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

J une 2007
Moving from EAI to SOA An Infosys
Perspective

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 called
Canonical 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 more
of 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 based
service 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.

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