This high-level overview of EiPaaS helps technologists understand the value of utilizing a platform architecture focused on enterprise integration.
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience. This is an article from DZone’s 2022 Enterprise Application Integration Trend Report. For more: In 1993, I started working in the Group Insurance division of a medium-sized insurance company. The products sold by this division were made available to life insurance agents via a locally executed application written in the Pascal programming language. Those agents placed the disk into their computer and launched an MS-DOS executable, which started a character-based application focused on generating new policy sales. Our team would create and validate the program before floppy disks were created and physically distributed to the agents using the application. A few years later, that same application was served via a network operating system (NOS) — getting rid of the need to distribute floppy disks and paving the way for faster updates. As the technology evolved, those NOS-driven solutions were replaced with multi-tier applications still hosted in locally managed data centers. Today, those very same applications have been transformed into cloud-based applications and services. The illustration in Figure 1 demonstrates the evolution of applications over the last 30 years. That «cloud» container is the product of learned lessons and best practices that have emerged from every prior iteration as applications have evolved. Former silos of proprietary information or functionality have become standards-based services that can provide a great impact to those who are allowed access. With applications, infrastructure, services, and data-focused aspects finding their way to become some «aaS» (as-a-service) offering, the next area of focus should be on enterprise integrations — or enterprise integration platform as a service (EiPaaS). The goal of this article is to provide a high-level overview of EiPaaS and help technologists understand the value that can be realized when utilizing a platform architecture focused on enterprise integration.
