Business applications rarely operate in isolation. For example, the sales application must access the inventory application, the procurement application needs to connect to an auction site, or you would like your PDA to synchronize with the corporate calendar. In most cases, any enterprise system can benefit by integrating with other applications within the enterprise. In addition, today's users expect instant access to all business functions an enterprise offers, regardless of which system the functionality may reside in. This requires disparate applications to be connected into a larger, enterprise application integration (EAI) solution, which provides the necessary functions of data transport (the packaging of the information to be shared), data transformation (the translation between the "languages spoken"), and routing (the movement between the source and the target of the data). EAI is the process of coordinating the operation of various applications across an enterprise so that it can perform as an integrated enterprise-wide system.

Applications communicate with other applications by sending messages to each other via message channels. An application connects to a messaging channel using a message endpoint, a component of the messaging system that the application can then use to send or receive messages. Message endpoints are custom to both the application and the messaging system. The rest of the application knows little about message formats, messaging channels, or any of the other details of communicating with other applications via messaging. It just knows that it has a request or piece of data to send to another application, or is expecting the same from another application. It is the messaging endpoint code that takes that command or data, makes it into a message, and sends it down a particular messaging channel. It is the endpoint that receives a message, extracts the contents, and gives them to the application in a meaningful way.

By default, any message delivered on a channel becomes available to any endpoint listening on that channel for messages to process. However, some applications may not want to process just any message on that channel, but only wish to process messages of a certain type or description. Such a discriminating application can use a filter to describe what sort of message it’s willing to receive. Then the messaging system will only make messages matching that description available to that receiving application.

Application integration solutions route messages between enterprise applications such as legacy systems, packaged applications, or homegrown custom applications. Each of these applications is usually built around a proprietary data model, and each application expects to receive messages that conform to its internal data format. Applications using different data formats communicate with each other using a special filter, a message transformer, to translate one data format into another.

Business Integration Technology creates enterprise application integration (EAI) solutions using our proven EME enterprise messaging engine. We have extensive experience and proven success in applying our knowledge and implementing EME in a variety of industries. Our Capabilities demonstrate expertise across business areas, data standards, and communication protocols. BIT applies the same knowledge, skills and best practices to EAI projects as are delivered in a B2B project.