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Drivers for STP in EAI
Pent-up Demand for EAI
products
Customer requirements for integration are maturing
with their IT infrastructure since this infrastructure is increasingly
becoming Decentralised and Coordinated.
ERP and CRM are not enough
The integration and maintenance burden has driven
organisations towards purchasing ever-more integrated application
(ERP, CRM) suites. But although ERP/CRM suites remove a large
part of the burden, there are many software requirements that
are not fulfilled by ERP and CRM functionality. Organizations
thus continue to struggle along hand-coding application integration
interfaces.
IT Department's Solution
The IT community is desperate for some type of
automation in the application integration area because they have
existing custom code to manage, as well as a commitment to new
application development and deployment. Also, pursuit of an M&A
and/or e-commerce strategy threatens to expand the integration
problem beyond the organization's internal systems.
Integration - clearly not
going to disappear as an Issue
Human-generated connections are idiosyncratic
and poorly documented. Point-to-point connections between two
applications are difficult and time-consuming to develop, and
even harder to maintain. Moreover, such connections do not provide
any leverage for additional integration projects. Every time there
is a new application release, system change or business process
change, another piece of custom code has to be developed for each
connection affected.
The IT Budget
A huge chunk of each global organization's IT
budget is already spent on application integration though 40%
of the IT budget that gets swallowed in systems maintenance. Spending
maintenance budget on EAI products is an investment in a strategic
solution that will ultimately cost the organization less. This
prospect is more appealing than pouring money into a one-off,
point-to-point solution.
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