Guiding principles define the underlying general rules and guidelines (across the Application Integration environment) that an organization will use to utilize and deploy all business and IT resources and assets. The principles in this document are intended to:
- Provide an effective framework within which the business can make decisions about how it uses/implements Application Integration technology.
- Provide a guide to establishing evaluation criteria, and exert an influence on the selection of suppliers, business partners, components, and products or product architectures used for integration.
- Drive the functional requirements of an integration solution’s architecture.
- Assist in the assessment of the existing integration environment to provide insights into the transition activities needed to strategically implement the principles in support of the business goals and priorities.
To be effective, all principles, policies, and guidelines should be defined and agreed upon by both senior business and IT executives. Once they have been agreed to and published, the principles and policies provide a framework which can be used to explain and justify why certain business and IT decisions are being made, or need to be made.