Enterprise Integration - Infrastructure - Essay Example

For effective integration, it is pivotal that all these information systems are linked together through a reliable technology. So much so that the enterprise as a whole works as a single platform, all the information systems connected and related in a productive manner, providing the processed information as and when needed, or even before hand. This leads to optimized business operations at reduced costs, alignment with the customer and enhanced business agility, streamlined internal business operations, individual roles and growth opportunities.

This calls for some strategic decisions about the kinds of technology that a company should use to link its various information systems. The technologies can then be made to work together in a coherent infrastructure to support the work of the organization. Regardless of the technology used, applications and data must communicate, and that communication is growing to include a wide variety of technologies, such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), JMS (Java Message Service), FTP and custom APIs.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is by far the most initial tool to serve the purpose of enterprise integration. ERP systems do not define what integration is and how it is to be developed, but they incur a techno-logic that conditions how control can be performed through financial and non-financial representations because they distinguish between an accounting mode and a logistics mode. The concept behind Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is that applications should expose their functionality as services in a way that can be accessed by any authorized external system.

SOA isn't a point product or even a suite of products-it requires multiple components comprising multiple products up and down the infrastructure stack and includes messaging (ESB) technology, application servers (ESP), management (SOA Management and Registries) products, development tools and more.Conventional integration technologies are evolving and are quickly being replaced with ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) software. ESBs provide integration plus the capabilities of legacy EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) products, and features and functions that integrate both legacy and contemporary services, such as Web services.

Enterprise and infrastructure management system (EIMS) technology offers network managers benefits such as unprecedented control, protection, security and integration with other systems. EIMS bridges network management software and physical layer management. It can self-discover the physical topology of data centers, communication rooms and wiring closets, while, at the same time, manage and troubleshoot network connectivity through integration with third-party logical layer applications.Infrastructure ModelIt is better to apply SOA concepts incrementally to existing information technology (IT) systems to exploit short-term business benefits.

SOA facilitates aligning existing IT infrastructure and systems to achieve end-to-end enterprise connectivity by removing redundancies, generating unified collaboration tools, and streamlining IT processes. The Human Service Bus (HSB) is an optimized organizational