Introduction to Integration

Today companies are using the Web to create new and better ways of serving their customers. Competition has become severe and is pushing the corporations to adopt new and different kinds of partnerships with suppliers, customers, and in some cases, even their own competitors .

Many electronic vertical exchanges provide services in which companies ( buyers ) can post their requirements and vendors or suppliers can then bid and compete for the business. Also, the companies must integrate their different units to serve customers better and gain competitive advantages. These exchanges require complex business arrangements in dynamic business processes and data being processed between the exchange, bidders, buyers, and different units. Businesses have to carefully construct their information systems so that they integrate well with their collaboraters and also continue to work with their own legacy systems. Data integration has become important with the increasing need for businesses to share information within and outside their organizations to reduce expensive inventories and costs.

There is a need for integration solutions that can provide standards-based functionality for data integration and business-to-business integration.