Application Integration

Key to Improved Business Processes

The essence of application integration has nothing to do with information technology (IT).

It’s about improving the speed and efficiency of business processes, whether those processes result in the production of a hard manufactured item like an iPhone or a 3rd quarter expenditure report requested by your boss or a Congressional Committee.
This integration is critical to the improvement of organizations because it makes processes more efficient and enables us to better serve our internal and external customers.

Stovepipe Systems Lead to Inefficient Business Processes

The information age was a blessing and a curse. It has enabled us to do things much faster, but it also led to an explosion of stovepipe systems, which, at the time of their original installations, seemed like great ideas. After all, they were a marked improvement over previous systems or manual processes.

However, we are now left with countless mission-critical systems that cannot talk to one another. This means the business processes that rely on the interchange of data between these applications, are relatively slow, expensive and inefficient.
Too often data has to be transferred between stovepipe systems using various forms of sneaker ware, where hard copy reports or disks are walked from one application to another. Or reports are generated and then emailed to a colleague who needs the data. This process sometimes involves the manual entry of information from one system into another.

Replacement of Legacy Systems Is Not an Option

The ideal situation would be to replace all of these legacy systems with new, interoperable ones that have standardized data structures and compatible technologies. However, the risks, time and cost of such replacements make that solution impossible in most situations.

Application Integration Solution

Fortunately, there are reliable, low-risk and relatively inexpensive solutions to this problem. One of these solutions is Microsoft BizTalk Server. For an explanation of how it can help your organization, read this article.