ARPN Journal of Systems and Software: Five Aspects of Application Integration Requirements

Most organizations use an increasing number of applications and services to solve specific business problems. In many cases, these applications and services exist on different platforms and were created at different times. The challenge that most organizations now face is to provide a method by which these applications can work together to address business goals that constantly evolve. This paper presents a practical guide for gathering application integration requirements. It discusses the major challenges involved and shows how organizations can adapt application integration environment to meet those challenges. The guide is not designed to show exactly which technologies to use in integration solution. Instead, it focuses on five major aspects of the application integration: business process, integration requirements, user exposure, cost and infrastructure. By considering the information of these subjects, organizations can design an effective application integration solution and improve capabilities needed to enable application integration. So a complete picture of important aspects of application integration can be achieved.