Enterprise Application Integration

In line with current digital transformations, the number of software applications in use by companies is continuously increasing. This particularly affects industrial enterprises, which face challenges due to their often complex business processes. A holistic and sustainable integration of these business processes requires a strong link between the different information systems used. In this context, application integration, also known as enterprise application integration (EAI), is becoming more important. Modern approaches such as the use of microservices offer a particularly flexible and efficient solution for seamlessly connecting different applications and thus promoting the agility and scalability of a company’s IT landscape.

Business process management (BPM) as a process-oriented approach to management has to implement and control the change process within an organisation from function- to process-orientation regarding organisational, personal and technological aspects. Furthermore BPM offers software-support to plan, control and supervise process performance and comprehensive cooperation of business processes.

The increasing coupling of software applications leads to complex integration scenarios in many companies. Doing this successfully requires well-harmonized concepts and tools. One promising approach is the product “Exchange Infrastructure” of the SAP AG, which is discussed in this article.

Optimized and efficient business processes are increasingly understood to be the key elements of competitive enterprises. The so far separated functionalities of modelling, execution, integration and analysis of business processes undergo currently a strong trend of convergence - this will lead to a new product type. These new systems will enable companies to put their business process model into the centre of their IT-landscape, to manage them process-centrically and to perform a successive transition to the Real-Time Enterprise due to the consideration of process data within the process model.