The need for application integration is greater than ever within companies as they seek to link legacy applications with newer applications in order to improve internal processes and work more effectively with their business partners. This paper shows why an appliance-based approach to integration not only offers advantages over custom code integrations but also complements integrations developed with custom code.
Traditionally, companies had just two choices for their integration needs—use complex platforms (like EAI) or write custom code. The platform approach evolved to meet the needs of large enterprises and is very expensive to procure, install, deploy and maintain. Therefore, most companies were forced to develop custom code for integrating their applications and, as a result, custom code has become the most widely used integration solution today.
Despite this popularity, companies are acutely aware of the pains of using custom code – it is labor-intensive, time consuming and doesn’t scale as a company grows. With no other viable alternative, companies suffered the pains of debugging and maintaining their integration code even as their business environments became more dynamic. In a world where businesses need to be more agile in responding to changes, a sluggish integration process clearly cannot continue for long before it begins to hurt.
