Application Integration (EAI)
Application integration, sometimes known as enterprise application integration (EAI), integrates data among applications or systems. As data is changed in one system, the change is propagated elsewhere, often via asynchronous messaging. The idea is to simplify and automate business processes as much as possible, with no sweeping changes to underlying data and application structures. A challenge: Data may reside on different OSes, use different computer languages, or be trapped in legacy systems with no vendor support. Read More
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Service-oriented architecture, or SOA, is a software architecture designed to utilize interoperable services grouped around business processes, with the aim of allowing different applications to easily exchange information with each other. The desired end state is a loose coupling of these services with operating systems, programming languages and other technologies underpinning applications. SOA uses many of the same concepts as distributed computing. Read More
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Data integration is the extraction, transformation and loading of data from disparate systems into a data warehouse or data mart for the purposes of manipulation and reporting. Data integration has traditionally focused on manipulating and analyzing historical data, either to detect trends or to support "what-if" queries by adjusting some of the values.
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Business Process Management (BPM)
Business process management forces discipline and alignment on business and IT. Though it initially dealt with automating mechanical processes, it has come to include human processes. With the latest available data, managers can monitor the business and make decisions in real time. Bringing together various types of information - on customers, business rules, policies, services, competitors - it lessens the risk that anything is lost in translation between business-speak and IT-speak and puts focus on the core business.
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