The Past, Present and Future of Enterprise Integration

December 2014

Software Architect

Kasun Indrasiri

WSO2 TechTalk

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Agenda

๏  Understanding ‘Integration’

๏  Homegrown Integration solutions, EAI hub-spoke and bus architecture

๏  SOA and and ESB

๏  APIs and Integration

๏  Hybrid Integration Middleware - iPaaS

๏  WSO2 Integration Platform and Use Cases

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Why Integration?

๏  Enterprises heavily rely on the underlying software systems/services/applications.

๏  Disparate technologies and platforms

๏  No single solution or a vendor

๏  Diverse Business requirements

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‘Enterprise Integration’

๏  Plumbing different software applications/services/systems and forming new software solutions is known as ‘Enterprise Integration’.

4 Image courtesy : http://www.clickhome.com.au/gallery/integration/

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Architecture Styles for Integration

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Image courtesy : http://www.eaipatterns.com/

๏  Styles for integration two or more software systems.

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Architecture Styles for Integration

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๏  File Transfer

§  One application writes a file that the other application reads and visa versa (eg: EDI, CSV, ePHI)

๏  Shared Database

§  Use a common database to share data among each other

๏  Remote Procedure Calls

§  Expose a business functionality via an interface definition and implementation of that interface using different technologies. (eg: CORBA, RMI)

๏  Messaging

§  Exchange data and invoke functionalities via messages (eg:SOA)

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Evolution of Integration Technologies

๏  The key driving forces:

§  Integrate anything with everything

§  Cost effective

§  Performance, less maintenance and operational overhead

§  Foster innovation

7 Image courtesy : http://achivion.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Systems_integration_evolution.png

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Homegrown Integration Solutions

๏  Implementing integration middleware in-house

๏  Monolithic, not-componentized

๏  Each application needs an adapter to connect to any other application. (nxn links)

๏  Cons : Ad-hoc point to point integration, proprietary, hard to reuse

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EAI

๏  Enterprise Application Integration

๏  Seamless integration of the applications in an infrastructure to achieve a given business objective

๏  Initially designed based on ‘hub-spoke’ and later as a ‘bus’ architecture.

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EAI-Hub/Spoke Architecture

๏  A centralized broker (Hub) acts as the integration engine while the applications are connected to the hub via adapters (Spokes)

๏  Pros: Seamless integration(no p2p links), central configuration repository

๏  Cons: Single point of failure, scalability, proprietary technologies, specific to a particular domain

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EAI vs. SOA vs. ESB

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hubs. Federated hub spoke architecture alleviates scalability issue while central management of multiple hubs makes this architecture easy to manage and brings down support cost.

3.2 BUS Bus architecture uses a central messaging backbone (bus) for message propagation. Applications would publish messages to bus using adapters. These messages would flow to subscribing applications using message bus. Subscribing applications will have adapters which would take message from bus and transform the message into a format required for the application. Key difference between hub/spoke and bus topology is that for the bus architecture, the integration engine that performs message transformation and routing is distributed in the application adapters and bus architecture requires an application adapter to run on the same platform as the original applications. Since adapters have integration engine and run on same platform on which source and target applications run, this scales much better and is complex to maintain compared to hub/spoke topology.

Image courtesy : http://stage.reflectsoftware.com/

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EAI- Bus Architecture

๏  Centralized messaging backbone, distributed integration tasks

๏  Primitive messaging capabilities from messaging bus

๏  Pros : Scalability, no single point of failure

๏  Cons : proprietary technologies, complexity

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EAI vs. SOA vs. ESB

Page 4 of 6

hubs. Federated hub spoke architecture alleviates scalability issue while central management of multiple hubs makes this architecture easy to manage and brings down support cost.

3.2 BUS Bus architecture uses a central messaging backbone (bus) for message propagation. Applications would publish messages to bus using adapters. These messages would flow to subscribing applications using message bus. Subscribing applications will have adapters which would take message from bus and transform the message into a format required for the application. Key difference between hub/spoke and bus topology is that for the bus architecture, the integration engine that performs message transformation and routing is distributed in the application adapters and bus architecture requires an application adapter to run on the same platform as the original applications. Since adapters have integration engine and run on same platform on which source and target applications run, this scales much better and is complex to maintain compared to hub/spoke topology.

Image courtesy : http://stage.reflectsoftware.com/

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Enterprise Service Bus

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๏  Rise of SOA, web services, WS-* standards

๏  ESB as the middleware layer that enables the interoperability among heterogeneous systems and services using SOA model

๏  Some EAI vendors rebrand EAI solutions as ESB while some vendors built ESBs from scratch : WSO2, Mule

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๏  SOA/ESB is a Success.

§  Discrete IT solutions are modeled as services

§  Accessible over the network via rigid contracts

§  Preferred way of integrating disparate systems

§  many organization have benefitted from employing SOA and ESB

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Retrospect on SOA and ESB

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๏  Limitations of SOA/ESB

§  Designed for internal interactions

§  Strict contracts (WSDL, XSD)

§  Complex data formats (SOAP)

§  Not designed for frequent iterations

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Retrospect on SOA and ESB

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APPs and API Proliferation

7 7 © 2013 IBM Corporation

The Business of APIs

Grow  revenues…

…  While  reducing  overhead

“$7bn worth of items on eBay through APIs” Mark Carges (Ebay CTO)

The API which has easily 10 times more traffic then the website, has been really very important to us.” Biz Stone (Co-founder, Twitter)

“The adoption of Amazon’s Web services is currently driving more network activity then everything Amazon does through their traditional web sites.” Jeff Bar (Amazon evangelist) / Dion Hinchcliffe (Journalist)

source:!SOA!and!Apis!–!Impact2013!

“The&API&which&has&easily&10&6mes&more&traffic&than&the&website,&has&been&really&very&important&to&us.”&&

“The&adop6on&of&Amazon’s&Web&services&is&currently&driving&more&network&ac6vity&than&everything&Amazon&does&through&their&&tradi6onal&web&sites.”&

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๏  API – a business functionality delivered over the internet

§  Standard protocols (HTTP),well defined but loose contract, network accessible, designed for access by third parties.

๏  A managed API

§  Advertised and subscribable, versioned

§  SLAs, Secured and authorized

§  Monitored and monetized

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APIs

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๏  APIs cannot replace Integration

§  Integration of internal services, systems, data and cloud apis

๏  Cannot mangle SOA for API Management needs

๏  Using SOA and API in combination is a key success factor of a Connected Business

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SOA and APIs : The Close Cousins

Image courtesy http://www.soa.com/images/enterprise-api-400.jpg

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๏  A simple interface to a complex system

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API Façade Pattern

Image courtesy: http://regmedia.co.uk/2012/11/06/ipad4_2.jpg, http://www.techautos.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/iPadMobo.jpg

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๏  API Façade in action with WSO2 Platform

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API Façade Pattern

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๏  Limitations of conventional Integration technologies

§  Integration issues due to rapid rise of social, mobile, and cloud platforms

§  Increasing number of integration processes are moving to the cloud

§  Cloud to cloud and cloud to on-premise integration

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The future of Integration

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๏  “The future of integration middleware is hybrid”-cloudtech

๏  What is Hybrid Integration?

§  A mix of on-premise, cloud, B2B, social, and mobile integration scenarios (Eg: Integrating On-premise ERP with a SaaS solution.)

§  Realized with a combination of SOA and Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)

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The future of Integration – Hybrid Integration

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๏  “iPaaS is a suite of cloud services enabling development, execution and governance of integration flows connecting any combination of on premise and cloud-based processes, services, applications and data within individual or across multiple organizations.” – Gartner

๏  Integration in the cloud – eg: IFTTT, Zapier, WSO2 Integration Cloud

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iPaaS

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๏  ESB as a Service

§  Develop, execute and govern ESB message flows in the cloud.

๏  Integration Templates

§  Execute and govern preconfigured Integration scenarios with connector interactions.

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WSO2 iPaaS

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๏  Pre-built integration scenarios that leverage ESB connectors to connect to cloud services.

๏  Configure and schedule an integration template

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WSO2 iPaaS – Integration Templates

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Summary

๏  Enterprise Integration is everywhere.

๏  Evolution of Integration

๏  WSO2 Integration use cases

๏  Hybrid Integration and beyond

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