Integrations-Conversion: Center of Excellence

The Integrations Conversion Center of Excellence proposes the use of the following technologies:

• Service Oriented Architecture (S.O.A)
• Electronic data interchange ( E.D.I)
• Integration-Conversion
• Software as a service (SaaS)
• Cloud Computing

In software engineering, a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a set of principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of interoperable services. These services are well-defined business functionalities that are built as software components (discrete pieces of code and/or data structures) that can be reused for different purposes. SOA design principles are used during the phases of systems development and integration.

The roadmap to SOA involves:

• Understanding the industry specific end state for the first iteration
• Gather the current state of business process maintenance, applications, integrations, security, master data and governance
• Reducing the SOA readiness gap between various entities

The various entities would be in one of the Integrations-conversion readiness states, i.e

• Business process maintenance
• Integration
• Applications
• Security
• Master data

SOA can be seen in a continuum, from older concepts of distributed computing and modular programming, through SOA, and on to current practices of mashups, SaaS, and Cloud Computing (which some see as the offspring of SOA).

The idea behind using Conversions is to leverage the existing technologies for:

• Ability to build applications by leveraging the existing assets and investments
• Reduced enterprise integration complexities arising due to heterogeneous environments, applications and systems
• Continuous business process improvement through better real-time visibility and control of the business processes
• Increased flexibility, faster time-to-market and reduced cost in the long term

Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the structured transmission of data between organizations by electronic means. It is used to transfer electronic documents or business data from one computer system to another computer system, i.e. from one trading partner to another trading partner without human intervention. It is the preferred mode for silent transmission of data, and used for transfer of services from one host to another.

Software as a service (SaaS), sometimes referred to as “on-demand software,” is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally (typically in the (Internet) cloud) and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet. SaaS has become a common delivery model for most business applications, including accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), invoicing, human resource management (HRM), content management (CM) and service desk management.

SaaS has been incorporated into the strategy of all leading enterprise software companies. The term software as a service (SaaS) is considered to be part of the nomenclature of cloud computing, along with infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS).