How Enterprise Application Integration Competes with ERPs - Research Paper Example

?HOW ENTERPRISE APPLICATION INTEGRATION (EAI) COMPETES WITH ERPS How Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) competes with ERPs Affiliation Date Table of Contents Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) 3 EAIs and ERPs 4 Insufficient Nature of ERP Systems 5 Why EAI? 6 Conclusion 8 References 8 HostIP. (2012). Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) . Retrieved February 16, 2012, from http://ecommerce.hostip.info/pages/417/Enterprise-Application-Integration-EAI.html 8 Introduction In the past few years, the acceptance and implementation of modern technologies has changed corporate working and operational arrangement. As a result, the competition among businesses has augmented and organizations are putting their attention on supply chain synchronization and management to improve their corporate performance. On the other hand, for many years, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems have been used for managing supply chain operations. In addition, the boundaries of ERP systems on integrated systems have directed organizations to look for innovative business management techniques to put together their systems as well as supply chains (Themistocleous, Irani, & Love, 2002). This paper presents a detailed analysis of enterprise application integration. The basic aim of this research is to show how EAI competes with Enterprise Resource Planning. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) EAI (Enterprise application integration) is the way of integrating two or more tools or systems in order to allow them to work as one. In this scenario, EAI includes hardware, software and services. However, enterprise application integration systems are utilized to put together contrary systems, like that an older technology based system in which a huge investment has previously been made (it is usually known as legacy system) and a latest business application, like that customer resource management (CRM) system; in a particular business. Moreover, the enterprise application integration systems are implemented with growing rate to put together the corporate systems of a variety of businesses to allow business dealings among companies to take place electronically (Themistocleous, Irani, & Love, 2002; HostIP, 2012). EAIs and ERPs The need for implementing EAI arose in the 1980s when a lot of business organizations that had until that time implemented information technology (IT) to computerize a variety of company procedures began to assume that the incorporation of these business management applications could, along with other things, augment competence and build accuracy inside company procedures. In this scenario, many IT managers tried to redesign previously implemented business management systems and applications in order to build them as if they were integrated. Instances of these endeavors comprise attempting to carry out operational transaction processing (linked with enterprise resource planning system working and operations) on systems for informational data handling and processing. On the other hand, the enterprise resource planning systems, which included the functions of human resource management, accounting, manufacturing, distribution and other back-end operations or business dealings that do not openly engage clients, grew in reputation all through 1990s when the majority of large size corporations began modernizing their mainframe systems with the latest client/server based ERP systems such as People-Soft Inc., SAP AG, and J.D. Edwards & Co. However, to make these business management systems well-matched with their legacy systems, businesses turned to enterprise application integration vendors for integration solutions (Themistocleous, Irani, & Love, 2002; HostIP, 2012; PeterIndia, 2012; MuleSoft Inc., 2012). Insufficient Nature of ERP Systems Managing supply chains and organization’s requirements to incorporate their applications on enterprise and cross-enterprise level is one of the complex jobs. However, for the incorporation of external and internal business tasks, companies are carrying-on to discover methods and means to additionally develop their competence and make more efficient key business procedures. For this purpose, businesses have not simply synchronized functional staff and business operations however have also sought to put together corporate applications into systems that are able to connect members of the supply chain jointly with information, data and knowledge (HostIP, 2012; MuleSoft Inc., 2012; PeterIndia, 2012; Themistocleous, Irani, & Love, 2002). In addition, the new technology based internal ERP systems are frequently applied to pay attention on standard data, business operations and re-engineered business logic. Hence, ERP systems have turned out to be a very serious integration challenge, as they are probable to recycle frequent services throughout common applications, and share business processes and services. In fact, ERP systems do not cover the entire IT working and operational needs and requirements, however they are able to convene the entire business procedures and, ERP will never achieved them. Moreover, it is assessed that ERP systems support broad processes and most excellent practices with businesses attempting to parameterize ERP packages to get better support for their business processes and strategy (HostIP, 2012; MuleSoft Inc., 2012; PeterIndia, 2012; Themistocleous, Irani, & Love, 2002). Though, customization is a challenging task that causes serious technology integration issues when ERP systems are complex to manage, non-flexible and frequently not intended to collaborate with other independent applications. It is assessed that characterize ERP systems as a key response that is not intended to collaborate with other applications. Hence, enterprise integration could be attained when businesses throw out existing applications and build and implement an absolutely new ERP solution. In other words, the more ERP modules accepted, the more integration is attained. In addition, it is assessed that businesses do not accept all the ERP modules however a subset of them. In many cases, where organizations acquired all the ERP modules from a single vendor, ERP technology based packages could not successfully automate over 30 percent of business processes. ERP systems hide 70-80 percent of IT requirements. Furthermore, organizations do not discard all their existing systems when accepting ERP packages, numerous applications (for example: legacy systems) frequently co-exist alongside enterprise systems (HostIP, 2012; MuleSoft Inc., 2012; PeterIndia, 2012; Themistocleous, Irani, & Love, 2002). Why EAI? In the past, enterprise system arrangements have been inadequately designed and implemented. In this scenario, many corporations built systems based on the cool technology of the day lacking understanding how these systems would by some means share business data and information. In addition, every system encompasses its own database, development language, operating system, and networking material. As a result, environments are changed. To address these critical issues, there appeared a number of ad hoc technologies. However, nothing appeared to be an ideal solution considering the difficulty connected with these systems (HostIP, 2012; MuleSoft Inc., 2012; PeterIndia, 2012; Themistocleous, Irani, & Love, 2002). In addition, enterprise application integration has come as a boon for enterprise architects to place everything accurately, that today's businesses face. Additionally, the enterprise application integration has turned out to be a sophisticated set of measures with recently advanced technologies, like that middle-wares and message brokers that permit users to bind systems jointly with a widespread glue code. In fact, there exist a lot of influential tools and techniques to implement EAI productively. Moreover, one more significant aspect that is driving enterprises in the direction of the promised land of EAI is the wide recognition of packaged applications, like that enterprise resource planning applications, normally known as stovepipe applications. These applications tackle and solve extremely narrow issues inside departments. Research has shown that enterprise application integration has become an excellent option to link a lot of disparate systems comprising ERP applications (HostIP, 2012; MuleSoft Inc., 2012; PeterIndia, 2012; Themistocleous, Irani, & Love, 2002). Moreover, when businesses begin to understand the need of interconnection of disparate systems in an attempt to manage the requirements of the company, the importance of integration technology also increases. Hence, it turns out to be an extremely significant milestone for every enterprise to efficiently design, architect, and develop systems on the basis of EAI technology. In fact, there are numerous outstanding EAI technologies currently available, thus it requires a steep learning curve to obtain the knowledge and wisdom to recognize when to implement EAI technology, architect a solution, select appropriate technology and they implement it successfully to the problem (HostIP, 2012; MuleSoft Inc., 2012; PeterIndia, 2012; Themistocleous, Irani, & Love, 2002). Conclusion This paper has presented a detailed analysis of two innovative technologies Enterprise Resource Planning and Enterprise application integration systems. This research shows that with the potential progress in technology more complex and sophisticated systems are replacing traditional technology based systems. In addition, the Enterprise application integration has become an excellent choice for the business organizations. On the other hand, Enterprise Resource Planning system is less effective and sophisticated for managing corporate operations. In this scenario, ERP is facing huge competition from EAI systems. References HostIP. (2012). Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) . Retrieved February 16, 2012, from http://ecommerce.hostip.info/pages/417/Enterprise-Application-Integration-EAI.html MuleSoft Inc. (2012). Understanding Enterprise Application Integration - The Benefits of ESB for EAI. Retrieved February 15, 2012, from http://www.mulesoft.org/enterprise-application-integration-eai-and-esb PeterIndia. (2012). Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). Retrieved February 16, 2012, from http://www.peterindia.net/EAIOverview.html Themistocleous, M., Irani, Z., & Love, P. E. (2002). ENTERPRISE APPLICATION INTEGRATION: AN EMERGING TECHNOLOGY FOR INTEGRATING ERP AND SUPPLY CHAINS. ECIS, (pp. 1087-1096). Gdansk. Read More