Preface

In the last several years, application integration, at least the notion of it, has worked its way into most information technology departments. This has been driven by a number of emerging developments, including the need to expose information found in existing systems to the Web, the need to participate in electronic marketplaces, the need to integrate their supply chain, and most importantly, the need for their existing enterprise systems to finally share information and common processes.

By now we know that application integration is important; there is not much need for me to restate that here. What is not as well understood is the amount of planning and coordination that needs to occur in order to pull off application integration today, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) or business-to-business (B2B); this, despite the availability of some pretty good technology that can make short work of joining systems together.

Moreover, while many are interested in application integration, few have taken the time to read books such as this, or the books I've written in the past, to better understand both the limitations and the opportunities. More often than not, application integration architects are driven more by the hype around the emerging standards and technology and less by their business needs and technology requirements. The end result is many failed projects, more due to lack of knowledge than lack of technology.

In essence, application integration is less about J2EE versus .NET, and more about understanding the requirements and future growth of the problem domain, a not-so-sexy activity that is all too often left on the side of the road, choosing, instead, "management by magazine."

Indeed, application integration is more of an all-encompassing concept, consisting of, but not limited to, metadata, business logic, interfaces, performance management, business processes, workflow, information processing, database integrity, standards strategies, vertical subsystems, accountability, application design, and middleware technology. Application integration is a strategic activity and a technology set that can enable an organization to run much more efficiently and, in most instances, provide a significant competitive advantage.



Next Generation Application Integration(c) From Simple Information to Web Services
Next Generation Application Integration: From Simple Information to Web Services
ISBN: 0201844567
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 220

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