EAI - Enterprise Application Integration

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is the process of linking together the applications within a single organisation to automate and simplify business processes:

• To the furthest possible degree;
• At the same time avoiding large scale changes to existing applications or data structures.

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is a framework for integration comprising a collection of technologies and services which, together, enable integration of applications and systems across the enterprise.

In many organisations, the many diverse applications used for customer relationship management,  supply chain management, business intelligence and other specialised functions (HR, Fleet Management etc) are unable to communicate with one another. This lack of communication leads to inefficiencies, where identical data are stored in multiple locations (sometimes with repetition of manual data entry – with the consequent costs and risks of errors), or processes which appear simple are not automated.

The systems that need to be linked together can require different operating systems, different database technologies and different computer languages. In some situations, legacy systems are no longer supported. And where in-house systems have been extensively modified over several years there can be practical obstacles to modification. Regression testing is often a significant factor which imposes unwanted cost and delay on any change project.

ClaritySwitch Transform is one example from Synergy’s portfolio of a product designed to be used in EAI projects.