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F E A T U R E

Force Fit

August 7, 2003
By Don MacVittie

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People Skills

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	In this article
	Introduction
	EAI to the Rescue
	People Skills
	Executive Summary
	By the Numbers \| FYI

In "Smooth Integrators", we tell you how to determine the right EAI platform for your organization. But no matter which product you choose, your staff won't likely run the software right out of the box because of EAI's inherent complexity.

If you have people familiar with Java application servers, they should be able to configure and use any of the systems we tested, but the learning curve is steep enough that training is still in order. Most EAI vendors offer both training and professional services.

An EAI implementation is not something to be undertaken lightly. You will touch every major system--possibly every system, period--in your organization. Businesspeople, technical staffers and managers will need to work together.

Done right, EAI can save you thousands of lines of code and many labor hours of management. It can also give you new insight into your business processes and enable you to quickly connect systems that might otherwise be unable to communicate. Done wrong, it can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars and produce no benefits.

If you want to implement EAI, inventory all the system interactions in your company--you'll be surprised at how many there are--and identify the most likely EAI candidates. Perhaps you have systems that are not communicating reliably, or systems for which "the guru" is no longer with the company. Then there are systems so critical that to lose them would cost big bucks every hour they're down. These are all good candidates for the first phase of an EAI deployment.

Now pick a couple of low-threat interfaces and use them as learning experiences. Choose test systems where you have in-house experts in the source and target systems, so mistakes can be patched easily. Run a sample implementation with these low-risk interactions, and then start Phase 1 of the rollout.

Getting high-risk integrations into Phase 1 is a tactical choice: The biggest business benefit is going to come from stabilizing unreliable interfaces or replacing homegrown integration code that no longer has an owner. The process of integrating your enterprise will take an investment of many labor hours, so showing a positive result early on is important.

Finally, dedicate staff to your EAI system long-term. It will function as the switch in your application network, handling all your app interactions. If it goes south, your apps will be without connectivity.

Also, have some trained EAI developers at the ready. Upgrades and system replacements will generate plenty of work for them. By using such EAI professionals, you're in effect not adding staff, but merely shifting responsibilities to ease the project teams' workload.

Don MacVittie is an application engineer at WPS Resources. Write to him at dmacvittie@nwc.com.

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