Moving from EAI to SOA An Infosys Perspective Manas Kumar Sarkar Over years traditional Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) has provided its benefits in terms of solution re-use, application decoupling & information standardization; however areas such as end-to-end monitoring of business process, Process improvement, Process agility and information ownership were not addressed in traditional EAI implementation (Application Integration). SOA aims at addressing the areas not addressed by the traditional EAI implementation and at same time build on the benefits of traditional EAI implementation. This paper analyses the traditional EAI implementation and discuss how SOA approach addresses the pain points which were remained unaddressed by EAI implementation Jun 2007
Traditional EAI Implementation Traditional EAI Implementation meant implementation of interfaces in an efficient way to increase information re-usability & impact minimization due to application changes by ensuring application de-coupling. Some of the areas which got focus in traditional EAI implementation were Application Interfaces Adapters for decoupling applications Canonical Message Models for information re-use Real-Time Integration These allowed application decoupling enabling N*(N-1) integration points to be reduced to N+1 integration points providing benefits like Business Benefits Improving business process by enabling real-time / near real time integration between application Up to date information enabling application / user to react faster Lowering TCO Solution re-use across multiple interfaces resulted in reducing development effort for number of point-to-point interfaces Decoupling applications minimizing impact on interfaces due to Application upgrade Application replacement Application re-hosting Architectural Benefits Information view standardization across enterprise Function level integration rather than data level integration enabling better use of application business logic A loosely coupled architecture providing higher flexibility to accommodate change Operational Benefit Ability to do technical level monitoring of interfaces to enable IT to identify the impact and notify the appropriate team 2 Infosys View Point
Traditional EAI Approach Analysis In a typical EAI implementation the focus of this phase was analyzing the application portfolio and the information exchange between applications as per the technical business flow. The primary focus had been interface rationalization and data standardization. Define The primary focus of this phase was to identify the integration points (i.e. database level or API Level or Message Level) and then define the Common Message Model (Also called Canonical Message Format) to achieve source and target decoupling. This was the key essence of most of the traditional EAI implementation. Implement This phase focused on the implementation aspect of the solution detailing out the Implementation logic for source to canonical message and canonical to target message format translation & validation Implementation of MOM and broker platform to achieve loosely coupled integration And then the message re-processing approach in case of application or integration broker failure Opportunities Missed Although EAI implementation provided Business & IT benefits but at the same time there were areas which were still unaddressed Infosys View Point 3
Business process improvement was only restricted to real-time data exchanges. Flexibility required in business process required changes in Business application and hence slowing down the entire process Publish/Subscribe implementation resulted in information overload Information security was not inherently supported End-To-End Business Process monitoring was always missing in traditional EAI implementation Ability to provide a business context for any technical failures Business Process & SOA EAI implementation mostly focused on IT benefits and hence missed on the Business & IT alignment. The biggest benefit of SOA is Business & IT alignment. Some of the key benefits that Business Process brings to SOA implementation are Impact of services to over arching business process & vice versa Business Process enabled by an SOA, automates more of the end-to-end process, including transactional, reference and human knowledge centric activities, providing more of a closed-loop feedback mechanism to business leaders. SOA s assemble and compose delivery style provides agility towards changing business needs Business Process and SOA, both supporting more iterative and continuous refinements to automated operations, enable mid-course, strategic adjustments. What does SOA Approach addresses In short SOA implementation aimed at addressing the short coming of traditional EAI implementation and at the same time builds on the benefits of traditional EAI implementation. The key essence of any SOA based implementation approach is decomposing the Business Process into multiple layers of service which could be re-used. Information integration which had been the key essence of any EAI implementation continues to exists in a SOA landscape as Information service. 4 Infosys View Point
Analysis The analysis phase in a SOA based approach focuses on addressing the pain points in the existing business process and identifies the To Be business process which could be monitored from both business & IT perspective providing the opportunity for continuous improvement. This phase will enable identification of user roles & system use cases which form the basis for service rationalization in the define phase. The biggest change from traditional EAI approach is holistic analysis of business process to identify new opportunities for improvement and monitoring of critical business KPI s Define This phase focus on rationalization of services (Value Service, Process Service, Business Service, Information Service & Utility service) based on Business Process Analysis and application service analysis, subsequently utilize enterprise Information model to define service contracts which enable better utilization service. Apart from service rationalization and service contract definition KPI s for Business Process needs to be utilized to define the service SLA s and map them to the Business Process KPI s. The key difference from EAI based approach is the identification of services both from Business Process and application portfolio perspective and also the focus changes from technical monitoring to Business Monitoring for defining the SLA. Implement The key focus of this phase is the implementation of the services and Business KPI s. Business rules and BPM forms the key components for composite service creation. Typically Business Rules are used in creation of services which are based on conditional based service interaction whereas BPM is typically used for services which are based on process flow. Lastly a closed loop monitoring to establish an end-to-end monitoring tying together Business Process KPI s, Service SLA & Infrastructure monitoring Conclusion Moving from traditional EAI implementation to SOA implementation would require changes in the overall approach for doing integration projects. The key aspects that would require focus in a SOA based approach which were not part of traditional EAI implementation are Need conscious effort to architect/design for an Enterprise wide re-usability instead of only at the project/program level. Transition from Vendor proprietary standards based integration to a more open standards based integration. Governance becomes more important and essential by the very nature of challenges that SOA brings which had been a little less challenging for a traditional EAI approach About the Author Manas Kumar Sarkar is a Principal Architect with Infosys Enterprise Solutions group. He has several years of experience in strategizing and implementing EAI solutions for large scale IT projects that involved EAI as a key component. He can be contacted at manaskumars@infosys.com.