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e-Government and Green Hat
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e-Government FAQ
1. What is EAI?
2. What is SOA?
3. Will Enterprise Applications Integration save me money?
4. Can I get more from my CRM?
5. Why is EAI better than point-to-point integration?
6. What part does integration play in transformational government?
7. Which middleware technology should I choose?
8. How can I share information services?
9. How can I reduce the cost of integration?
10. Do I need an integration strategy?
1. What is EAI?
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is the unrestricted sharing of data and business processes throughout the networked applications or data sources in an organisation. As enterprises grow and recognise the need for their information and applications to be shared between systems, organisations are investing in EAI in order to streamline processes and keep all the elements of the enterprise interconnected. However, many back office applications and data sources are built in proprietary technologies and were initially designed to run completely independently.
Enterprise Application Integration is related to middleware technologies, and newer EAI technologies involve using web services as part of service-oriented architecture as a means of integration. Enterprise
Currently, it is thought that the best approach to EAI is to use an Enterprise service bus (ESB), which connects numerous, independent systems together. Although other approaches have been explored, including connecting at the database or user-interface level, the ESB approach has been adopted as the strategic winner. Individual applications can publish messages to the bus and subscribe to receive certain messages from the bus. Each application only requires one connection to the bus, and the message bus approach can be extremely scalable and highly evolvable.
An enterprise service bus generally provides an abstraction layer on top of an Enterprise Messaging System which allows integration architects to exploit the value of messaging without writing code. Contrary to the more classical EAI approach of a monolithic stack in a hub and spoke architecture, the foundation of an enterprise service bus is built of base functions broken up into their constituent parts, with distributed deployment where needed, working in harmony as necessary.
EAI may involve developing a new total view of an enterprise's business and its applications, seeing how existing applications fit into the new view, and then devising ways to efficiently reuse what already exists while adding new applications and data.
2. What is SOA?
A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the underlying structure supporting communications between services. In this context, a service is defined as a unit of work to be performed on behalf of some computing entity, such as a human user or another program. SOA defines how two computing entities, such as programs, interact in such a way as to enable one entity to perform a unit of work on behalf of another entity. All functions or service interactions are defined using a description language and have interfaces that are invoked to perform business processes. Each interaction is self-contained, so that it is independent of any other interaction or interconnect protocol of the communicating device. Because interfaces are platform-independent, a client from any device using any operating system in any language can use the service.
Though built on similar principles, SOA is not the same as Web services, which indicates a collection of technologies, such as SOAP and XML. SOA is more than a set of technologies and runs independent of any specific technologies.
SOA draws the best of earlier enterprise architecture ideas into a concept that combines adaptable connections with well-defined, standards-based interfaces to help you build flexibility into your existing infrastructure. You can reuse SOA services extensively; regardless of whether they are based on newly implemented services or existing IT assets.
Evidence shows that a successful SOA can accelerate the application delivery cycle by 40%, which speeds a company’s time-to-market, as well as reduces the total cost of IT by more than 20%.
3. Will Enterprise Applications Integration save me money?
We are now in the age of efficiency, as outlined in the Gershon Report, and it is widely accepted that significant, sustained efficiency savings come from improving back-office processes, which almost inevitably involves integrating several complex legacy back-office systems. Typical examples of these corporate and line of business systems are:
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One of the roles of the CIO or ICT Manager is to enable the information held in such systems to be made available directly to those who need it most, whether they are:
- Council staff working in collaboration, aided by interoperability of systems
- External practitioners working in a multi-agency environment
- Citizens transacting with the council via multiple access channels
The combination of best practice processes and modern technology with effective change management that is key to delivering significant benefits.
IT underpins much of ‘Gershon’ and as the scope and scale of the efficiency agenda widens, so the imperative is to move to the integration of systems and data around effective processes. Many individual projects both locally and nationally have begun this transition and Gershon should be seen as an extension to that process.
Once an enterprise integration strategy and solution is in place, services can be joined up and improved for relatively little cost compared to previous integration methods - another key requirement of the efficiency agenda.
4. Can I get more from my CRM?
Yes....especially if it not yet linked to your back office applications. CRM is only as useful as the information to which it has direct access. By being able to share information between your CRM and your back office line of business applications, such as Revenues, Benefits, Housing Management, Social Care, Environmental Services, Education, etc, you can deliver faster, more accurate and appropriate services to your citizens.
Many suppliers of such applications will still offer integration via a point-to-point architecture but by far the most efficient and cost effective method is through Enterprise Application Integration.
5. Why is EAI better than point-to-point integration?
Well, for a start look at a typical point-to-point (P2P) solution:
The number of connections (n) needed to have fully-meshed point-to-point integration is given by the formula
.
Thus, for 10 applications to be fully integrated point-to-point,
, or 45 point-to-point connections are needed.
P2P is also misleading in its apparent simplicity, as custom/bespoke code needs to be developed to provide features such as:
- Error handling
- Replaying lost messages
- Business Logic
- Transformation
- Security
- Fault tolerance
- High availability
- Future scalability
Using P2P to connect systems will cause future problems when solution needs to be extended or scaled.
Enterprise Application Integration drastically reduces the number of required links:
The use of middleware to provide EAI:
- Provides a single interface between each application
- Adds error handling
- Enables replay of messages (persistence)
- Enables future scalability
- Permits fault-tolerance
- Requires limited use of bespoke code - most of work required is configuration
6. What part does integration play in transformational government?
Systems integration has always underpinned the ethos of e-Government. The sharing of information across the council, its agencies and its citizens is key to improving public services through technology.
The Priority Outcomes that helped steer e-Government until spring 2006, included requirements for integration, e.g.
G24: Integration of customer relationship management systems with back office activity through use of enabling technology such as Workflow to create complete automation of business process management.
As e-Government evolves into t-Government, we see a shift in emphasis towards shared information and services. There is also a requirement for professionalism in the approach to the use of technology within government. UK central government is beginning to make it clear that enterprise application integration, including approaches such as Service Oriented Architecture, are recommended routes for those organisations looking for a sound strategy for information sharing.
7. Which middleware technology should I choose?
That will depend on, amongst other things, the requirements your business and your staff, your technical strategy and your budget. Implementing an enterprise middleware solution is an investment that will deliver service improvements and efficiency savings for many years to come. However, it is a significant investment and needs expert advice to ensure that you select the product and technology that will serve you best.
Green Hat Consulting are technology-agnostic experts in the field of Enterprise Application Integration. We are not tied to any particular product or technology but we have vast expertise and experience in implementing all of the major enterprise middleware solutions. Therefore, we are best placed to work with you to choose and implement the right solution for you - one that will deliver on price and performance.
8. How can I share information services?
Linking back office systems directly to one another, or to front office applications such as CRM, using costly, bespoke, point-to-point integration is one way of sharing the highly valuable information that you hold within your organisation. However, that method is extremely expensive in the longer term and is totally inflexible in a world where systems and applications are changing on a regular basis. An enterprise middleware solution, incorporating highly flexible Enterprise Application Integration and Service Oriented Architecture will enable you to join anything to anything, according to your business requirements and priorities today, and tomorrow.
9. How can I reduce the cost of integration?
The important thing is to integrate what you actually need to integrate, according to your business and service priorities, but not to fall into the trap of joining systems, applications and databases directly to each other, either by means of bespoke development or ‘adaptors’.Adaptors that enable you to link your back and front office applications to a single enterprise middleware tier, and to all services developed on that platform, will be reusable and will deliver far better return on investment than point-to-point solutions
10. Do I need an integration strategy?
The integration of applications and data sources within a large organisation is often something that is approached in a piecemeal, knee-jerk manner, which inevitably leads to dead-end ‘solutions’ that are inflexible, have limited lifespan, and deliver poor return on investment.
While it is true that business requirements for sharing information between particular systems often come along by surprise and in a haphazard fashion, this does not mean that a sound strategy cannot be put in place to handle the necessary integration in a cost effective and future proof way. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), based on Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), is the strategy recommended by UK Government and major worldwide organisations alike. Since 1996, Green Hat Consulting have been leading experts in SOA and EAI, and our consultants can pass on that experience to you, ensuring that your integration strategy is the most cost effective and efficient for your council’s needs.