What is enterprise integration and why is it important?

Enterprise integration uses technologies and methodologies to integrate business applications, data, private and public clouds, processes and devices across the IT environment. Enterprise integration is important because it connects functionality and communication between systems, allowing organizations to react quickly to business needs and become more agile and responsive companies.

The complexity of most business environments typically involves multiple clouds, sprawling applications, and data scaling, making it difficult to manage and prepare for the future. Enterprise integration takes a holistic approach to solving challenges by bringing together separate data and application integration disciplines in a combined effort with a single governance model.

Types of business integration

There are a number of different integration types that connect critical systems, processes, data and applications across all lines of business within an organization that drive transformational benefits.

Application Integration – With  enterprise application integration (EIS), processes and data can be optimized, integrated, and shared between separate software applications in real time to provide improved insights, visibility, and productivity across the organization.

Data Integration: With data integration, information – or data – is discovered, retrieved, and compiled from disparate sources into a structured, unified view.

Cloud Integration – With cloud integration, multiple hybrid cloud environments are unified (both public and private clouds) as a cohesive IT infrastructure that addresses data, processes, system architectures, and enterprise applications.

API Integration – With the application programming interface (API), the integration of two (or more) business applications is connected through their APIs, allowing those systems to exchange data sources. These critical connections drive processes and workflows across the enterprise to synchronize data, improve organizational productivity, and drive growth.

Platform Integration: With the help of a broad range of software tools, IT specialists can create safe integration processes that link and control various cloud-based systems, apps, software development services, and data sources. Integrated platform as a service (iPaaS) and platform integration are closely related concepts.

Process Integration: With process integration, workflows and processes spanning multiple applications and systems can be optimized and orchestrated to transform operations and drive efficiency.

Device integration: With device integration, different devices are connected so they can communicate, interact and operate across areas to support business needs and drive productivity.

By integrating multiple clouds, applications, platforms, workflows and devices, business leaders can leverage real-time data and processes from across the organization to make informed decisions. That same 2022 ESG survey found that the operational impacts of enterprise integration exceeded expectations, with 90% of respondents achieving better data visibility and 89% seeing a reduction in management complexity.

The business benefits of enterprise integration

Optimize and automate business processes.

Customers and employees expect a seamless, personalized experience across multiple digital touchpoints. By optimizing and automating fragmented internal business processes, companies are simultaneously delivering engaging customer experiences.

Give clients strategic information.

Leaders in the market today have to use data from both inside and outside their companies to predict the wants and needs of their customers. By gaining a comprehensive understanding of their customers and audiences, organizations can enhance their competitive advantage and foster customer loyalty.

Design a future-proof IT environment.

To support new business models, legacy systems must frequently be extended as part of a successful digital strategy. Cohesive enterprise integration solutions can unlock the value of your existing investments with an API-first approach.

Enable the API economy.

Companies are adopting APIs to unlock unique services and create new business models to gain a competitive advantage. These businesses can create an ecosystem of suppliers, partners, and customers by utilizing digital channels to create these economies both inside and outside of their immediate organizational boundaries.

The technologies involved in business integration

Intelligent companies are integrated companies. They apply advanced technologies, intelligent process automation and real-time data to drive growth and business impact. As such, the applications, data and devices at the center of the business strategy must be accessible, and in multiple cloud environments at once.

Delivering on the promise of transformation means effectively connecting and automating business processes, applications and data sources. To streamline this process and minimize risk, many organizations take advantage of enterprise application integration software (middleware) as well as cloud services. A guided scope is often included to assess an organization's integration requirements and objectives, allowing the business to apply proven patterns for IoT-centric processes, data, users, and scenarios.

Enterprise application integration software solutions and cloud services often address the following transformative business technologies:

iPaaS – Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) offers a cloud service for application, data, process, and service-oriented architecture (SOA) integration scenarios. This multi-tenant platform facilitates B2B integration as well as cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-on-premise, and on-premise to on-premise connectivity.

EiPaaS : Gartner defines enterprise integration platform as a service (EiPaaS) as a combination of integration technology capabilities that are delivered as a suite of cloud services and designed to support enterprise-class integration initiatives.

IaaS – Integration as a Service (IaaS) is an instant computing infrastructure provided and managed over the Internet.

Messaging – Messaging is a form of communication for different components in a distributed application architecture. If both parties to a communication are aware of the same messaging format and protocol, components can send and receive messages across various operating systems, languages, and compilers.

Application Connectors: Architectural components that simulate the rules governing component interactions are called application connectors. They can be used to quickly integrate new EndPoints because they are standard class connections that have been customized for specific APIs.

Data Flows – Data flows provide a constant stream of information that applications can add to or consume, regardless of the transmission of that data. 

Enterprise Integration Patterns – EIPs are collections of technology-agnostic solutions to common integration problems. Patterns also provide a common language for application developers and architects to describe integrations.

APIs, or application programming interfaces, An API is a collection of definitions, protocols, and tools used in the development of application software.

It allows your product or service to communicate with other products and services without having to know how they are implemented.

Enterprise Integration best practices

Start with a platform approach. A platform-based approach supports multiple dimensions of enterprise connectivity, addressing a wide range of integration use cases (such as applications, processes, data, usage, sensors and others) in on-premise ecosystems, in the cloud and hybrid.

Use APIs as building blocks. APIs facilitate the integration of people, processes, and systems by acting as swappable integration components within a platform framework. This allows the business to easily transform digital assets into new business models through monetization plans.

Make the integration accessible to everyone. By democratizing integration, the business can empower all users with intuitive no-code development experiences. Business users of all profiles and technical capabilities can update and develop integrations to help maximize business value, decreasing dependence on dedicated developers.

Implement intelligent lifecycle management. In software development for enterprise integration, intelligent lifecycle management is crucial. Create ongoing management plans to support your business integration strategy. Plans should include access control, change management, extending integrations, system credentials, and data encryption. For hybrid deployments, lifecycle management must be able to push patches and updates to runtime engines, whether on-premises or in the cloud.

Drive continuous improvements with analytics and predictive intelligence. Use integration activity analytics to gain insights into data flow across the enterprise, departments, and endpoints. With greater user-driven integration, predictive intelligence can recognize integration patterns used across the organization.

Establish an integration center of excellence (ICoE). Within a software development company consider establishing an integration center of excellence (ICoE) or integration competency center (ICC) methodically integrates data, systems, cloud, and enterprise applications in a scalable, economical, and consistent way to provide a long-term competitive advantage. As a centralized function that disseminates knowledge and standardizes processes throughout the organization, the role of the ICoE is to promote business integration as a formal discipline. ICC provides multiple benefits to the software development company, including reduced infrastructure and data center costs, sustainable growth, greater supply chain stability, smart technologies and predictive analytics for better decision making, smarter process automation, and much more. further.

Yokesh Sankar is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Sparkout Tech. He believes in changing people's lives for the better and developing the skills they need for success.