InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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May 28, 2001 |
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First In A Two-Part Series
Integration Powered
Enterprise application integration is becoming a key element of a savvy E-commerce strategy. Integration servers provide the latest approach to linking Web, legacy, and line-of-business applications without requiring custom coding.
By Eric Sanchez, Kaushal Patel, and Joe Fenner
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ophisticated E-business initiatives are driving application integration to the top of the IT priorities list. Building software that transcends application boundaries and trading-partners' networks requires the integration of Web, legacy, and line-of-business applications. Historically, this was accomplished through the creation of custom middleware that linked one application to another in a closed and proprietary fashion. But that piecemeal approach isn't extensible or scalable enough to meet today's rapid deployment requirements.
The challenge of tying back-end and front-end systems together in a common E-business architecture has given rise to the market for integration servers (see related story, p. 60). This category of software includes packaged connectors for different enterprise systems, which simplifies the process of integration, drastically reduces the amount of customization, and facilitates reuse.
Doculabs recently conducted a comparative assessment of the integration servers from six vendors: CrossWorlds Software, SeeBeyond Technologies, Tibco Software, Vitria Technology, webMethods, and WRQ. We wanted to find out just how well these vendors are addressing companies' integration requirements. We also wanted to identify emerging technology trends and shed some light on these trends and the business drivers behind the adoption of this technology.
Overall, we found that the integration servers offer good packaged connectors for many major business systems such as enterprise resource planning systems and mainframe environments. However, we found considerable differences in product architectures. This is an important distinction, and understanding these differences will help the systems architect choose the right kind of integration server for his or her company's environment and application needs.
Finally, we found key differences in how the various integration servers address the critical component of process management, which is the automation and management of business processes that span disparate systems. This important set of functions must be carried out consistently to ensure transaction and data integrity.
Integration servers are a mature product category, and there's quite a bit of consistency among the different offerings. All of the integration servers we tested offer packaged connectors for the most significant types of systems, toolkits for performing custom development and integration around those connectors, and engines for translating data between systems. Integration servers enable the integration of systems as widely diverse as relational databases, Web content, mainframe data, and enterprise applications.
The servers are built around one of two physical architectural approaches: a hub-and-spoke model or a network-centric bus model. The hub-and-spoke implementation is akin to a networking star topology, while the bus model is more like a network bus topology.
Products that follow the hub-and-spoke approach include those from CrossWorlds, Vitria, webMethods, and WRQ. In this approach, all integrated applications connect through a central server. Thus, a new system or application only needs to be connected with the hub to be automatically integrated with other applications that also are connected with the hub. The integration server acts as a message broker to control communication, data translation, and process interaction among the connected systems.
Besides minimizing point-to-point integration, hub-and-spoke integration servers can be centrally managed, which simplifies administration. On the downside, the centralized approach can create performance bottlenecks and a single point of failure. Under this model, scalability must be achieved by adding multiple message brokers and servers, which introduces additional architectural and administrative complexity.
In a message-bus topology, all nodes are linked in a series along a common communication backbone. Messages that are sent between interconnected applications travel along the bus to the integration server, which handles the data transformation, translation, and subsequent routing to the receiving node.
Products that use the bus architecture include those from SeeBeyond and Tibco. The bus provides the medium for messages to reach their destinations. The physical implementation of this approach involves placing adapters within each integrated system or application, which then uses the bus backbone for interacting with the integration server and the other interconnected systems.
Compared with the hub-and-spoke model, the bus model scales better and potentially offers better performance. However, implementation of the bus model is more complex and more difficult to administer as the environment grows.
The decision as to which architecture to use should be based on your application mix, usage, and available resources. For example, hub-and-spoke architectures are better for companies with limited IT resources and environments that involve a handful of systems and moderate transaction volumes. Bus architectures are more difficult to manage for resource-strapped IT groups, but they're better-suited for large-scale environments involving dozens or hundreds of systems with heavy transaction volumes.
Aside from understanding the architectural approaches that integration servers use, it's crucial to understand how they address process management. With multiple systems working together within a single application framework, it's critical to have control over the handoffs and interactions among the different systems.
However, few of the integration servers we evaluated have particularly strong process-management capabilities. To effectively manage intersystem applications, workflow capabilities are needed. Workflow rules help to establish conditions and actions that will be taken appropriate to the different message types and tasks being carried out. Workflow capabilities should also allow manual intervention at various stages of a given process and provide a centralized audit trail.
Tibco and Vitria offer process management, including graphical workflow-design tools and processing automation engines. Realizing the need for process management, many integration-server vendors are buying conventional workflow vendors to bolster their capabilities in this area. Tibco gained workflow capabilities through its acquisition of InConcert, a workflow vendor originally owned by Xerox Corp. WebMethods recently acquired IntelleFrame, and it's working on incorporating the workflow engine into its server.
Other vendors will partner with workflow vendors such as Staffware plc. Although integration servers need to improve in certain functional areas, they offer clear value to companies in terms of time, effort, and cost reductions.
A number of factors are driving demand for integration servers. Integration efforts make up more than a third of the overall budgets in many IT departments, so any savings in this area can be significant. For many enterprise resource planning applications and business systems, integration servers provide packaged adapters with 70% to 80% of the integration capabilities out of the box. With companies continuing to merge, they're bringing "new" legacy systems into their infrastructures and looking for ways to leverage these systems without costly migrations. Integration servers are a strategic technology in this effort.
However, companies should realize what they're in for when they go down the enterprise application integration path. The software isn't cheap, so large companies can expect six-figure outlays. In addition, while integration servers offer payback in terms of simplifying integration, they don't eliminate the effort. Moreover, implementing an integration server often requires professional services, which can be more expensive than the software.
While these costs may lead many companies to view EAI as an operational expense, they should view it as a strategic investment. To deliver quickly on E-business strategies, companies need flexibility and speed to add new systems to their environments, as well as administration and control features that lower the cost of ownership.
Of course, the challenge of picking the right technology partner remains. And with mergers, acquisitions, market consolidation, and general market volatility, the choices are getting cloudier. Recent market moves that involve the enterprise application integration sector include webMethods' acquisition of Active Software, Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of BlueStone Software, and Sybase's acquisition of New Era Of Networks.
This acquisition trend shows that enterprise application integration has gotten the attention of high-profile E-commerce and Web-application server vendors that realize integration is a critical piece of their offerings. We're also seeing the expansion of EAI servers to include business-to-business integration capabilities to help extend the interoperability model outside the company.
During the next 12 to 18 months, expect to see a heavy focus on the business-to-business side of EAI, and look for vendors to offer these capabilities through expanded product lines that handle a broader set of E-business requirements beyond integration.
Analysis provided by Doculabs
Eric Sanchez, Kaushal Patel, and Joe Fenner are analysts with Doculabs, an independent advisory firm that helps companies choose the right technologies and strategies for E-business. Contact them at info@doculabs.com.
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