This workshop brought together representatives from two industry consortia that have
common goals around the integration of largescale systems to enable global enterprise
interoperability in a secure, reliable, and timely manner.
The Open Group articulates this vision as "Boundarlyess Information Flow" -
the ability to put in place infrastructure services that bring information together and
provide that information to the users and applications that need it.
The EAIIC promotes Enterprise Application Integration through sponsored research, the
establishment of standards and guidelines, best practices, and articulation of strategic
and measurable benefits. It focuses on "the Quest for Measurable Business Value"
deriving from the ability to effectively integrate largescale systems that were
independently developed and remain independently managed.
Both consortia stress the need for a business-driven approach to integration solutions,
and both have proven methodologies that can help address the key problems involved.
The goal of the workshop was to share information, and explore the goals and methods of
each consortium with a view to identifying opportunities for synergy and collaboration.
On behalf of the EAIIC, the following presentations were made:
- "Global Integration Framework" by John Schmidt,
EAIIC Director. John explained the need for a discipline that is fundamentally different
from the traditional Systems Development Lifecycle approach when attempting to integrate
largescale systems that were independently developed, and remain independently managed.
- "EAI Principles & Foundation for TBI" by John
Schmidt. In his role as EAIIC Chairman - Methodology Committee, John presented five EAI
“laws” that any integration methodology must follow if it is to be effective,
and outlined a set of ten principles as a “starter set” for working towards a
mature best practice in this area.
- "Total Business Integration" by Steve Field,
Chairman Best Practices Committee, and Ajay Anand, Johnson & Johnson. This was
an outline of the Total Business Integration (TBI) Methodology, first created at Johnson
& Johnson for enterprise use, and currently proposed as the basis for a global
integration best practice by the EAIIC.
- "Vendor Perspective" by S. Winters, IBM Industry
Solutions, was a vendor view of the challenges in the application integration space.
- "End User Perspective" by David White, Johnson
& Johnson, and Ajay Anand, Johnson & Johnson, covered the challenges in building
an Enterprise Integration Strategy, and the application of TBI to a large integration
project.
On behalf of The Open Group:
- Terry Blevins presented The Open Group Boundaryless Information
Flow initiative.
- Chris Greenslade, Chair of The Open Group Architecture Forum, outlined The Open
Group's enterprise architecture framework and method, TOGAF.
The final session of the workshop was a facilitated discussion that explored potential
synergies, solicited feedback from participants, and identified individuals interested in
participating further in collaborative work.
