ENTERPRISE APPLICATION INTEGRATION

Departmental Application Integration (DAI), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and Business Community Integration (BCI) target different business needs, have different scopes and involve varying degrees of budgetary commitments.

However, when it comes to technology, it translates into a flexible and scalable architecture that could easily progress from DAI to EAI to BCI, and from another view, enable A2A, B2B, E2E, B2C and P2P. At the same time, it should be possible to replace any component of the architecture, any time with minimal impact. In fact, it should be possible to even replace the glue that binds this architecture together.

In other words, the architecture should be able to "evolve" with the increasing and changing business scope, growing user base, acquisition of the best-of-breed COTS components and new technologies.

We are a firm believer in component methodology and that smartly designed components can be easily assembled to build applications, and applications integrated to create enterprise solutions.

When viewed as separate components; even commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) packages like Oracle Applications, SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel etc can be easily assembled (integrated) to meet each department's business requirements and create an EAI solution.

A message broker based, hub and spoke architecture that uses open and industry standard technologies for building interfaces, provides plug & play capability, flexibility, scalability and cost effectiveness, as well as vendor independence.

J2EE, CORBA and XML: : J2EE, CORBA and XML provide open and industry standard technologies for integrating heterogenous systems.

Some of Evolvers' re-usable, flexible, scalable, extensible, vendor neutral, industry standard compliant components using J2EE technologies (Java, JSP, Servlet, EJB, JDBC), XML, and CORBA are :

• B2B/B2C ASP (application service provider) exchange to enable eCommerce for loans and advances.
• Message Broker for COTS application integration. The Broker provides integration via CORBA, EJB, XML, and JDBC-ODBC.
• Change Propagation : Framework to asynchronously transmit data, messages and events to applications.
• Object to relational mapping framework for connecting business objects to relational databases.

Microsoft .NET: : MS .NET is ideal for organizations that have traditionally used and deployed MS technologies. In a homogeneous Microsoft technology environment, evolving towards the component-based and Web Services enabled .NET framework provides a robust architecture.

Oracle Applications: : Oracle Application Server provides full-featured integration linking packaged, custom, mainframe, and component-based Java/J2EE applications. Oracle9iAS Integration is a comprehensive set of infrastructure and tools for integrating enterprise applications. Integration options used are:

• Business process integration via the Oracle Workflow component.
• Programming interfaces with COM/DCOM, CORBA, or Java Libraries.
• Use of pre-built adapters for 3rd party packages like, SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Ariba, etc.
• Message-based interaction options include XML over HTTP, IBM MQ Series, MS MQ.
• For those organizations standardizing their information bus on middleware and integration platforms such as Microsoft BizTalk, WebMethod, Mercator, Vitria, prebuilt Oracle adapters are available to these products.
• Traditional methods of interface tables, Triggers, and Stored Procedures could be used, though not preferred and recommended.

SAP: : SAP technology provides integration through the Internet-Business Framework, an open and component-based architecture. Integration options used are:

• SAP WebFlow for time and event-driven workflow to drive end-to-end, cross-component and cross-enterprise business processes
• The SAP Business Connector to make all solutions accessible via XML-based business documents.
• Programming interfaces using BAPI, COM+, CORBA, or Java Libraries
• Use of pre-built adapters for 3rd party packages.
• For loose coupling, message-based interaction could be used that include XML over HTTP, SOAP, MQ Series.
• For those organizations standardizing their information bus on middleware and integration platforms such as Microsoft BizTalk, WebMethod, Vitria, prebuilt adapters to these products could be used.

Siebel: : Siebel 7 lowers integration costs by providing support for a standards-based "application network" - a vendor-independent architecture for inter-application integration. We like this since we are big proponents of vendor-independent architecture and integration designs. Integration options used are:

• Using programmatic interfaces such as COM, CORBA, or Java Libraries.
• For loose coupling, message-based interaction options are XML over HTTP, IBM MQ Series, and MS MQ.
• For those organizations standardizing their information bus on middleware platforms such as Microsoft BizTalk, WebMethod, SeeBeyond, Vitria, and TIBCO, prebuilt Siebel adapters to these products could be used.

Legacy mainframe: : Legacy data is either accessed directly from the datastores or from existing transactions that preserve the business rules.

Depending on the business requirements, legacy technologies used, and technology blueprint, integration is done via real-time integration of database via JDBC/ODBC (e.g. DB2), scrapping data from existing transactions (e.g. IMS and CICS), or abstraction of legacy code with CORBA, J2EE or .NET.

PRODUCTS: :

• cLink - Intranet portal for corporations, real estate, asscociations, communities etc.
• Proceed – Supply Chain Management
• Allows enterprise’s customer to access system, and securely place orders.
• Allows multiple shipments with customizable schedule.
• Simulates final negotiation process through a "Request for Amendment" cycle.
• Ensures that the different terms of the order are exactly in acceptance to both the sides. This drastically reduces the time for an order going live.
• Manufacturer and customer can track execution of the order through multiple stages.
• Proceed considers the logistics system as an integral part of the value chain and lets the logistics partner update the shipment details.
• Integrates existing workflow processes such as Enterprise Resource Planning systems.
• Claimstrack - Web based Insurance claims tracking system (J2EE based)

Evolvers. Creating value through technology evolution.