What is Enterprise Integration

In many businesses, multiple people need to know the same information. In many of these cases, they each use the information for different purposes. For example, when information about how much oil has been sold this month gets released, multiple people can use it. The marketing team can use it to come up with new strategies while the financial side will use it to determine company finances. However, if the information is not integrated into your company, it can be hard for all of these teams to get the numbers and use them.

To do this, companies use enterprise integration. In the simplest terms, this is part of a cloud strategy in which many apps and devices are accessible to each other and talk to each other to get the information they need.

The term itself encompasses the technology, process, team, structure, data, devices, and applications that go into creating a connected business. Integrating your business not only makes your organization more efficient, productive, and agile but also saves money.

Where Did Enterprise Integration Start

As technology advanced, increasingly complicated programs were run on a business level. Unfortunately, this usually meant that several programs were needed to drive all the aspects of a business. At the same time, each of these programs either couldn’t or did a horrible job of talking to each other.

As the decades passed, this problem only got worse. Technology continued to advance, and businesses relied further on systems that didn’t talk to each other. To fix this problem, technology gurus came up with solutions on getting them to communicate with each other and share data. Over time, these fixes became a need for a real answer so that duplicating efforts wouldn’t have to happen anymore.

This is where the services of enterprise integration came from. Now, we’ve produced technologies and simplified the way that programs talk to each other. We can make all the programs used by a business talk to save time and money for the business and its employees.

What Methods Exist for Enterprise Integration?

Point-to-Point Integration

In short, this means that each program is talking to the other programs. It is by far the most direct route to getting applications working together. It merely involves making each program able to communicate with each other program in business.

The biggest downfall to this method is the time it takes an IT company to customize all of it. A subsequent defeat is the rigidity of the structure. If you add something else, it can often take just as long to add that it is it took to create the system in the first place.

Hub and Spoke Integration

The solution to point-to-point integration was hub-and-spoke integration. Each app was connected to a “hub” by a “spoke.” In simple terms, each application was able to talk to a central broker that would transfer the information without speaking directly to the other app.

This meant that each app could be tailored only to talk to the broker rather than each of the other apps. Each app was able to be more focused. However, the failure of the central broker could bring the whole system down.

Enterprise Service Bus Integration

This method worked in the same way as a hub-and-spoke with all apps talking to a central service. However, this central service provided more than just transferring information. ESB Integration allowed for routing, orchestration, messaging, security, transformation, and more. However, like all those before it, this method of enterprise integration was less than agile as new technologies came on board.

Agile Integration

The newest level-up in technology is agile integration. Since change is happening more frequently as technology continues to evolve, your integration must be able to change as well. Though the other options have the lead in security and complete data integration, agile integration still stays safe while offering for easier change as it’s needed. With Agile Integration, you are employing the use of many teams, cloud software, and agile delivery techniques.

Through various options, you will have the ability to focus your enterprise integration further than ever before. You’ll be able to focus on flexibility, scalability, or usability based on how you distribute your integration and where you focus your efforts.

Enterprise integration is great for companies looking to save money when they have multiple programs and people that need to talk to each other all across their company. Cloud-based enterprise integration can let co-workers communicate data through vast distances without duplicating efforts. If you’re looking for an enterprise integration solution, check with us to see what we can do for you.