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While the business case for EAI is clear to most people versed in the
technical aspects of this discussion, it might not be as clear to those who
really need to understand its value. For example: will implementing EAI
within an enterprise provide a return worthy of the investment? If so, how
long before the return is realized? Is EAI a short-term or long-term
proposition? And, perhaps most importantly, what are the methods that best
measure success?
Before we make the business case for EAI, a number of things should be
understood. First, implementing EAI requires that someone thoroughly
understand the business processes in the enterprise. It is only by using
this information that the degree of integration necessary to optimize those
business processes can be determined. While there are methodologies and
procedures that can be applied, most competent managers understand the
degree of value when applying EAI without over-analyzing this information.
Not all organizations are equal. For this reason, some organizations will
benefit more than others from EAI. While some organizations clearly demand
an EAI initiative, others might find almost no value in implementing EAI
within their enterprises. If a customer leverages a single, host-based
computer system with few applications existing on that platform, only a few
thousand users would have only limited benefit from EAI. When applications
and data exist within the same environment, they are much easier to
integrate. For years programmers have been successfully integrating
homogeneous applications.
However, it is when applications and data do not exist within the same
environment; when the organization has gone through mergers or acquisitions;
when it has experienced uncontrolled architecture and unruly application
development projects; or when it has a large, distributed system with a
multitude of platforms and protocols that exist to support hundreds, or
thousands of users, that the enterprise will realize a tremendous benefit
from EAI.
While it may be possible to develop a "common sense" set of metrics to
evaluate the success of EAI, the reality is that in most cases they must be
significantly adjusted on a case-by-case basis to account for the many
factors that exist in any given enterprise. Because of this, there is no
easy way to create a broad-based way to define EAI success. It must be
measured enterprise by enterprise.
In order to evaluate the value of EAI to your enterprise, you must establish
a set of measures that define success for your organization. This can be
accomplished by examining and measuring the current state of the enterprise.
With this baseline, consider your goals and the amount of effort that will
be required for you to realize them.
For example, if increasing sales is one of your goals, sharing inventory
information with the sales order-processing system may allow sales to
operate more effectively and thus help realize that goal. Even so, without a
significant gain in user productivity or a reduction in error rate, the
integration effort between two systems has minimal value. Therefore, in
order to accurately assess EAI, you need to weigh both user productivity and
error reduction, giving a measure to both. Only then can you determine the
impact of EAI on your enterprise.
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