EAI – What is it?
EAI – Enterprise Application Integration. Currently the toast of the consulting classes, replacement to ERP, the new universal IT panacea.
As with everything else there is a glint of gold in this but you do have to dig hard to find it.
There are a wide variety of so called EAI solutions.
As with all IT, the only way that an EAI solution will work for you, is if your IT system currently works for you.
EAI is not a magic bullet. It will not recreate your business process making it bigger, better, and easy to use. If your system already has problem areas, it will help make them bigger and better and easier to see. That’s why senior management is interested in it. It can quickly and easily debundle the information hierarchies and fiefdoms that some Managers & Department heads have created to enhance their own position.
EAI at its most basic level is the integration of dissimilar application systems to share information from them via a common user interface
The main goal of EAI should be to move towards achieving a “Zero Latency Enterprise” situation or an enterprise API.
(Gartner Group report Sept 1999)
The traditional way this has been approached is via middleware, which when deployed can connect applications and systems together, but can be unaware of other similar transactions taking place with in the same IT environment.
This approach can give rise to problems or restrictions actually caused by the integration method itself.
This philosophy is alien to the basic under-pinning of EAI which is not a point to point style solution, but one which focuses on the holistic needs of the enterprise business process, and then acts as an ‘honest’ information broker.
Thus we can see that really EAI is not a new area, Middleware solutions have been around for many years. It is really a new way of looking at an old problem.
Traditional Middleware
These provide a point to point link between system A and system B – Any other integration need or link may complicate this process and may indeed render it inoperable.
To add insult to injury, with a restricted middleware approach, changes to systems which enable the interaction of information sharing may require alterations to both Source and Target systems. This can make the whole process complex, time consuming and often dooms it to failure.
Continuing use of traditional middleware solutions can create complex point to point linkages, which resemble poorly planned plumbing with no central control and negligible management.
Enterprise is an internationally known car rental, with more than “7,000 neighboring and airport locations throughout North America and Europe. Enterprise is the largest car rental brand in North America, well-known for its great rates, award-winning customer service and picking up local car rental customers at no extra cost” (About). Enterprise offers great leadership opportunities to its employees and helps them become entrepreneurs. They provide over 1 million job opportunities worldwide, this private company thrives its self in customer service because they thrive on being personable by creating relationships not just transactions
Never allow any machine on the control network to talk direct to a machine on the business organize or on the Internet. Though a couple of affiliations' mechanical control structures may not direct go up against the Internet, an affiliation still exists if those structures are related with a bit of the network. Affiliations may not comprehend this affiliation exists, but instead a persevering advanced hazard on-screen character can find such pathways and use them to access and try current control systems to try to make a physical result. Along these lines, affiliations are encouraged to coordinate serious assessments of their structures, including the corporate endeavor pieces, to make sense of where pathways exist.
With AXI Travel, AXI was able to identify exactly what the customer was looking for, listened to the recommendations of the customer and implemented those recommendations, and worked with the leading name in IT to develop an ASP superior to any of its competitors. Leveraging the infrastructure already in place to develop new e-businesses, while providing incentives to the consumer to use all of the AXI e-businesses, solidified a customer base for their internet offerings. If AXI wants to remain a leader in the internet business corporate services industry, they need to continue these best practices of sound customer service and rapid innovation in the future.
The most recent history of our HMI software upgrades has been full of small upgrades, hot fixes (quick patches provided by GE) and changes to minor configuration items on the projects themselves. Recently, spurred by an announcement from Microsoft that Windows NT would soon be unsupported, GM decided it was time to upgrade its servers. The new servers would have Windows 2003 Server and any client or production computer would have Windows 2000. Any SQL Server will run SQL 2000 after the upgrade. The project began as a somewhat simple server hardware and software upgrade and has moved into a full-blown consolidation, network upgrade and server consolidation. From the outset, both EDS and GM have agreed to use a CMMi framework for all actions relating to this upgrade.
Firstly, these types of systems are installed in an environment which instantly adapts to the complex system and starts generating new requirements from the very moment it starts using it. These new requirements may occur because only after a process of trial and error can one truly see what functions with a system and what does not; and these things may not have been evident before the installment of the complex system.
... could experience main of the same benefits has seen MGI Spa. If Artemis moves away from the old IT systems to a more advanced Web-Based ERP IT systems.
· All parties – manufacturers, 3PLs, suppliers – could participate in EDI (electronic data interchange)
Only one executive out of five expressed about the EIS function when the EIS released. In other words, most of the executives do not know about the computer nor how to interpret. Genericorp should have hired storyteller to give executives better understanding of the system. Moreover, Genericorp should have communicated with three executives that do not use the EIS and find the reason for not using the system. The success of MIDS at Lockheed-Georgia and EIS at the Worldbank keeps updating the system that fulfills the executives’ needs.
At the moment, Enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems had become important systems in the modern business world. The meaning of ERP itself is an integrated software package composed by a set of standard functional modules (production, sales, human resources, finance, etc.) developed or integrated by the vendor that can be adapted to the specific needs of each customer (Esteves et al. 2000).
The purpose of implementing an ERP system in a company is when the company isn’t operating efficiently. Look at it like this, when your body is sick, you know you need to take medicine, you just can’t stand the taste. And in the same matter when your company isn’t operating efficiently, you’ve got to take steps to correct it. Most companies just fear the disruption, the learning, and the cost and the inconvenience of it all. “Another way to look at or understand ERP is cars have dashboards so the driver can get to where he or she wants to go. Airports have control towers to make sure everything and everyone gets to where they need to be. All of your typical individual machines have control panels so you can make them do what they are supposed to do”. (Jones, W (2006, 01). Roadmap to Fusion: Engaging Oracle Consulting on the path to your next business platform. Orcacle Corporation World Headquarters,)
“From early on the ambition of ERP-systems has been used to integrate all transaction systems within the one system which combines all information and practices across full organisation, and gives proper information for decision-making in real-time” (Bjorn-Andersen & Johansson 2007)
This can’t be said enough. The systems your business uses need to be connected and able to exchange information back and forth through an automated process.
...tecture for scalability and availability as the public cloud but is restricted to a single organization.
E-business and e-commerce are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, and sometimes they are used to differentiate one vendor’s product from another. In both cases, the e stands for "electronic networks" and describes the application of electronic network technology - including Internet and electronic data interchange (EDI) - to improve and change business processes (Bartels, 2000)