc. and on

XML.

"Application infrastructure is the fastest growing

segment in the worldwide market as against services and applications. It is

growing at CAGR of 23% (IDC report). In India is also evident as more and more

companies in Bangalore are setting up labs for developing components and

technologies that enable heterogeneous applications to communicate," says

Srikant Rao. Globally firms with revenues greater $1 billion will spend an

average of $6.3 million this year on EAI.

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EAI initiatives are difficult and the market may take time to

mature in India. However there is a good potential for vendors as most

enterprises in India use legacy or homebred applications and would probably like

to integrate them. And as EAI becomes an inevitable need for enterprises to keep

up with the dynamics of the market, one must always look toward standards to

lower the cost of EAI initiatives and reduce the vendor risks that are often

associated with EAI products.

Radhika Bhuyan In New

Delhi

CASE STUDY: Rumblings at DMC

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DMC Stratex Networks



Start up year:
1984



Employees:
1,100



Annual revenues:
$400 million



EAI package
: Sierra Atlantic’s Application

Networks (solution developed in Hyderabad). Sierra Atlantic integrates and

develops solutions using solutions from a mixed breed of vendors




Line of business
: Manufacturer of wireless

cellular infrastructure and broadband access




Object for EAI implementation:
Automate order

fulfillment systems




Platform used
: Vitria’s BusinessWare

Business Challenges/Objectives



After acquiring several companies in different cities spread across the

country and globe, California-based DMC Stratex Networks, found itself with

several disparate legacy systems, including Computer Associates’ CA-MANMAN,

Oracle Applications, and Chameleon Software. So it wanted a solution that would

help integrate and automate these systems into one standardized solution.

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Every order at DMC is customized on a huge scale with

thousands of expensive units going through the order fulfillment process. So

making changes to an order of that scale becomes a time-consuming process. So

they wanted a totally integrated system for all their enterprise applications

and with which they could go on adding additional enterprise applications. In

addition they wanted a platform that would allow them to integrate new

acquisitions easily.

So DMC wanted to:

  • Integrate disparate legacy systems, while

    maintaining information to an Oracle database
  • Automate order fulfillment processes, and make order

    changes and process orders faster
  • Facilitate corporate acquisitions and organization

    changes through standardization of integrated disparate systems

The Solution



DMC went on to integrate Oracle as its back-office application, Agile for
product content management, Siebel for product configuration and sales force

automation and Clarify for CRM at a business process level.They wanted to

maintain links between all these legacy systems to the main Oracle database,

while still working on legacy system in different cities.

Implementation time:

4 months




Connected:
Clarify, Agile, Siebel, Oracle and

other legacy applications




Operating system:
Sun Solaris



Platform:
Vitria BusinessWare

Result



Earlier DMC had a fairly manual process in order fulfillment, which took two

weeks to complete but now the same thing is done within two days. The decrease

in cycle time has resulted in increased revenue because of the ability to handle

more customers at a time and larger orders in volume. It was able to witness

four consecutive quarters of record sales after that. The solution did not need

them to hire more people to process more orders in a shorter period.

So overall it:

  • Reduced processing time for a customized order from

    two weeks to two days
  • Streamlined resources and improved productivity

    without adding head-count
  • Decreased cycle times, lowered operating costs and

    increased revenue
  • Created the ability to adapt to changes quickly and

    efficiently without custom code changes to the application
  • Improved customer service processes on a global

    scale

Inputs from Zia Askari/CNS in Hyderabad

CASE STUDY: ICICIDirect.com

During the last few years, ICICI has been working hard

to keep up with new customers and demands for online trading. In order to

facilitate online trading ICICI wanted the separate legacy applications that

held customer’s bank account, the demat accounts and broker accounts, to be

integrated into one. So it decided to develop and implement a middleware based

on open standards. It created a special task force to build an online ordering

system in Java that enables retail customers to trade online over the Internet

using a browser. The online trading system runs on a J2EE compliant application

server and has integrated these applications using BEA’s Tuxedo. BEA’s

Tuxedo uses CORBA to allow application communicate to one another and pass

information or data between these applications. Transactions happen in a 128-bit

encryption format.

Implementation time:

3 months




Benefits:
Value addition to customers

Result: The online

ordering system has been a huge success and is also the only kind in India. The

integrated system built on open standards would not pose a problem if ICICI

intends to integrate or add more applications. The solution from BEA has enabled

to tie the various components of web trading between the bank, demat section and

the broker accounts into a single entity.

Levels of Integration

One must approach an EAI vendor to provide them with an integrated and mixed

suite of solutions to avoid vendor lock-ins. An EAI integration happens at

several points:

Message level: Technologies that support message level integration are

messaging and object request broker (ORB), which manages communications and data

exchange between objects. This is the most basic level of integration that

involves passing information or message queues over a middleware. Information is

passed by using standards such as JMS (Java Messaging Service), which an EAI

package incorporates, such as Fiorano’s MQ. Other messaging middleware

products are IBM’s MQSeries, Microsoft’s MSMQ, JMS, and BEA’s MessageQ

which are designed to handle information transfer within a distributed computing

environment.

Data level: These are points from where data is introduced like the

application’s database, flat file, API and document style interfaces. At this

level, connectors, rule-based routing, and adapters are used as a backbone

connection to transfer data between applications. Prior to integration data that

needs to be transferred from one application to another must be identified and

cataloged. The above mentioned tools help in data sharing and distributing and

some help to pull data from a database, and then transform the data so that it

is compatible with a second database and then load it into that second database.

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