Doing business in the New Economy is a sink-or-swim proposition. Given the quantum jump in pace and marketplace dynamics, following traditional integration strategies for linking data and applications is no longer enough.

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The nature of the way you work has become more dynamic. The length of time, on average, that you maintain a given business partner relationship has shortened significantly; at the same time the volume of data you must manage has increased dramatically. These evolving constructs present challenges as you seek to integrate an even greater number of dissimilar applications.

Up to this point, CTOs have had EAI (enterprise application integration) products and services at their disposal and they have excelled at interconnecting dissimilar applications and data sets. Now EAI technology is converging with BPI (business process integration), and a new strategy, called EBI (enterprise business integration), is coming to the forefront.

The fundamental idea behind EBI is to create an integration framework that is managed at the business process layer. This new framework will handle changes in processes and partners as well as the underlying data and applications.

Adopting an EBI strategy will allow you to more easily plug in varied partners while modifying processes, applications, and data across your enterprise. But EBI is not yet a plug-and-play proposition. Expect this part of the market to evolve significantly over the next year and beyond. Planning a move toward EBI now will leave you well prepared for dynamic integration in the future.

Breaking down EBI components

Often referred to as next-generation EAI, these EBI frameworks can be implemented in a number of different ways. There are CORBA frameworks, Java-based frameworks, and EAI vendor-proprietary frameworks. In the case of all of these frameworks, the move to an EBI-based solution means that all integration is managed at the business process layer. This contrasts with first-generation EAI frameworks that placed control for integration solely in the application and data layers. The movement of integration management upstream to the business process layer signals a simplification of integration -- something long needed in the EAI space.

EBI products and services help you construct a new metalayer at the business process level -- above your existing application and data layers. This layer is separate and apart from the data and applications that you and your business partners have on hand. The metalayer helps you link multiple business processes that may or may not already be automated, and it helps you more firmly grasp control over your integration needs on an enterprise level. What's really critical and different (compared to first-generation EAI solutions) is that the EBI metalayer lets you modify your business process workflow at any time on an ad hoc basis. This gives you the ability to meet the challenges of dynamic integration in our digital economy.

Managing your business integration needs in this fashion gives you the ultimate control over processes, applications, and data inside your enterprise and in the linkages you have with business partners. The process layer manages application execution and data exchange -- a huge change from the way EAI worked in the past. Instead of managing individual integration activity at an application or data layer, you can manage all of your integration cohesively.

Choosing the right tools

In general you'll want to implement an open standards-based EBI framework. You might wish to avoid vendor-specific implementations and seek out vendors who support frameworks that are CORBA-or Java-based. This way, you can change your EBI framework solution more easily should the need arise in the future.

Several solutions are only now beginning to come to market. Some are EAI adaptations that link BPI tools into proprietary products and others are open solutions that implement a Java-based framework. The EBI solution you select should allow you to configure and manage processes, workflow, applications, and data -- internal and external.

These fledgling EBI solutions require careful analysis of every business process and workflow that is carried out within your company or in conjunction with your business partners. But once implemented, making changes is much easier and faster than when focusing on the data or application layers, as you would have done with traditional EAI solutions.

Before jumping onto the EBI bandwagon, you might wish to use some process modeling tools to gain the upper hand on the myriad of business processes you already have in place. These tools help you identify and map out your current processes, and many can help you construct a map that can later speed up your EBI implementation. This is a good place to start your planning for EBI.

Process modeling tools provide four different areas of support: business process diagramming, business analysis, IT requirements definition, and IT process analysis.

Some products are stronger in one area than the others. On the business process front, vendors such as Popkin and IDS Sheer provide strong support, while others, such as Computer Associates' Platinum product line, are more focused on IT-based process analysis.

Laying the groundwork

Standards bodies are already working to quickly build common approaches that will prove useful to those building EBI frameworks. For example, the workflow management coalition (www.aiim.org/wfmc) is working on standard ways to manage workflow. As you might expect, XML plays a key role in the workflow standardization process.

XML will likely creep into process modeling, EAI tools, and EBI solutions, too. According to Gartner, 75 percent of large enterprises will be implementing XML by the end of this year. So when you begin to examine your integration strategy, you'll need to see how well potential solutions support XML, because this is a leading technology going forward in the integration space.

In today's fast-paced marketplace, CTOs need to rethink their approach to managing the business. You should no longer view your enterprise as simply a mammoth load of data and a bevy of applications that needs to be managed. If you view your enterprise as an open set of processes that constantly change and implement the EBI frameworks to manage those processes, you'll be well equipped to meet the dynamic and challenging pace of e-business.