These implementations provide great business value by combining ease of deployment with simple orchestration options that make integration as effortless as building a Visio diagram. Concerned about integration with monolithic legacy applications? Not to worry. EAI 2.0 leaves very few out in the cold. Integrating applications from PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel, and even newcomer Salesforce.com is as easy as drag-and-drop. These products are coming of age and adding new adapters, or plug-ins, that support specific enterprise applications and data sources. In 2007, we expect to see a few more (yet unannounced) entrants into the market.
But Wait One Second
Lest we sound uncharacteristically optimistic, we'll admit that EAI 2.0 has its shortcomings. The technology currently lacks integration options for custom applications, except through Web services and more conventional file- and database-related mechanisms. Only a handful will SOA-enable mainframe applications, for example. Products from SOA Software, Software AG and TIBCO are popular mechanisms for bringing these legacy applications into a modern computing environment, but they're neither affordable nor easy to implement.
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Integrating custom client-server applications, too, is difficult. Developers must write extra code to provide interfaces at either the integration hub or the application. Applications that take advantage of database storage will be easier to handle, as always, but this integration is at the data--not the function--level. Developers still must recode substantial application logic while they try to integrate custom applications with the rest of the ecosystem.
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