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Manas Kumar Sarkar

Over years traditional Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) has

provided its benefits in terms of solution re-use, application

decoupling & information standardization; however areas such as

end-to-end monitoring of business process, Process

improvement, Process agility and information ownership were not

addressed in traditional EAI implementation (Application

Integration). SOA aims at addressing the areas not addressed by

the traditional EAI implementation and at same time build on the

benefits of traditional EAI implementation.

This paper analyses the traditional EAI implementation and

discuss how SOA approach addresses the pain points which were

remained unaddressed by EAI implementation

June 2007

Moving from EAI to SOA An InfosysPerspective

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Traditional EAI Implementation

Traditional EAI Implementation meant implementation of interfaces in an efficient way to increase

information re-usability & impact minimization due to application changes by ensuring application

de-coupling. Some of the areas which got focus in traditional EAI implementation were

Application Interfaces

Adapters for decoupling applications

Canonical Message Models for information re-use

Real-Time Integration

These allowed application decoupling enabling N*(N-1) integration points to be reduced to N+1

integration points providing benefits like

Business Benefits

Improving business process by enabling real-time / near real time integration

between application

Up to date information enabling application / user to react faster

Lowering TCO

Solution re-use across multiple interfaces resulted in reducing development effort

for number of point-to-point interfaces

Decoupling applications minimizing impact on interfaces due to

Application upgrade

Application replacement

Application re-hosting

Architectural Benefits

Information view standardization across enterprise

Function level integration rather than data level integration enabling better use of

application business logic

A loosely coupled architecture providing higher flexibility to accommodate

change

Operational Benefit

Ability to do technical level monitoring of interfaces to enable IT to identify the

impact and notify the appropriate team

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Traditional EAI Approach

Analysis

In a typical EAI implementation the focus of this phase was analyzing the application portfolio

and the information exchange between applications as per the technical business flow. The

primary focus had been interface rationalization and data standardization.

Define

The primary focus of this phase was to identify the integration points (i.e. database level or

API Level or Message Level) and then define the Common Message Model (Also calledCanonical Message Format) to achieve source and target decoupling. This was the key

essence of most of the traditional EAI implementation.

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Implement

This phase focused on the implementation aspect of the solution detailing out the

Implementation logic for source to canonical message and canonical to target

message format translation & validation

Implementation of MOM and broker platform to achieve loosely coupled integration

And then the message re-processing approach in case of application or integration

broker failure

Opportunities Missed

Although EAI implementation provided Business & IT benefits but at the same time there were

areas which were still unaddressed

Business process improvement was only restricted to real-time data exchanges.

Flexibility required in business process required changes in Business application and

hence slowing down the entire process

Publish/Subscribe implementation resulted in information overload

Information security was not inherently supported

End-To-End Business Process monitoring was always missing in traditional EAI

implementation

Ability to provide a business context for any technical failures

Business Process & SOA

EAI implementation mostly focused on IT benefits and hence missed on the Business & IT

alignment. The biggest benefit of SOA is Business & IT alignment. Some of the key benefits that

Business Process brings to SOA implementation are

Impact of services to over arching business process & vice versa

Business Process enabled by an SOA, automates more of the end-to-end process,

including transactional, reference and human knowledge centric activities, providing moreof a closed-loop feedback mechanism to business leaders.

SOAs "assemble and compose" delivery style provides agility towards changing

business needs

Business Process and SOA, both supporting more iterative and continuous refinements

to automated operations, enable mid-course, strategic adjustments.

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What does SOA Approach addresses

In short SOA implementation aimed at addressing the short coming of traditional EAI

implementation and at the same time builds on the benefits of traditional EAI implementation. The

key essence of any SOA based implementation approach is decomposing the Business Process

into multiple layers of service which could be re-used. Information integration which had been the

key essence of any EAI implementation continues to exists in a SOA landscape as Information

service.

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Analysis

The analysis phase in a SOA based approach focuses on addressing the pain points in the

existing business process and identifies the To Be business process which could be

monitored from both business & IT perspective providing the opportunity for continuous

improvement. This phase will enable identification of user roles & system use cases which

form the basis for service rationalization in the define phase. The biggest change from

traditional EAI approach is holistic analysis of business process to identify new opportunities

for improvement and monitoring of critical business KPIs

Define

This phase focus on rationalization of services (Value Service, Process Service, Business

Service, Information Service & Utility service) based on Business Process Analysis and

application service analysis, subsequently utilize enterprise Information model to define

service contracts which enable better utilization service. Apart from service rationalization

and service contract definition KPIs for Business Process needs to be utilized to define the

service SLAs and map them to the Business Process KPIs. The key difference from EAI

based approach is the identification of services both from Business Process and application

portfolio perspective and also the focus changes from technical monitoring to Business

Monitoring for defining the SLA.

Implement

The key focus of this phase is the implementation of the services and Business KPIs.

Business rules and BPM forms the key components for composite service creation. Typically

Business Rules are used in creation of services which are based on conditional basedservice interaction whereas BPM is typically used for services which are based on process

flow. Lastly a closed loop monitoring to establish an end-to-end monitoring tying together

Business Process KPIs, Service SLA & Infrastructure monitoring

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Conclusion

Moving from traditional EAI implementation to SOA implementation would require changes in the

overall approach for doing integration projects. The key aspects that would require focus in a

SOA based approach which were not part of traditional EAI implementation are

Need conscious effort to architect/design for an Enterprise wide re-usability instead of

only at the project/program level.

Transition from Vendor proprietary standards based integration to a more open standards

based integration.

Governance becomes more important and essential by the very nature of challenges that

SOA brings which had been a little less challenging for a traditional EAI approach

About the Author

Manas Kumar Sarkar is a Principal Architect with Infosys Enterprise Solutions group.

He has several years of experience in strategizing and implementing EAI solutions for large

scale IT projects that involved EAI as a key component. He can be contacted at

manaskumars@infosys.com.

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2007 Infosys Technologies Limited.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Copyright in whole and in part of this document Moving from EAI to SOA An Infosys Perspective belongs to Infosys TechnologiesLimited. This work may not be used, sold, transferred, adapted, abridged, copied or reproduced in whole or in part in any manner or form orin any media without the prior written consent of Infosys Technologies Limited.

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