The driving force for establishing an integration strategy depends on your current situation, potential and limitations. And they will most probably change over time.
Some of the demands we often see behind the need to establish an integration strategy are:
Access to information
- Access to information in real time.
- Data resides in different applications, not designed to communicate.
- Improved decision making.
- Implementation of a Service Oriented Architecture and loosely coupled applications.
Collaboration with business partners
- B2B integration (EDI, XML), e-procurement, supply chain integration, web access to legacy systems, CRM (self-service).
- A need to create advantages towards competitors.
Restructuring, mergers and acquisitions
- Mixed IT-infrastructures.
- Different ERP applications - which need to collaborate - time and cost effectively!
- Information sharing.
Overall economy
- Increased payback from existing applications/IT investments, modernization of "old applications".
- Need for "loosely coupled" applications, where applications and versions may be changed
- Improved re-usability and lower cost of ownership.
- Reduced risks with IT, create traceability and follow-up standards, "disaster recovery".
The evolution of enterprise applications has gone from "closed environments" that were hard to integrate - to the new open and component based solutions with pre-built interfaces for information sharing. In short, we can describe the business system evolution as:
1. The Era of customer unique, tailor-made applications
2. The Era of standardised ERP- and business systems
During the last 15-20 years, the major business applications and ERP vendors were established.
All systems were designed to be "stand-alone", more and more modules were added over time.
The development goal was for the application to be the "centre of the user's universe", no need for other applications.
Applications were built bottom-up.
3. The Era of open, component based systems, supporting an integration strategy!
Today, the market asks for open systems that can interact with other applications. The technical infrastructure and the standards are available.
It is a "multivendor world", no single vendor can supply all IT-systems.
Use of industry standards (webservices/.Net, J2EE…).
Freedom for customers to choose "best-of-breed" solutions
"Recycling" and extension of existing IT-investments, a need to "get more out" of the investments. Service enablement of disparate applications.
Avoiding "big-bangs", huge system/version upgrades, 24x365 service.
The ERP vendors have gone from a monolithic homogenous system architecture to an architecture with "built-in" possibilities for information sharing. Today, they are working in partnerships with software specialists to supply state-of-the-art solutions for all customers. Most IT suppliers has started offering support for a SOA arctitecture.