EAI (Enterprise Application Integration), BPI (Business Process Integration), EI (Enterprise Integration), B2B integration are all buzzwords emphasizing the obvious. For any enterprise to conduct its business today, it must link its appealing web front-end with its back-end systems - transactional and data base systems. It must also connect with the systems of its trading partners.
In this context, we can talk about two levels of integration - within and beyond the firewall. The focus of EAI is internal to the enterprise emphasizing the sharing of data between disparate systems - ERP, legacy and more recently front-end web applications. On its part, B2B integration builds on EAI and links the processes of an enterprise with those of its customers and trading partners. In other words, B2B integration is an end-to-end solution for the automation of business processes within and across the boundaries of the enterprise.
Two integration portals well worth a click are ebizQ for e-business integration and IT Portal for EAI. A stop at these portals would not be complete without a visit to the EAI Journal with its collection of articles on all forms of integration.
The integration of diverse systems within an enterprise is not new by any stretch of the imagination. System integrators have earned their consulting dollars in developing point-to-point application integration solutions using either custom interfaces or generalized middleware to transfer information. By the same token, large enterprises have since the late eighties communicated electronically with their trading partners using EDI standards such as ANSI X12 or EDIFACT over Value-Added- Networks (VANs).
However, both approaches have shortcomings. Point-to-point technology is expensive to build and maintain as well as not being extendable. Also, while EDI automates some business transactions such as a purchase order, the technology is expensive, message-centric and does not standardize the common business processes and interfaces between the various partners in a supply chain.
To meet the imperative of the new Net economy, industry consortiums such as RosettaNet, BizTalk and OAG are facilitating the automation of business processes and the sharing of documents across enterprises through the development of frameworks and open standards. The RosettaNet standard arose in the IT and electronic components industry as a result of the work of the RosettaNet community. RosettaNet defines high-level standard business processes such as inventory management, identifies their constituent parts called Partner Interface Processes (PIPs), and specifies the exchange protocols for their implementation. Eventually, it will be possible to have the same standard part number for a network router irrespective of the vendor.
