1. Traditional Enterprise Integration Tools can be empowered with special connectors to access Cloud-located Applications—This is the most likely approach for IT organizations, which have already invested a lot in integration suite for their application integration needs. With a persistent rise in the necessity towards accessing and integrating cloud applications, special drivers, connectors and adapters are being built and incorporated on the existing integration platforms to enable bidirectional connectivity with the participating cloud services. As indicated earlier, there are several popular and pioneering enterprise integration methods and platforms such as EAI/ESB, which are accordingly empowered, configured and customized in order to access and leverage the growing array of cloud applications too. For attaining an enhanced performance, integration appliances are very hot in the market.
2. Traditional Enterprise Integration Tools are hosted in the Cloud—This approach is similar to the first option except that the integration software suite is now hosted in any third-party cloud infrastructures so that the enterprise does not worry about procuring and managing the hardware or installing the integration software. This is a good fit for IT organizations that outsource the integration projects to IT service organizations and systems integrators, who have the skills and resources to create and deliver integrated systems. The IT divisions of business enterprises need not worry about the upfront investment of high-end computer machines, integration packages, and their maintenance with this approach. Similarly system integrators can just focus on their core competencies of designing, developing, testing, and deploying integrated systems. It is a good fit for cloud-to-cloud (C2C) integration, but requires a secure VPN tunnel to access on-premise corporate data. An example of a hosted integration technology is Informatica PowerCenter Cloud Edition on Amazon EC2.
3. Integration-as-a-Service (IaaS) or On-Demand Integration Offerings— These are SaaS applications that are designed to deliver the integration service securely over the Internet and are able to integrate cloud applications with the on-premise systems, cloud-to-cloud applications.
Even on-premise systems can be integrated with other on-premise applications via this integration service. This approach is a good fit for companies who insist about the ease of use, ease of maintenance, time to deployment, and are on a tight budget. It is appealing to small and midsized companies, as well as large enterprises with departmental application deployments. It is also a good fit for companies who plan to use their SaaS administrator or business analyst as the primary resource for managing and maintaining their integration work. A good example is Informatica On-Demand Integration Services.
In a nutshell, the integration requirements can be realised using any one of the following methods and middleware products.
1. Hosted and extended ESB (Internet service bus / cloud integration bus)
2. Online Message Queues, Brokers and Hubs
3. Wizard and configuration-based integration platforms (Niche integration solutions)
4. Integration Service Portfolio Approach
5. Appliance-based Integration (Standalone or Hosted)
With the emergence of the cloud space, the integration scope grows further and hence people are looking out for robust and resilient solutions and services that would speed up and simplify the whole process of integration.
Source of Information : Wiley - Cloud Computing Principles and Paradigms
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