What is enterprise integration and why is it important?
Enterprise integration is the practice of connecting business applications, data, private and public clouds, processes, devices – and of course, people – across the entire IT landscape.
Enterprise integration overview
Connecting the dots is often easier said than done. Most enterprises have a burgeoning array of diverse applications, devices, clouds, and networks, not to mention exponentially growing volumes of data. Given the complexity, how can they react quickly enough to side-step global disruptions and meet ever-shifting customer demands? How do they stay responsive, resilient – and profitable? The answer lies in enterprise integration.
Integration doesn’t mean simply bolting a lot of new software and tools on to your existing systems. Achieving true integration in your businesses can only happen when everyone and everything – your teams, your customers, your partners, and your systems – can all work together in real time.
What is enterprise integration?
Enterprise integration is the use of technology and methodologies to tightly connect everything in an IT landscape – including applications, data, clouds, APIs, processes, and devices. It combines multiple integration approaches into one combined effort, with one governance model.
Why is enterprise integration important?
Enterprise integration makes it possible for different systems and data sources to seamlessly share information with each other. It allows data to flow across the organization in real time, so businesses can automate processes, improve efficiency, gain better customer insight, and adopt new technologies and business models. Ultimately, enterprise integration is the key to agility – empowering even very large companies to adapt quickly and pivot on a dime.
83%
of organizations consider enterprise integration a top-5 business priority over the next 2 years.
The key business benefits of enterprise integration include:
Optimized and automated business processes. Fragmented and disconnected processes slow down workflows, hinder operational efficiency, and create inconsistent user experiences. With enterprise integration, companies can not only connect, optimize, and automate processes across the organization, they can provide seamless customer and employee experiences across all digital touchpoints.
Better customer insight. Customer information comes in many different formats, from many different data sources and applications. With enterprise integration, businesses can connect and interpret all this information in one place, gain a 360-degree view of their customers and audiences, and ensure compliance with privacy regulations.
Futureproofed IT landscape. Successful digital transformation strategies often require connecting legacy systems with newer cloud technologies. Enterprise integration uses an API-first approach to merge the old and the new. This way, companies can extract real-time data from legacy systems to maintain business continuity – while supporting new business models and modernizing their IT landscapes.
Opportunities in the API economy. More and more businesses are unlocking new opportunities in the API economy. Using APIs to build an ecosystem of buyers, partners, and suppliers, they can facilitate seamless information exchange, create unique services and business models, and drive competitive differentiation.
Types of integration
There are a number of different types of integration connecting critical systems, processes, data, and applications across all lines of business within an organization.
- Application integration: With enterprise application integration (EAI), processes and data can be optimized, integrated, and shared between separate software applications in real time – to deliver improved insights, visibility, and productivity across the organization.
- Data integration: With data integration, information – or data – is discovered, retrieved, and compiled from disparate sources into a structured and unified view.
- Cloud integration: With cloud integration, multiple hybrid cloud environments are pulled together (both public and private clouds) as a cohesive IT infrastructure that addresses data, processes, system architectures, and enterprise applications.
- API integration: With application programming interface (API) integration, two (or more) enterprise applications are connected via their APIs, allowing those systems to exchange data sources. These critical connections power processes and workflows throughout the business in order to sync data, enhance organizational productivity, and drive growth.
- Platform integration: With platform integration, a comprehensive set of software products enables IT professionals to develop secure integration flows that connect and govern disparate applications, systems, services, and data sources in the cloud. Platform integration is also closely related to integrated platform as a service (iPaaS).
- Process integration: With process integration, workflows and processes that span multiple applications and systems can be optimized and orchestrated to transform operations and drive efficiency.
- Device integration: With device integration, different devices are connected so they can communicate, interact, and interoperate to support business needs and drive productivity.
The exact types and combinations of integrations supported can vary between integration software vendors.
Enterprise integration platforms and technologies
Intelligent enterprises are integrated enterprises. They apply advanced technologies, intelligent process automation, and connected, real-time data to drive growth and impact the business. As such, the applications, data, and devices at the core of the business strategy must be made accessible across multiple cloud environments all at once. There are a number of different enterprise integration platforms and technologies that can help make this happen:
iPaaS: Integration platform as a service (iPaaS) delivers a cloud service for application, data, process, and service-oriented architecture (SOA) integration scenarios. It's a multi-tenant platform that supports cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-on-premise, on-premise-to-on-premise, and B2B integration.
Messaging: Messaging is a way for different components in a distributed application architecture to communicate. Components can send and receive messages across different languages, compilers, and operating systems as long as each side of the communication understands the common messaging format and protocol.
Pub/sub: Publish/subscribe is a design pattern for exchanging event data between applications, devices, and services. With this model, publishers (any source of data) send messages to subscribers (receivers interested in this data) in real time. Pub/sub is often used for decoupled and microservices-based applications as well as event-driven architectures (EDAs).
Application connectors: Application connectors are architectural elements that model the rules for how components interact. They are standard class connections customized for certain APIs, so they can be used to quickly integrate new endpoints.
Data streams: Data streams provide a constant flow of information that applications can add to or consume, independent of the transmission of that data.
Enterprise integration patterns: EIPs are collections of technology-independent solutions to common integration problems. Patterns also provide a common language for developers and application architects to describe integrations.
Application programming interfaces (APIs): An API is a set of tools, definitions, and protocols for building application software. It lets your product or service communicate with other products and services without having to know how they’re implemented.
Examples of enterprise integration
Organizations across industries are using enterprise integration to further their business goals and gain a competitive advantage. Here are some examples of what can be accomplished through various integration strategies.
A centralized analytics infrastructure to build a smarter Infrastructure and reduce emissions.
To improve data management and enhance analytics across a £600 billion capital infrastructure investment portfolio, British construction company Costain Group plc proposed a common data platform called the intelligent infrastructure control center (IICC). Unifying their project data for smarter analytics resulted in lowering infrastructure costs by 66%. It also reduced the demand for data centers, helping the sector reduce its carbon footprint and achieve its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Even better, with data virtualization making siloed data available, 80% of all data is now accessible, up from 30%. That sort of full data transparency gave management visibility into the impact of day-to-day project activities, providing critical information to help support key decision-makers. Those advanced and predictive analytics reduce unknowns and lower risk while helping further cut costs and increase project efficiencies.
A customer-centric online retail experience.
To support mobility, unify channels, and create a seamless customer journey, consumer electronics retailer, Elkjøp, created a frictionless, omnichannel customer experience with a sustainable IT foundation that enables flexibility and rapid innovation at scale. In order to fulfill its vision for a next-generation retail experience, Elkjøp made the decision to replace 12 legacy systems with a new integrated architecture. The dramatic, cloud-based overhaul resulted in a fully integrated retail platform that has both improved workflows and delivered 100% uptime. Their ambitious transformation strategy yielded an array of other benefits for Elkjøp, including an 800% increase in the number of positive product ratings and growing their customer database to more than 5M (in the Nordics alone).
IoT-enabled business models and B2B cloud integration
Endress + Hauser is an industrial machinery and components (IM&C) company based in Germany. To improve data-driven intelligence and support B2B cloud integration and new IoT-powered business models, the IM&C company turned to cloud-based data and integration solutions that use machine learning technology. As a result of implementing their new integration approach, Endress + Hauser increased the speed of projects, reduced costs by more than 5X, and laid a foundation for earning net digital sales of 50 million Euros. By using standardized integration packages, the organization was also able to bolster legal compliance.
Best practices in enterprise integration
Executing a winning enterprise integration approach is made easier when following proven best practices like the following:
- Start with a platform approach.
A platform-based approach supports the multiple dimensions of enterprise connectivity, catering to a wide range of integration use cases (such as application, process, data, usage, sensors, and others) across on-premise, cloud, and hybrid ecosystems. - Use APIs as foundational building blocks.
APIs serve as interchangeable integration components within a platform framework, supporting the integration of people, processes, and systems. This allows the business to easily transform digital assets into new business models through a variety of monetization plans. - Make integration accessible to everyone.
By democratizing integration, the business can empower all users with intuitive, no-code build experiences. Business users of all backgrounds and technical capabilities can update and build integrations to help maximize business value, lessening the reliance on dedicated developers. - Implement smart lifecycle management.
Create ongoing management plans to support the enterprise integration strategy. Plans must include access control, change management processes, rules for extending integrations, management of system credentials, and data encryption. For hybrid deployments, lifecycle management must be able to push patches and upgrades to runtime engines whether on-premise or in the cloud. - Drive continual improvements with analytics and predictive intelligence.
Use integration activity analytics to draw insights from the flow of data across the business, departments, and endpoints. With increases in user-led integration, predictive intelligence can recognize integration patterns on usage across the organization. - Establish an integration center of excellence (ICoE).
An integration center of excellence (ICoE), also known as an integration competency center (ICC), is a shared service within an organization that methodically integrates data, system, cloud, and enterprise applications in a coherent, scalable, and cost-effective way to deliver an enduring competitive advantage. As a centralized function disseminating knowledge and standardizing processes across the organization, the ICoE’s role is to promote enterprise integration as a formal discipline. ICC’s yield multiple benefits to the business including reduced infrastructure and data center costs, sustainable growth, greater supply chain stability, intelligent technologies and predictive analytics for enhanced decision-making, smarter processes automation, and much more.
How to establish an integration center of excellence (ICoE)
True enterprise integration extends far beyond systems, applications, and processes to encompass organizational cultures, structures, and workflows. Converging the diversity of skills, knowledge, and expertise will break down silos and yield new digital offerings as well as an enhanced customer experience, overall.
This is no longer a digital transformation ideal, it is table stakes. The competitive and fiscal advantages of establishing an integration center of excellence are too great to ignore.
To accomplish this strategic imperative, organizations must assign a C-suite sponsor and build a cross-department team dedicated to applying best practices and standards. This will optimize scarce IT resources by combining integration skills, resources, and processes into one dedicated team of subject matter experts. These experts should be drawn from various disciplines including compliance and security – and all lines of business – that oversee applications and data directly impacted by the integration.
The 5 essential steps to establishing an effective Integration Center of Excellence (ICoE) are:
- Assessing integration maturity
- Establishing a mission, charter, scope, and targets
- Performing a GAP analysis and developing a list of improvements
- Developing a multiphase deployment roadmap
- Delivering a final engagement report to business and IT leaders
With an ICoE, organizations can expect the following benefits:
Accelerated project delivery time
Operational and IT budget efficiencies by investing in technology solutions that serve multiple projects
Lower maintenance costs
Improved ROI through the creation and reuse of enterprise assets such as source definitions, application interfaces, and codified business rules
There is little doubt that more businesses and boardrooms have recognized the strategic imperative for enterprise integration. However, establishing a cohesive and connected organization can be fraught with challenges and unforeseen risks. Successful enterprise integration demands an agile and scalable integration strategy. Some vendors offer a guided approach to the design and execution of this type of strategy – driven by an Integration Center of Excellence. The SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology, for example, is built right into SAP Integration Suite and is based on proven best practices and an in-dept knowledge of the technology.
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