Introducing Application Infrastructure

In search of competitive advantages over their industry peers, organizations are pioneering innovative technical and Web-centric solutions to propagate their intellectual data, information, and knowledge through their network infrastructure to support mission-critical real-time decisions, which can straddle multiple business units.

Without proper foresight and application infrastructure planning to support a growing application portfolio, the adoption of new technologies can quickly generate extremely complex and heterogeneous technical environments, all of which need to be maintained and evolve in parallel with their supported business practices and processes. Depending on the degree of enterprise visibility, applications may also have to integrate with other applications to form a larger business solution suite (an enterprise solution). However, if externalization of business processes has not been planned, integration efforts can be hindered to a point where they are deemed too complex and expensive. This is the dilemma most organizations are finding themselves in, and due to the pace in which technology-based business solutions are originated, constructed , and deployed, this dilemma is ongoing and largely suppressed by an organization's desire to succeed.

A proven technical solution to this dilemma is the adoption of an interoperable, standards-based application infrastructure that can outlive and support the development, integration, and extension of technical business solutions. Organizations embracing such an application infrastructure approach have increased the overall IT productivity, business value, and longevity of their business solutions, while also lowering any related support cost structures.

Application infrastructure is available in many forms and from many vendors . Realizing what application infrastructure software is the most applicable to your organization is an important issue you must resolve. The ramifications of implementing the wrong application infrastructure are only amplified over time, with the final outcome being that your application infrastructure will eventually cease to support your current and future technical demands.