Thursday 22 January 2015

Beyond Integration FAQs

Overview
Beyond Integration is a compelling vision for the future, an aspiration to take the challenges of modern enterprise applications integration and transform them into a giant step forwards.
It is, however, a complex topic that is difficult to explain adequately in a short overview - see previous post for the infographic.  We have therefore compiled this list of frequently asked questions to explain some of the concepts in a little more detail.
Frequently Asked Questions
  1. Exactly how does Beyond Integration open up my Business Processes?
    All enterprise applications have at their heart a business process model; in legacy applications this is often ill-defined and locked away, but in a well designed modern SOA application it will be much more visible.  It may even be implemented directly in BPEL or BPMN tooling.  Almost certainly it will have service interfaces for interacting with that business process; for initiating and progressing process instances, and for exposing the state of those services in real time.  By combining these process services with your own enterprise business process management you can build truly enterprise wide processes that seamlessly span traditional organisational boundaries and bring the value in those processes to everyone who needs it.
  2. My vendor assures me all the value in their app is unlocked already, am I OK?
    Of course they say that, and in some rare cases it might even be true. For most enterprise applications, however, things are rarely so promising.  Most were designed and built as self-contained systems, with the value (data, business logic and business process) exposed only through their own user interface.  Integration APIs would then be tacked on the side, giving access to the value that is easy to expose, or that most customers are clamouring for.  The rest remains locked away.
  3. Is this just a sales pitch for Oracle Fusion Apps?
    Absolutely not.  Oracle have a strong sales team for that.  Fusion Apps is at most an enabler for the Beyond Integration vision, by virtue of being one of the first mainstream enterprise application suites built from the ground up on modern Service Oriented Architecture principles.  Simply buying or building modern service oriented applications won’t move you beyond integration; using them in a new way to unlock more value from within them will.
  4. So, what are you trying to sell?
    Beyond Integration isn’t an attempt to directly sell anything.  We are trying to ignite discussion amongst IT leaders and set a direction for enterprise strategy as the technology world transforms around us.  We would like to be part of those conversations with you, and can provide consultancy services if you need help, but this journey is about unlocking value within your own organisation and ultimately you must walk your own path.
  5. Can I move Beyond Integration right now?
    We’d love to answer “yes” to this but, unfortunately, we simply aren’t there yet.  Many of the enterprise applications we depend on have their architectural roots in the 1980s and 1990s, and our own in-house bespoke applications have often made too many compromises in order to hit project deadlines.  Things are improving, however, and we are confident that we will start to see large enterprises start to realise real value from this way of thinking in the next year or two.
  6. Is this just about IT? Our silos are cultural as well as technological.
    Breaking down organisational silos and building seamless processes across the organisation is much more than an IT problem, and in order to truly benefit from moving beyond integration those organisational issues must be tackled.  However, the IT systems element remain a critical part of this.
  7. Aren’t Enterprise Applications the best place for business process definition?
    For some areas where your organisation doesn’t seek competitive advantage there is often little value in inventing your own  business process, and buying in a process that is embedded in an application can make sense.  However, the rate at which best practice in business processes is changing at the moment often far outstrips the rate at which enterprise application vendors update their applications.
  8. We are locked into our current apps for several years; what can we do?
    Beyond Integration is a vision to work towards, so as long as you can see a way to make progress there is value to be gained.  If you find yourself in this position you have plenty of time to prepare for the next round of vendor selection and to ensure that your Beyond Integration vision is a part of that.  Internal IT projects can also begin to work with service & process abstractions that are in line with your vision rather than with the applications directly, reducing the tight coupling that would likely pressure you to reselect the incumbent vendor in the future.
  9. So what should I do next?
    As with any long term vision, understanding how to get there can be the hardest challenge.  Articulating your own vision is an important first step, as is defining a high level roadmap and identifying how you will measure your progress towards your goals.
  10. What do all the little icons mean?
    The person with a screen represents an application’s user interface.  The water-cooler is a database.  The cogs show business processes, and the chain links denote service interfaces.
  11. What is the funny shaped box that gets a question mark in it?
    Often when implementing service-oriented integration there is an intermediary such as an Enterprise Service Bus involved in service interactions.  When everything is in your own data centre this is easy to manage.  But what about interactions between services in the cloud? Where is your ESB hosted now?  Do the cloud service interactions have to route back into your data centre?
  12. Why does moving to the cloud break database integration?
    Cloud data centres hold a huge amount of very valuable, and potentially very sensitive, data, and that data must be protected at all costs.  Opening up the data centre firewalls to allow direct database access for even one customer presents a risk to everyone’s data.  SaaS providers will have made specific assurances to their customers about the safeguards protecting that data.  Bear in mind that SaaS hosting is somewhat different to a traditional shared data centre model; you, as a SaaS customer, very likely won’t have specific infrastructure dedicated to your service, that can be firewalled-off separately.
  13. Why don’t you show database access in “unlocking all the value”?
    Data tier integration is going to become increasingly difficult as SaaS becomes more pervasive, and has never been the first choice for integration in a Service Oriented strategy anyway.  SOA principles recommend integrating above the data tier, using services at the process or business activity level.  Of course all the valuable data in your databases should be unlocked, but we would recommend doing so via a well defined business activity service interface.
  14. How do I know this is really possible?
    The problems we have been describing are largely confined to the world of enterprise applications.  Over the last few years there has been a revolution in consumer cloud applications, with agile startups (“digital disruptors”) using the mashup model very effectively to create value in ways that no-one could have foreseen previously.  Their culture is based on sharing their value with others; Facebook, for example, could have locked their systems away and been somewhat successful.  Instead, they built an API and an apps ecosystem, resulting in them becoming a global powerhouse almost overnight.
More Information
For further information, or if your questions aren’t covered here, please contact us through one of the following channels:-
Tel:0208 614 7070
Web:estafet.com
Email: enquiries@estafet.com

Beyond Integration



Beyond Integration is a compelling vision for the future, an aspiration to take the challenges of modern enterprise applications integration and transform them into a giant step forwards.

Organisations that share this vision will naturally be wondering how to turn the vision into reality.  What actions can they take that will move them closer to the vision, how can they measure their progress towards it and who are the key stakeholders that need to be brought on board?

As with any vision, realising it is a journey rather than a single activity, and having a roadmap for that journey will be invaluable.


Estafet - Beyond Integration