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Editor's Note:
The products reviewed in this article were tested by Doculabs in mid-2001.
Some of the vendors have revised their products since then, so be sure to contact the vendors directly to see what changes may have been made to their EAI applications.
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EAI (enterprise application integration) products were developed to address these integration problems. With EAI, disparate systems are connected to a single integration server using a repeatable process. Adding a new technology or system is then just a matter of repeating the integration process and connecting the technology or system to the integration server. In this way, all the applications within an enterprise can communicate and exchange data as needed through the integration server, rather than through customized application-to-application integrations.
We recently assessed EAI products from seven vendors: CrossWorlds Software, iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions, SeeBeyond Technology Corp., Tibco Software, Vitria Technology, webMethods and WRQ. IBM Corp., Mercator Software, Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. were also invited, but each declined to participate.
Based on our test results, Tibco's ActiveEnterprise wins our Editor's Choice award. ActiveEnterprise is easy to use and reliable enough to handle nearly any integration project. In addition, Tibco's many years of experience in this space have resulted in a product feature set that is so extensive, it could be considered a superset of EAI functionality.
EAI Overview
EAI products comprise several components that simplify the integration of disparate systems. These include:
>> Business-process management. This component lends itself to the business user and lets him or her create process flows using a GUI. Because processes and relationships among systems are represented graphically, business users can make changes without the need for programming. Most EAI products offer some level of automation for system-to-system processes, but few offer true workflow capabilities that enable human interaction to be incorporated as part of the process. Some vendors rely on third-party products, such as those from Staffware, while others are developing solutions or acquiring workflow vendors to incorporate such technology into the EAI solution.
>> Packaged connectors/adapters. EAI products include prebuilt connections to applications a company is likely to have implemented, such as those from SAP, Siebel and Oracle. Because the connectors are prebuilt, they allow applications to be connected quickly, requiring minimal development effort.
>> Connector developer toolkit. Such toolkits are used for building connectors that the EAI product does not provide out of the box.
>> Data-mapping utility and translation capabilities. These capabilities let users define the data-mapping and conversion parameters between systems, which is an essential ability when integrating specialized applications.
Most integration servers include a graphical environment that makes using the packaged connectors a point-and-click exercise. With these tools, developers can specify the source application or system, add the connector or adapter, and begin introspecting the data source -- exposing the data and the data layout in a visual representation or view. From there, the developer can map the data into a data definition, specifying the translation parameters that are executed at run-time. Data translation and transformation are the keys to letting disparate systems talk to each other.
Also critical to integration servers are process management and automation. Organizations without integrated systems typically follow manual processes that can involve multiple departments and back-end systems, even for simple processes such as handling an order from an e-commerce site. With integration servers, business users can define sophisticated process flows that span multiple systems. Many integration servers provide graphical utilities for developing process flows, with business logic automatically generated. At run-time, the integration server automates the process flow.
Internal vs. External Integration
The integration market is segmented into two areas -- EAI and B2Bi (business-to-business integration). EAI is a solution for modeling and automating business processes within an organization by coordinating disparate data sources and applications; B2Bi is a solution for extending an organization's integration beyond its firewall to connect with external constituencies, such as partners and other supply-chain participants.
Although EAI and B2Bi may appear similar on the surface, several fundamental differences exist between them. For example, a key difference is the level of security provided; organizations integrating with their partners (B2Bi) have much more stringent security requirements than those required for internal integration (EAI) -- and none of the integration servers we evaluated scored highly in this area. Another example is process management: Although this is a relatively straightforward feature for EAI, B2Bi scenarios require the ability to extend automated processes across multiple organizations and to collaborate through one-to-many and many-to-many relationships. Thus, process management usually involves participation in more diverse, less defined relationships for B2Bi than it does for EAI.
The key is to understand whether your focus is on internal or external integration, then to evaluate the products in that context. Our focus for this review was on internal integration. But we expect the B2Bi space to become more evolved soon and for the capabilities required for external integration to find their way into existing EAI products, including those we tested.
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