What is the definition of application integration?
Application integration is the method of enabling several apps, each created for a particular function, to connect. Companies may establish integrations that modernize their infrastructures and enable agile business operations by combining and optimizing data and workflows between diverse software applications.
Application integration bridges the gap between on-premises systems and rapidly changing cloud-based corporate apps. Application integration enables firms to coordinate a range of operations across their entire infrastructures via completely networked processes and data exchanges, allowing them to run more effectively and efficiently.
Concepts for application integration
1. API
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a process that classifies how various software components should talk to one another. They let developers simply and rapidly access the capabilities of other software via well-defined data structures, and as a result, they have become a popular method of connecting applications, data, and services in recent years.
2. Occurrences and actions
An event is an occurrence in your linked apps, such as the receipt of a payment. An event then initiates an action or sequence of actions, which can involve both standard functionality (such as generating, obtaining, or modifying datasets) and application-specific activity (such as establishing a new case in Salesforce).
3. The mapping of data
The information interchange that will be used is specified through data mapping. For example, completing and submitting contact forms in one application can set off activities that map certain form fields to other equivalent datasets in other applications, classifying the information submitted into first name, last name, status, and so on. This streamlines the exporting of data for easier categorization and analysis.
Advantages of Application Integration
1. Organizational advantages
Integrating your apps across several clouds is a critical step towards data synchronisation. However, you will require an integration solution that enables the deployment of integration runtimes across several clouds. This enables you to deploy near your applications, resulting in shorter latency times as operations execute directly within the cloud and cheaper costs due to the elimination of the need to transport data across platforms.
2. Benefits of operations
- Access any data from any location: Data is increasingly scattered across many environments as organizations diversify their application architecture (e.g., deploying SaaS apps and establishing new cloud solutions). Integration tools deployed across various settings offer access to any type of data in any format from any system.
- Resolve ‘endpoint individuality: Each system or application has unique characteristics that must be taken into consideration in any integration—error handling, authentication methods, load management, performance optimisation, and so on. Integration technologies that address these aspects ‘out of the box’ produce enormous productivity improvements over coding and a greater degree of enterprise-class durability.
- Permit integrators to focus on integration: Integrators can use purpose-built tooling to focus on building business logic rather than the surrounding infrastructure. An integration tool facilitates the creation of integration processes by addressing error recovery, fault tolerance, log collection, performance analysis, message tracing, and transactional update and recovery.
Use cases for application integration
1. Banking: By integrating client accounts, loan applications, and other back-end processes into their mobile app, a bank may deliver services through a new digital channel and attract new consumers.
2. Manufacturing: Hundreds of devices are used in factories to monitor all areas of the manufacturing process. Manufacturers can get insights into production bottlenecks and better balance quality, cost, and throughput by connecting the devices to other systems (e.g., parts inventories, scheduling applications, industrial environment management systems).
3. Healthcare: The integration of a hospital patient’s record with an EHR system allows healthcare providers to access the patient’s history, treatments, and data from various sources. As the patient progresses through the hospital, the relevant carers may simply obtain the information they require to treat the patient as efficiently as possible.
4. ERP systems: Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems serve as the centre of the organization’s business operations. Organizations may automate and optimize mission-critical business activities like payment processing, supply chain management, sales lead tracking, and more by connecting ERP with auxiliary software and services.
5. CRM platforms: CRM platforms can boost productivity and efficiency by automating sales, marketing, and customer service.
Conclusion
As the need for better consumer experiences as well as more apps affects business and IT operations, application integration is going to continue to be a small part of the transformation of a company’s operations. An effort towards increasing automation will help achieve these objectives.
