|
Processing capability within EAI allows many interactions and communication decisions to be taken away from individual applications and placed into a centralized and controlled environment. The logical centralization of interaction management drives up reuse and enables an organization to organically start growing new functions and systems using existing data and processes as foundation.
Data issued by source applications is transformed and routed according to the logic defined within EAI infrastructure i.e. Virtual Application Architecture (VAA), which is the backbone for an enterprise. A virtual application is a set of loosely coupled systems integrated in such a manner that data from any of these systems is available to any other system that belongs to the virtual application.
VAA is a powerful concept for assisting companies to integrate multiple applications running in a heterogeneous networked environment into, seemingly, a single application. Bi-directional flow of information increases levels of benefit and helps in making robust application architecture.
VAA implements an isolation layer between every interacting entity introducing flexibility to grow, change and replace all elements of business infrastructure, as long as interface to the EAI layer is maintained. It provides the unique opportunity to resolve long-standing issues with old standards, designs and structure that occur so often with legacy/CRM systems. Additionally, VAA is useful in organizing and comparing tools and products used for these integration projects.
Challenges being faced by EAI are:
- Data formats
- Changing infrastructure
- Unique business process
- Hetrogenous systems
- Data integrity requirements
Goal
It gives companies a focal point for the company integration strategy. With this the enterprise application assets will become a named functional entities that can be executed by any other application. These entities will be mapped to a set of rules that define how to execute/process these named entities. Once this is accomplished, the TCC is dramatically reduced compared to the point-to-point solution.
VAA is designed to provide a road map for EAI that will support the integration needs of the enterprise. Moreover, it helps decipher the chaos in an emerging product field. Best of all, VAA presents an evolutionary approach to design, which means that companies can build slowly toward this goal with minimal impact on their existing systems!
VAA standardizes the interface used by different applications thereby optimizing information flow and avoiding redundancies.
| 
