Application Integration

Application Integration is an approach to extending the life of legacy software applications written in archaic languages such as PL/1, Fortran, Pascal, Basic and COBOL. Over the years many companies have developed valuable equity, intellectual property and business logic using legacy platforms such as IBM MVS, CICS, IMS, COBOL, DCE/RPC, OS400/RPG, OS390 and Cool:Gen/IEF. As a one time fix, Application Integration is quite effective. But as new platforms evolve and older one’s fade, companies are faced with having to merge or abandon working applications and invest in new ones several times in order to remain current and manage operational risk.

At eCube Systems, we use a new methold called Enterprise Evolution or Legacy Modernization methodology rather than enterprise application integration to help companies leverage existing investments in legacy technology as they move to support contemporary service oriented architectures such as .NET, J2EE, LDAP and SOAP.  Whether a company wants to transform, integrate or maintain a Application platform we help them reach their goal without abandoning the ROI already in hand.

The Problem: Application Integration doesn't scale

The problem with legacy application integration is that if it is employed many times over a few years, it causes performance, scalability, and maintenance problems with the profileration of custom code that were developed for  each iteration of application integration for specific systems. Many times the application integration has to be "cloned" for each new system.

IT managers are facing a variety of business pressures that are forcing them to evaluate what the best choice they have in regards to maintaining and integrating their legacy application systems with newer technology.  Here are some of the problems with application integration:

1. Enterprise Application Integration involves custom developed adapters (sometimes called wrappers)  to existing application interfaces in order to interface with newer technology or other applications. As more and more of these Enterprise Application Integration projects arise, more and more adapters or modifications to existing adapters happen. These changes require additional maintenance to support the modernization of legacy systems due to business rule changes. As time goes on, the proliferation of adapters on the application resembles a Christmas tree with too many ornaments: it just falls over.
   
2. Enterprise Application Integration projects are typically labor intensive and one-off creations just for one customer, making most of what is developed not re-useable. This results in a consultant bonanza for the EAI Integrators.  Instead of developing independence from vendors and older systems, Enterprise Application Integration actually entrenches the customer further in and compounds that with the maintenance of a unique, custom made adapter just for their company.
3. Application integration does not address problems like business rule changes, redundant code logic, dead code or feature creep. Integrating in a new application sometimes duplicates existing functionality.
4. Application integration doesn't address agility: it adds more overhead.
   

As the industry shifts to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and to utility computing based on Web Services and SOAP -- the 4th major paradigm shift in 10 years -- addressing these issues has never been as pressing. Over time, application integration increases the risk and expense of modernizing legacy applications.

The solution to Application Integration: Enterprise Evolution

A far better approach than tactically integrated applications for specific interfaces is the three step process of Enterprise Evolution: ARM. ARM is an intelligent evolution of legacy applications: Assessment, Remediation and Modernization. Each phase provides valuable information on the Application and Business Rules that govern them, remediate existing or potential problems and implement design changes that make the application more agile in the future.

Example: Application Integration vs Enterprise Evolution

The use of DCE Middleware is still prevalent in spite of IBM's announcements of dropping support. Many companies have developed products and services for their customers using the popularly known DCE middleware. Previous attempts to extend DCE applications' lifespan have resulted in multiple disjoint programs to either wrapper or gateway DCE to other technologies. Each time, more and more code is written to maintain it and more and more time is wasted maintaining just the wrappers, gateways or adapters as they are sometimes known. Now days companies using DCE are turning to integrators to rewrite these applications, but total re-writes are very costly and time consuming.

The solution to application integration is eCube Systems' Enterprise Evolution products and services that bridge legacy technology gaps. EE enables customers to extend technology ROI, manage risk and leverage existing business assets. eCube uses the ARM application modernization process to help companies bring “transformed” legacy applications into synchronization with the latest technology. To maximize legacy ROI, eCube has developed three primary offering categories for application modernization: Legacy Support and Maintenance (LSM), Legacy Modernization Services (LMS) and Legacy Modernization Products (LMP). 

Using NXTera 5.0 and NXTware EV, eCube Systems provides an Evolutionary approach to integrating legacy applications with a systematic phased solution called Enterprise Evolution. This legacy application modernization process is based on the evolution of existing business logic and the integration/implementation of contemporary platforms, such as .NET, J2EE, Web Services, HTTP/Servlets and XML.

Enterprise Evolution employs a phased approach so that the users can continue to use the existing legacy application while phasing in components of the modernized system. As part of the assessment phase, Enterprise Evolution refractors the legacy application to defend it from “software hardening” or the growing inflexibility of legacy systems, enabling it to participate as an enterprise service provider.

Legacy application integration has a cost, but it shouldn't be performance. In many cases IT organization are finding that integrating Enterprise applications together have created a bottleneck that severely impacts performance. A true application integration strategy embraces a commitment to steady improvement in performance and the fulfillment of service level goals.

Correspondingly, risk is the something every business executive has to deal with. Whether a company decides to “stay put”, integrate their existing legacy application, or modernize, there is risk involved. eCube is committed to balancing the risk, with proven technology, proven application integration and software modernization methods that insure the value of IT efforts moving into the future. Application modernization means that old applications can be maintained, renewed, evolved, transformed or harvested to speed new development in such a way as to assure the ability of every enterprise application to meet its commitments to the business and exceed expectation to reliability.