GLUE between Business and EAI
Working on EAI for half a decade, now the question that comes to my mind is - What is the GLUE between Business and EAI. As IT buzz words, EAI is just another Technology BUZZ word for Business . I believe we as EAI experts have done little to translate Technology to Business Benefits.
Hence for me Business Benefits are the GLUE between EAI and Business. I am sure as a reader, there is sarcastic smile on your face expressing as if a hard nut has been cracked. Everyone knows Business Benefits are GLUE between IT and Business, what's the big Deal? The deal is it's always been easy for me to define Business Benefits for Applications like CRM, Order Management etc etc. How do you define for EAI which is so back end?
Well I asked my friends and the unanimous answer is BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) . In my humble opinion BAM is the enabler to tracking but its still technology word and nothing that Business Understands or are yet to understand.
Talking of Basics of different types of EAI, they are
1- Data Integration
2- Application Integration
3- Process Integration
Technically that's the definition but Integration is always involved in some Process and hence as EAI Implementers, we need to associate each Integration type to the Business Process we are involved in. It's very similar to the motivation Mantra that always give the workers a BIG Picture e:g If workers working for TAJ MAHAL construction had known , they are building one of Seven Wonders, the motivation levels would have been higher. Similarly once we know how it will be used in Business, all the EAI experts will be able to visualize more than Data and Application Integration.
Keeping that thought also in mind, I have always struggled to define EAI Business benefits during the Implementation but have been better off defining during the support process. Some of the Parameters for Deriving the Business Benefits during support are SLA Improvement, Performance Improvement, System Availability Improvement etc. Key Questions to be answered
1- Is BPM the BRAND name for GLUE considering all EAI Vendors are steeping into that?
2- Do we really have to wait till Support to really define Business Benefits??
Shoot for your comments and thoughts on your Derivation of Business Benefits during Implementations.
Well I asked my friends and the unanimous answer is BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) . In my humble opinion BAM is the enabler to tracking but its still technology word and nothing that Business Understands or are yet to understand.
Talking of Basics of different types of EAI, they are
1- Data Integration
2- Application Integration
3- Process Integration
Technically that's the definition but Integration is always involved in some Process and hence as EAI Implementers, we need to associate each Integration type to the Business Process we are involved in. It's very similar to the motivation Mantra that always give the workers a BIG Picture e:g If workers working for TAJ MAHAL construction had known , they are building one of Seven Wonders, the motivation levels would have been higher. Similarly once we know how it will be used in Business, all the EAI experts will be able to visualize more than Data and Application Integration.
Keeping that thought also in mind, I have always struggled to define EAI Business benefits during the Implementation but have been better off defining during the support process. Some of the Parameters for Deriving the Business Benefits during support are SLA Improvement, Performance Improvement, System Availability Improvement etc. Key Questions to be answered
1- Is BPM the BRAND name for GLUE considering all EAI Vendors are steeping into that?
2- Do we really have to wait till Support to really define Business Benefits??
Shoot for your comments and thoughts on your Derivation of Business Benefits during Implementations.
Comments
It was really a nice read and genuine thought.Frankly for me benifits of eai has been visible over years.To start with, it was just interface after interface but if you step back and think about the actual work which is being going ...then one can really cherish it. To quote some examples, in one of my apparal customer , the way they used to ranging was to spread the sheets on tables in big room and and whole team used to work on it, with integration and building a front end tool the whole job was a cake walk.If I start writing everything it will be blog in itself :).
In a nutshell to appreciate the benifits I guess we need to see what was being done(and how )before the integration. That will tell the whole story.
Kuldeepak
Posted by: Kuldeepak Angrish | September 28, 2010 8:25 PM