EAI Architecture software and business integration: methodologies and tools

The growing attention being paid to business integration problems affecting the IT world, has forced telecommunications operators, and all the market sectors in general, to find methods and tools for rendering application integration faster while maintaining an attractive ROI level. In recent years, there has been a tendency to rethink the approach to integration, resulting in the emergence of the current SOA and ESB technology dominating trend.
 

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is an architectural approach that makes it possible to “encapsulate” business functionality at a high level in a discrete set of technologically and topologically independent (loosely-coupled) software component, accessible using defined standard interfaces and standard communication protocols.

SOAP, Web Services, WSDL, JMS standards, which have quickly become established on the market, are the key technological factors behind the rapid success achieved by ESB (Enterprise Service Bus).

Best Practices

Reply’s approach to SOA/ESB consists of:

• Impact analysis methods derived from the introduction of SOA. This follows a CMMI pattern (SOA Maturity Model) providing measurable aims and guidelines for achieving the correct SOA “maturity” level in the company context.
• Design method emphasising “re-usable” components and “agile” development, guided essentially by a process that is iterative with the application integration.
• EAI Best Practices using standards, design patterns and technological expertise
• ESB software infrastructures that emphasize and support the methodological and design approach.

Techonological Skills

• Market packages: BEA, Tibco, Sonic, Iona, Cape Clear, IBM i.e. the main ESB solutions providers
• Reply’s proprietary ESB framework, an enabling solution which has little effect on customer’s costs