Design Engineering-V-Integration Patterns-At A glance

In today's technology world, its not an unusual scenario for most of the organizations that their IT ecosystem is a gamut of disparate / distinct systems, tools, homegrown software's & all these clubbed with spreadsheets and other small point-to-point applications none-the-less the behemoth enterprise grade platform like ERP, HRMS, CRM, Billing, etc. This makes the ecosystem very complex and sometimes too large to handle. Most of these systems don't work in isolation and they are connected somehow. The net result is that its a complex collection of heterogeneous platforms, siloed applications, duplicated data & services interconnected by plethora of different methods. Typically they are connected through data feeds and through integration networks. In such scenarios, its very difficult to have a single-source-of-truth data and have also a single-pane-of-glass view of the entire spectrum.

The outcome is lowered productivity, errors & duplication in data, spaghetti automation, low business agility and it also results into needing specialists to make this whole ecosystem working & going on. The problem is further compounded by the speed at which technology evolves and changes as it puts expiry time for current & past implementations. It won't be a surprise that such situation can place the enterprises or organizations at the distinct disadvantage against competition.

This is termed as the "Problem Of Integration".

Most of the challenges & concerns can be addressed with integration of such systems, applications and tools through enterprise grade practices and there comes the enterprise integration patterns which puts forth the different ways of integrating such systems. As every pattern intended to do, these patterns also help to provide solutions to challenges / issues, standardize the implementations, establish consistency and improve predictability, reduce time & efforts, improve quality. The overall enterprise integration architecture is purpose built to balance the needs & requirements of the business with the requirements of individual systems/applications.

This article covers 21 patterns which are described through graphics. These are divided into 5 sets and the grouping of patterns is as seen below.

First Set

Here are 5 patterns of the first set.

Second Set

4 patterns are described here of the second set.

Third Set

4 patterns are described here of the third set.

Fourth Set

4 patterns are described here of the fourth set.

Fifth Set

4 patterns are described here of the fifth set.

So far so good.

Happy Designing!!

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