Business considerations for Enterprise Application Integration

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) software has enormous potential to reduce Information Technology (IT) costs and introduce immediate benefits to the utility business. The perceived benefits come about, as usual in the IT industry, by making sure the technology offered is well understood and will be applied to improve appropriate business processes. EAI provides the enabling technology that moves away from multiple point-topoint integration between disparate systems, instead providing an ‘integration bus’ that applications can tap into via connectors or adapters. This apparently simple shift from one model to another promises to significantly reduce long term costs.

Most utilities have clearly understood that by introducing e-Business processes they will be establishing an IT infrastructure for future business health. It will be the basis for the interactions between the utility / energy company, their customers, suppliers and partners for years to come. The question is how to make the transition a successful one. The underlying key issue to this is the balance that needs to be struck between striving towards business benefits and the costs of acquiring and long term maintenance of software.

Consider on one hand, Company X that chooses to take the route of establishing a web presence for customers and suppliers and has done the absolute minimal investment in the connection to back-office processes. In addition, those back-office processes are monolithic and internally focussed where most interaction is batch oriented file transfer. Although they will get some instant recognition from being on the Web, the benefits of e- Business are far off for them.

Company Y has decided to go another route by taking a longer-term view. They have chosen to replace their legacy systems with a massive overhaul so that they have all modern web enabled software from start to finish. Although they will have the comfort of knowing they’ve made a good long-term investment, the benefits of e-Business are far off for them.

The scenarios pictured above are not entirely realistic, deliberately so: they represent the extremes of how being too technology focussed can result in poor business decisions. Let’s also consider a third example, Company Z who, by watching and learning from X and Y, has decided to utilize EAI technology to address its business issues.

EAI provides mechanisms, technologies and an integration philosophy to enable organizations to make the right choices to weave the optimal path to e-Business and core systems integration. Spatial technology and systems present special challenges - demanding, complex applications - that make those choices even more difficult although emerging standards for the web and for application integration will make a difference. For utility organizations and vendors making those right choices are key to a rapid return on investment.

This paper will explore these issues further by providing relevant background on the technology but with the focus on how it relates to business considerations.