Visitors Edition
Membership Help?
Need help? Our Trial Membership program will get you help on any IT project you're working on. You'll get access to our research, tools, advice and project help.
Start your free trial membership now:
Start your free trial membership now:
Want to learn more about our membership options, pricing, or to get a product demo?
Get in touch with one of our reps using an option below.
Learn more About Info-Tech
Develop an Application Integration Strategy
Application Integration: new concepts in a time-honored field.
More Details
Your Challenge
- The organization houses a multiplicity of messaging protocols, making each new application integration a nightmare of confused standards, hardcodes, and unnecessary complexity.
- IT needlessly duplicates software components across software systems, building the same thing time and again.
- IT systems reflect inconsistent quality, due to limited sharing of best practices across departments. Similar systems in different departments experience widely different error rates.
- The organization struggles to release new products or services ahead of its competitors, often ending up in the middle of the pack in terms of time-to-market.
Our Advice
Critical Insight- Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) benefits typically ramp up in the 3-5 year time period, with ROI starting in the second year. Expect few benefits in the first year of your implementation project.
- SOA benefits increase with the complexity and rate of change of application integrations. Focus your SOA implementation on the most complex and fast-changing areas of the organization. A SOA implementation need not touch every part of the organization to deliver the majority of SOA benefits.
- Middleware and SOA technology components are often sold together in current-generation solutions. The technology cost of SOA is small relative to the governance and maintenance cost of the architecture, so consider a middleware-only implementation to capture some agility benefits.
- Choose the optimal integration methodology for each of your application integrations.
- Build the business case for SOA by calculating the costs and benefits of an implementation in dollar terms. SOA benefits include improved IT service quality, improved IT agility (leading to reduced time-to-market), and reduced IT cost.
- Plan the seven steps to SOA implementation over a 3-5 year timeline.
Get to Action
-
Understand the benefits and costs of middleware and SOA.
Build an application integration strategy.
-
Choose the optimal integration method for each application integration.
Achieve your integration objectives.
-
Evaluate the benefits and costs of a SOA implementation.
Decide whether to pursue SOA or consider a middleware-only implementation.
Get the Complete Storyboard
See how all the steps you need to take come together, with tools and advice to help with each task on your list.
BONUS: Get access to up to 5 additional free downloads
Download NowCompanies Who Helped
6 companies contributed research to this project, however, their identities will be kept confidential due to the sensitivity of the material.
Solution Road Map
Other Solution Sets in Application Integration
1. Develop an Application Integration Strategy
Application Integration: new concepts in a time-honored field.
Application Integration: new concepts in a time-honored field.
