Integration Versus Transformation: Leveraging Legacy Information Assets

by William M. Ulrich

If your organization is making a significant investment in enterprise application integration (EAI) technology, you are not alone. Estimates state that the EAI technology market is pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars annually with service revenues dwarfing technology revenue estimates by a factor of 10-to-1. Integration is in demand in the private and public sector. The race is on to connect everything to everything using all types of data and application middleware as well as business process automation tools. The problem is that EAI solutions alone are not enough to address integration requirements. EAI must be balanced with legacy transformation solutions to be effective over the long term. The accompanying Executive Report discusses the challenges that legacy applications and data structures place on organizations attempting to meet a wide variety of business requirements, along with options for addressing these challenges.