Dissolving Organisational and Technological Silos: An Overview of Enterprise Integration Concepts

Abstract

Over the last few years, the importance of enterprise integration has grown significantly. As organizations expand, become more distributed, and rely more on technology, there is a need to ensure both business processes and technology systems are co-coordinated in a strategic rather than ad-hoc manner. In the early days of IT, integration was viewed largely as a technical activity. Today, there is a much stronger business focus. In fact, many of an organisation’s strategic initiatives such as e-business, customer relationship management and supply chain management depend upon enterprise integration. There are four basic integration architectures, namely, batch integration, point-to-point integration, broker-based integration and business process integration. Each integration architecture represents varying levels of enterprise integration maturity. Enterprise integration is a significant undertaking, and carries with it significant technical and managerial challenges. Managing enterprise integration projects requires, among other things, a strategic framework, senior management support and risk management. A clear understanding of enterprise integration requirements is also crucial.